Look, it’s only been a week.
Yes, we’re still on Blindspot. See here for the previous post, and introductory details to Blindspot.
Otherwise, we’re gonna dive right into this one.
I think it’s getting obvious at this point, but SPOILERS!
Where Am I?
There was absolutely no way I was going to finish the over two full seasons worth of episodes I had to watch before I had to write another post. If I could hibernate and just watch episodes without ever having to leave my room or socialise, perhaps I could’ve, I, however, have stuff to do, unfortunately.
So, since last we caught up I watched up until Episode 413: “Though This Be Madness, Yet There is Method In’t”, and let’s just say… it hurt. I watched the majority of these episodes over the weekend and have been busy ever since. If you’re familiar with the show you know the series of arcs I then watched in 48 hours is painful.
So, to recap that? They oust Hirsch. Kurt tells Jane he killed Avery, Jane leaves Kurt, Avery’s not dead, they rescue Avery, Jane goes back to Kurt. Roman made himself an accidental family, his plans start to fall apart, he takes Jane home, Blake shoots him, he and Jane have a tearful goodbye. Jane faints, she is dying, she wakes up as Remi, Kurt is not okay… and that’s just the end of Season 3. I have also watched the painfully teary arc of Jane dying in Season 4. I have thankfully watched her be cured in Episode 412: “The Tale of the Book of Secrets”, but just because it ends well does not mean that was any easier to watch, and I know she’s about to have some mental health struggles to come.
Of course, in between Jane and Kurt’s arcs being devastating, Reade loses Meg, Tasha and Patterson have a rift (quite understandably so because Borden’s not dead!), Tasha reveals her feelings to Reade and then has to leave to go undercover, and that emotional turmoil sucks too.
Season 3 is arguably the strongest season they ever had, and I adore so much of the start of Season 4, with the ZIP poisoning arc, and Weitz coming back, and Rich is a main cast member now, and Boston is showing up, and Ally appears. It’s great. Episode 409: “Check Your Ed” is possibly my favourite episode of the entire series.
All these narratives in quick succession may have hurt like a son of a gun, but they were incredibly enjoyable, and some of their best work, but I may be bias. I do adore their dynamics in Season 3 onwards more than the early seasons, because the core couple is married now, and Tasha and Reade are finally having to face up to feelings they’re burying. They feel more like a cohesive family unit, with the added benefit of Jane and Kurt being together.
A Clarifying Aside
I feel like I should clarify for those that may have forgotten or have read ahead in spite of not having watched the show, that the Briggs siblings are who the Kruger siblings grow up to be. The Kruger’s are Remi and Roman Briggs before the orphanage, before Sandstorm, before Shepherd. Untouched by all their pain that is to come.
Furthermore, in case you truly have forgotten, Remi is who Jane was before her ZIP injection, before the amnesia. The show mixes pronouns between Remi and Jane sometimes, debating with itself whether Jane should be held responsible for Remi’s actions. By Season 4, though, the distinction seems to have been made clear. Jane is not Remi. Of course, they are about to immediately blur that line by the end of 409, but that’s more of an internal struggle for Jane, than it is something for everyone else to debate over. Also, Avery is Remi’s daughter Shepherd made her give up. Thanks to Roman’s shenanigans Jane is able to connect with her, though, so that’s pretty cool. No less painful because she didn’t even know she existed, and then she was briefly dead, but they’re a family unit now, and that’s all that matters.
It should also be noted for the uninitiated, that Roman thinks Jane is deserving of his revenge, what he calls penance, because in an attempt to give him the same new lease on life she gained via ZIP she had dosed him with it in Season 2 without his consent. Of course, they knew who Roman was and he was immediately locked in a box by the FBI in spite of his amnesia, in effect denying him the same opportunities Jane had. Some may say his anger is justified. It’s highly likely if they’d known who Jane was in the pilot she’d have been in a box as well. She was only allowed to reinvent herself because of her blank slate, and the effort Sandstorm went to to ensure she would not be identified as Remi, but as Taylor.
Okay, Briggs history and context given to you. If you were a bit out of the loop and hadn’t watched in a while, you should be up to date, and if you’re reading because you don’t mind spoilers… you were warned, and also it should make some more sense now. I realised Blindspot is also one of those that needs a little bit of a character guide to navigate if you’re even slightly unfamiliar with it, so, it’s been given here.
