The Blacklist Review: The Deer Hunter (Season 2 Episode 13)

The Blacklist very rarely focuses on female blacklisters or killers, but when it does, I always find them to be extremely interesting. In this week’s episode, titled “The Deer Hunter,” our blacklister is even more interesting because of how her story seems to somewhat parallel that of Elizabeth Keen’s.

If you’ll recall from the last few weeks (and pre-hiatus events), Liz is in a bit of hot water since the body of that D.C. harbormaster that Tom killed has surfaced. And now? Now she’s in even more trouble than she thought imaginable because – as she explains later to Ressler – she can’t hide behind the task force anymore and Detective Wilcox tells Liz that Samuel Aleko (the guy who was guarding Tom) is ready to take a plea deal in exchange for information on what happened to the harbor master.

Of course, Raymond Reddington knows everything. Even more so than he usually seems to, actually. First, as Liz and the task force begin to examine the serial killer known as The Deer Hunter, Red informs them that they’ve been looking at the killer all wrong – they’re not searching for a man; their killer is a woman. Liz rejects Red’s assessment because she’s a professional profiler, remember? But as the task force begins to look at the case, what they realize is The Deer Hunter’s crime spree stopped years ago and who they’re searching for is actually a copycat killer.

As Ressler and Liz begin to put the pieces together, they realize that every recent victim has been a husband or significant other of a woman who reported him for abuse or violence. This leads them to Tracy Solobotkin (Amanda Plummer of The Hunger Games and – what I initially recognized her from, the Disney Channel Original Movie, Get a Clue), a woman who works for an agency that helps domestic abuse victims.

Liz gets kidnapped by Tracy while following her without backup (Ressler was kidnapped last week, so it seems only fitting Liz would be this week, right? As an aside: are these people just really bad at their jobs because they get kidnapped A LOT?) and learns Tracy’s story: her husband was The Deer Hunter. She didn’t know that when she married him, but she knew he was a damaged man, psychologically: his father never loved him or expressed care for him, which made him grow up to be distant and violent.

As their marriage grew, he became abusive and threatening, but Tracy never left him. On the night she found out what he did and who he was, she tried to but he came after her. And so she defended herself by wielding a bow and killed him. She realized that she never wanted another woman to suffer what she did, so she helped others by killing their abusive men.

There’s this obvious moment of parallelism between Liz and Tracy in two instances. First, there’s the point of Tracy’s story: though she’s mentally unstable (clearly), she did what she had to in order to protect herself. Liz is struggling with this. She feels guilt for what Tom did to the harbor master and the question of how far she will go to protect herself from sentencing and jail is pretty evident.

Secondly, as Tracy prepares to kill Liz, the agent angers the killer so that she’ll come after her and Liz uses her thigh strength (she’s being suspended from the ceiling by a harness at this point) in order to try and squeeze the life out of Tracy. And she nearly does, in the exact same way that Tom killed that harbor master, but Ressler and Samar intervene.

The most telling conversation of the episode occurs after this event between Ressler and Liz, where she confesses that she’s going to turn herself into Detective Wilcox. Ressler is having none of Liz’s pity party and reminds her, yet again, that she was not the one who killed him. It was Tom’s fault and the burden of guilt shouldn’t be placed on her, but on the actual guilty party. But Liz insists that she hesitated and that’s why she felt guilt – she would have killed Tracy, too, if Ressler hadn’t intervened. It’s then that Ressler begins to get really emotional as he delivers the following advice to Liz:

Ressler: How many people do you think are alive today who wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for the work we do?
Liz: Please…
Ressler: 50? 100? How many, Liz? How many families haven’t buried a mother, a father, brother, sister? Children? See, the only question is the body count. So you go ahead and you nail yourself to a cross. And while you’re up there, feeling sanctified, you consider how many people are gonna die because this task force gets shut down.
Liz: Ressler!
Ressler: No, don’t. Don’t ask me to feel your pain, Liz. I’ve got more than enough of my own.

What is so amazing about this speech was how emotional Ressler is. We don’t often see him on the verge of tears. His emotion of choice is anger. But he is genuinely upset (and kudos to Diego Kattenhoff and Megan Boone for the emotion they both delivered in this scene – Liz gets emotional, too) at the thought of losing his partner and losing his livelihood and losing – more than anything – his purpose. He genuinely cares about Liz. Her and the task force? They’re all he has left. And someone needed to remind Liz that the job isn’t just about her. They’re partners, so what she does affects him and vice versa.

Remember how I noted above that Red knows more in this episode than he usually does? The second thing he mysteriously knows is that Liz is in trouble.

It’s Red who goes to Samuel Alecko and convinces him to change his story and not take the plea deal. If he does that for Red, Red will ensure that Samuel’s brother who is in need of a heart transplant gets to the top of the list and will have a new heart within the week. So when Detective Wilcox questions Samuel and asks him to tell his story about how Liz was involved in covering up the D.C. harbor master’s murder… Samuel refuses to verify that story.

Elsewhere in this episode, when Red isn’t doing everyone’s jobs for them, he’s searching for the mysterious person who belongs to the phone number in the safe and has Aram track the number to an apartment which is empty. A struggle appears to have occurred at the apartment though and there’s blood, which sends Red (and Dembe, too) on the hunt for that mystery person.

At the end of the episode, Liz confesses to Red that she has the Fulcrum and Red calls her out on the reason she didn’t tell him in the first place: for all of her complaining and constant waffling, she was afraid that if she gave him the Fulcrum, he would have no reason to remain in her life. There appears to be some truth to that statement, as Liz leaves without saying another word.

“The Deer Hunter” was an interesting episode of The Blacklist: it wasn’t the most stellar this series has ever been, but proved that female blacklisters can be just as complex and dangerous as male ones and that Red may have stopped Liz’s life from unraveling for now, but how much longer can she last until the next thread begins to fray?

(If the promo for next week’s episode is any indication, that time will come VERY soon.)

Observations and other notes:

• “You’re sexy no matter what.” Samar called Aram “sexy” and it made me so giddy. I love that we’re getting a slow-building relationship with those two. I sincerely hope that nothing ruins it.
• “One of the reasons I’m still alive is due to my love of reading.”
• Red schooled Liz on her profiling which is telling because that’s literally her job.
• “I used to have a teeming mane just like that!” James Spader’s delivery of that line and how he grabbed Amir Arison’s hair was hilarious.
• The guard gave Red ninety seconds with Samuel Alecko so naturally, Red spent a good seventy-five of those monologuing.
• Dear Ressler and Liz: only bad things happen when you two split up to look for a suspect. Please stay together.
• “What are you gonna do? Ground me? Take away my phone privileges?”

Prepare yourselves, The Blacklist fans, because it looks like Tom is making his triumphant return next week (although I’m confused because the promos made it look like he would be back in “The Deer Hunter”). Also next week, Red gets kidnapped! Man, people sure get kidnapped a lot in this show.

Until then, let us know what you thought of this week’s episodes in the comments!

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The Blacklist airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.