So, what do I have to say about it beyond the pain it caused?
Roman is a brilliant villain.
Look, Roman is sympathetic, traumatised and, sure, a killer, but a genius, and genuinely caring, at least to his own perceptions. Regardless of what qualified professionals may have told us of him, he definitely loves Jane and Blake Crawford. He starts out as a vengeful good guy. His whole plan is to take down Hank Crawford, and why not cause Jane some appropriately deserved (to him) pain while he’s at it. Two birds, one stone. Sure, he made all of them pawns in his plan, but his plan was in the end to take down a bad guy, because, yes, Hank sucks.
None of what he does to the main cast can be deemed as just or good. He is, objectively speaking, the antagonist. He was completely willing to turn against Jane and the squad the minute Hank offered him something better. Now, in my opinion, he joins Hank because he loves Blake, and realises that taking down Hank will cause him to lose Blake, and so he complies with Hank’s plan in order to keep Blake. His motivations for turning are his love for Blake, though I suspect Jane’s speech that basically summarises to her disowning him did not help. Regardless of what he may think of Hank’s plan, saying once that he approves of it, the fact Roman so easily turns against Hank again the more he loses, implies joining Hank was a means to an end. That end being Blake.
His death in the finale (Episode 322: “In Memory”) is deeply saddening. That episode is a contrived homecoming, and a goodbye to our favourite psychopath, because regardless of all he does, we love him, Jane loves him, and he loves Jane. Whatever betrayals, and announcements of hatred, and attempts to kill each other there may be between them, they love each other, and she grieves when he dies because he is her last connection to that ever so coveted past she can’t remember. He has spent half the season reminding her of what he knows and she doesn’t, and with him gone, so too is that connection.
Side note, but the Kruger’s were apparently loaded. We can’t say for sure what kind of childhood they could’ve had because we don’t really know all that much about their parents, but from that house, it’s fair to say they would’ve lived a fairly comfortable and happy childhood. Of course, there’s also that trust fund Roman collected on in Season 2, so, wow. Tangentially related, but why the hell were Alice and Ian apparently sharing a bedroom in a house that size?
I’m going to continue to wait until I have completed Madeline’s story before commenting on her. I may have watched twelve episodes of her story, but that’s not really enough. Shepherd and Roman often had their motives and full goals revealed in the very end of the season, so it feels only right to allow Madeline that same patience before passing a judgement.
So, Roman aside what’s the rest of it like?
I love it and hate it because I love it. It is, as stated, the best they did. For me anyways, Season 3, and this portion of Season 4 I’ve watched, is peak Blindspot. This is, obviously, subjective, but you can’t argue that what they made in Season 3 wasn’t beautiful.
I found Blindspot when Season 3 was airing, finally caught up as the finale hit our screens in the UK and proceeded to freak out immensely. There are few shows I’ve tried intently to try and keep up on as the new episodes aired, but when the Season 3 finale officially broke me, watching the new Season 4 episodes as quick as was feasibly possible became a top priority the months later we had to painfully wait after that cliff-hanger. It should be noted that once Jane was cured, I didn’t quite keep up on it, which is why I’ve never finished Season 4.
Most of the plot points I mentioned earlier occur in the Season 3 finale alone. From the moment Roman brings Jane back to South Africa it hurts to watch. That episode does not stop, and then it ends with the last less than ten minutes including Roman dying, Jane almost dying, being told Jane is sick, Jane waking up as Remi, and then Kurt being revealed to be severely injured. That’s a lot to process in very little time, and then it just leaves you there! Remi was back! And I was bawling!
When you start Season 4 it picks up three months later like it didn’t just devastate you with three emotional plot points in the end of an episode, like we didn’t just discover that our two leads are potentially dying! It’s okay, though, they’re totally fine. Kurt’s recovering from a bullet wound more seriously than anyone’s ever taken a bullet wound so far. Need we think back to Jane’s wound in the Season 2 premiere? Totally a clean shot, Tasha assured us. She was fine to return to work the day after Roman’s unofficial triage. She’s fine. It feels much more realistic Kurt is taken out of the field for three months, not to mention his reported coma.
Most importantly here, though, is Remi is back, and it’s been three months! What has she been doing? She’s sick still, right? That ZIP is gonna kill her regardless of who occupies that brain!
I do like that they manage to casually reference that due to Kurt’s injury it’s been awhile between our favourite couple, or in other words, Remi has managed to skilfully avoid engaging in too much intimacy beyond hugs and kisses with Kurt Weller, Jane Doe’s husband. Which, if we’re being honest, we’re all very thankful for, because that would’ve been a little too far.
I also like that Jane’s usual predictable Season Haircut, is used by Remi to try to convince Kurt that she’s totally still Jane… Thanks to Patterson it doesn’t work, but you know, she tried. It also has the added benefit of Jane looking like Jane again when we finally see her this season. When Remi is outed she then echoes Jane’s lines to Roman from last season at the party when she declared “Remi is dead.” Jane likes very much who she became, and from what she knows of Remi, she’s not particularly a fan, and she has been expressing such opinions since way back when she was undercover at Sandstorm. This is not news to us, but it is a reflection of the fact Jane is trying to move forward. Then here, Remi says instead “Jane is dead.” she of course ends with “My name is Remi.” For her it’s likely a reclamation of her identity. She perceives everything was stolen from her, and this is her claiming it back.
I wanted to watch the Remi arc is quick as possible, because it wasn’t previously one of my favourites, and on numerous occasions I have simply just rewatched Episodes 409-412, possibly more than I’ve watched all the earlier seasons combined, but on this watch I really appreciated what they did. The ZIP arc cleverly gives them a chance to bring Remi back, and Remi a reason not to run away immediately. Brilliantly structured. Then the true impacts of Jane dealing with having Remi’s memories is set aside briefly because she’s too busy dealing with the fact she’s dying, but they get to it, they don’t neglect it.
I want to explore how Season 3 and Season 4 have vastly different approaches to the past, present and future in its own separate post, so that’s on the docket to be planned.
The chance for them to explore Remi, though, is fantastic. She has so far been a character equivalent to some sort of mythical beast. We know her by reputation and her actions, and 3-minute clips in which her characterisation differs greatly depending on who’s memory it is. So, the chance to finally meet someone who we’ve only really known as if she was a shadow in the background is great, and they do such a good job. To me Remi, combined with everything we already know and her presentation here, is an incredibly empathetic and caring person, a traumatised individual, with a lot of anger, and Shepherd either taught her or manipulated her into using that rage, and her incredible skills for her own plan.
We don’t meet Jane until Episode 9 this season, and in that episode Remi, who we’ve only really met this season has a brilliant closure to her arc, as she and Jane unite to face Shepherd together. Regardless of how much Jane may have vilified Remi in her head, here she realises Remi’s only the weapon that she is because Shepherd shaped her into it. Remi is so much a product of her trauma, her rage, and the angry people that sharpened her that she doesn’t even realise how much of who she is, is not a choice she made.
When she wakes up, Remi is, understandably, angry. If you think about it from her perspective, Remi sacrificed everything for her cause, and when she finally woke up 4 Years later (I’ll come to the inconsistency!) she found out everything she fought for, everything she believed in, loved and cared for was gone. Sandstorm was the villain, yes, and a terrorist group, but it was all Remi had, it was her family, her fiancé, her friends, her reason for living and it was gone. You’d be angry too. What’s interesting is the fact she immediately channels that anger into getting Shepherd back. She’s not her own person, she’s relying on Shepherd to have a way to bring it all back. When she stands up to Shepherd with Jane, she’s finally doing something for herself, she made a choice, and it wasn’t out of anger. In fact, she had to overcome her anger to make it. That’s how you do a full arc for a character in only nine episodes.
So, apparently, I had a lot to say. I’m not quite done yet, though.
How about Jane?
I want to mention that Episodes 409-412 are a wonderful set of episodes. There’s a reason I watched them so many times and it’s because they are so wonderfully done. It’s weird this season because they go 8 Episodes without us ever seeing one of the lead characters. Her face is on the screen but it’s not her, it’s like her evil twin, magical alter ego. Jaimie Alexander is there, giving a stellar performance as the angry and vengeful Remi Briggs… Jane Doe is not. It’s confusing on your perceptions, especially when she cuts her hair again. She looks like Jane, and when she does it you miss her, because she’s not here. It’s so weird to not quite want to rout for the face you’ve been routing for three seasons, and then occasionally you almost want to because on top of replacing our hero she is still dying, and if she dies, Jane dies too. So, we want her to live, and if she has to succeed in her plans to do so then so be it.
As a side note the ZIP poisoning is an incredibly convenient excuse for Remi to get away with nearly everything. Besides the Roman hallucination she actually exhibits very little symptoms until her last episodes where it’s clearly got much worse. Almost every time she claims to have a headache or feel faint or dizzy, at least from what we see, she’s lying in order to sneak away and do something devious. It’s the perfect excuse, and it’s baked into her re-emergence. In fact, she is a symptom of the sickness she is using as an excuse.
Strangely, this quite nicely brings me back to Jane’s coming back. Episode 409 is worthy of its own special recognition of a post one day. It’s wonderful and has a lot to explore beyond what it means for Remi and Jane, and the ramifications of Jane waking up with Remi’s memories, something she hardly has time to process before she’s reminded of the fact she’s literally dying right now. Then you have the next episodes, and interestingly Jane is having frequent headaches and feeling faint and all that, but she is not hallucinating. In fact, 409 is the last time we see Roman for a long time outside of archival footage. Jane’s still sick but he’s not appearing, no one’s appearing. I do wonder, who or what would she have seen if she did hallucinate?
Those episodes before her cure are beautiful and Jaimie Alexander does an excellent job of portraying Jane’s condition and mental space. You feel her pain radiate out of the screen; you believe she could actually be blind. It breaks your heart.
Everything about these episodes does. Kurt is genuinely worried his wife is going to die, and Jane has almost resided herself to dying. It’s almost a Sci-Fi kind of illness, from as far as I know, a fictional drug’s side effects, but she currently has the same kind of diagnosis equivalent to that of a cancer patient, and one that she has been told is killing her, unless they can cure it, and for some of these episodes they don’t have any idea what a cure could be, never mind how to get it. Then when they do have a solution it’s just out of reach! That heartbreak is palpable through the scenes Jane and Kurt share. They are both grieving before it happens. Jane’s body starts to forget how to function, they are on a timeline of days, and they have no sense how to get what they need to cure her. Their spark of hope is so small.
Then, because I love the sad as much as I love the immense happiness, this is beautiful to watch. I want to bawl but I can’t look away. You’re in that room with them, and you feel it, and you want to cry, and the little voice in the back of your head is telling you there’s so much hope, this is only Episode 12, but you feel Jane losing it at the same time.
In between all that, there’s Patterson and Rich! Who fight indescribably hard to save her life and do! Not only that, Jane is dying, and the episode is still entertaining because Patterson and Rich are incredibly entertaining as a duo. They’re like best friends now, and play off each other brilliantly, and that dynamic between them lightens the mood of Episode 412, that could otherwise just be so dark. It’s a wonderful balance.
What’s the timeline?
Just one point before we call it quits on this “catch-up”, which is becoming less and less of a brief catch up. In fact, it’s hardly brief at all.
Point? The timeline, which is where the inconsistency comes in.
Orion canonically happens in 2013, Jane is canonically dropped in Time Square in 2015, when the pilot airs. There’s a three month time jump between Season’s 1 and 2, and then there’s a two year time jump between Season’s 2 and 3, and then Season 3 shows the airdate of the episode on the wall in Jane’s hospital room: ‘Today’s date: 5/18/2018’. This, I believe, is where they messed up first.
Now, I will allow leeway, but let’s just think about this. Remi says to the Roman hallucination in the Season 4 premiere:
“I can’t remember the last two and a half years of my life. The last thing I remember is Oscar telling me that I would wake up in Time Square.”
Remi Briggs – Blindspot Episode 401: “Hella Duplicitous”
So, for point of fact, she says two and a half years, a sum that the time jumps alone, including the three months skipped in this episode, ADD UP TO! Then specifies, that the last thing she remembers is an event that occurred before the pilot!
Now don’t get me wrong, routinely Blindspot episodes canonically occur the day after the previous one, it happens all the time. There is so little time skipped between episodes, I would have no problem believing the entirety of Season 1 actually occurs in like three months. I think, it’s more likely to be six considering all that happens, but we’re going for a tight schedule, and the first 5 Episodes occur over like a week so, three months feels very feasible.
However, the entirety of the last three seasons, including the time jumps, physically cannot have occurred in two and a half years. The maths doesn’t work, it’s impossible. It has 100% been longer than two and half years.
All this inconsistency, likely because the wrong date was written on Jane’s hospital room wall. Assuming Season 2 takes place in the year it aired (2017 for the finale), the date should’ve read at least 2019, if not 2020.
It is common that TV Seasons are treated as if they occur over the year the season aired in. One Season = One year. Simple maths. If a character turns 31 in Season 1, you can assume they will turn 35 in Season 5. This is obviously shown in series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who would celebrate her birthday (nearly!) every year, at around about the same time in the season. Also, if you’re told a character’s age you can extrapolate what their birth year may be based on when the episode aired, though this only applies to shows set in a modern context.
Blindspot differs from this. So many episodes occur in rapid succession that the timeline of the seasons, the content we actually see, is a little obscure at best. There are moments where they’ll tell you it’s only been a week since something happened and you’re truly shocked because it feels like you’ve watched way more of the canon than a week. There is 22 Episodes in a season, if every single one occurs literally the day after the previous one a season occurs in less than a month! Genuinely take a moment to consider if you believe that all the events of any of the seasons occur in less than a month. I will suspend my disbelief for many things that I love but I have limits.
Regardless, Remi either sucks at math, or the timeline math just ain’t gonna math, even if all three of the last seasons occur in a month each, it adds up to at least two years and nine months. Considering events include, Mayfair getting arrested and released on house arrest, Sandstorm building a satellite and sending it to space, Ally having a child (yes I know this overlaps with some time jumps), people recovering from a huge compound exploding, Patterson losing David and then recovering enough to consider dating Borden, never mind build a relationship enough with him to hurt like it does, and Roman managing to recover all his memories after being dosed with ZIP. My point is that there’s a lot of long running arcs that require more than a few weeks, more than a few months even. So, at minimum we’re bumping it up to having been a safe 3 Years, in reality it’s probably been at least 4 Years, and considering Remi tacked on a half a year, we’ll put that on there too.
In conclusion, they forgot about the two-year time jump when they did the set dressing and everyone’s had to roll with it since. It’s part of the dialogue now, though, so it’s canon. Just don’t think about the maths.
I love this show anyways. It could make absolutely zero sense and I would still wilfully believe it’s done no wrong.
Okay, now I’m done.
To Conclude
Oops.
So, this was longer than I had expected. There was even analysis in there, which I thought I wouldn’t do till I finished the series. Guess I had a lot of thoughts I just had to get out, and believe me, I was holding back.
I was going to talk more about Madeline and even Hank a bit, but decided that villains of Blindspot as a whole are worthy of their own post at some point, and as such left those in drafts for the time being until I finished the series, and can comment on all of them in their entirety. As stated earlier, regardless of what opinions I may have on Madeline already, it is certainly better to wait until I have completed her arc before commenting in order to avoid looking a fool, at the very least.
Instead I stuck to Roman, and his impact on the finale, and how that feeds into the opening arc of Season 4, which is an almost self-contained arc. The ZIP poisoning narrative has only one remaining plot thread, that being the ramifications of Jane having Remi’s memories now. A plot point that won’t become relevant till later. It’s not abandoned. It is externally triggered after Jane’s impending death has been resolved. In effect, that gained internal struggle is its own separate arc, but is by a thread linked to this one. It couldn’t have occurred without the pivotal 409. Jane’s internal struggle, though, is possibly a B-Plot, as Tasha’s undercover feels at the start of the season in spite of the fact it sets up the main villain for the rest of the season.
Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you for sticking around to the end if you did, I greatly appreciate it as always.
All these thoughts come from a place of deep love for this show. They only exist because thinking about the show takes up as much of my spare time as watching it does, which is why I have a blog, and some wonderfully tolerant friends and family. Thank you to you all.
I do hope, you’ll join me for the next one, which will be in two weeks this time, as usual. I can’t promise the post will be on something new, but I can hope I’ll have finished Blindspot by then… and I am no more prepared to do so than when I didn’t finish it a few years ago. I may cry a lot, and then I’ll tell you all about it at some point, I am sure.
For now, though, thank you once more for reading, and I’ll see you in the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to NBC, Warner Bros. Television and all other relevant parties.