The Blacklist Review: Marvin Gerard (Season 3 Episode 2)

If there is one theme so far in this season of The Blacklist, it is the theme of fear. Everyone is afraid of something. I, for instance, am afraid of spiders. I’m a basic Ron Weasley when it comes to them. Elizabeth Keen’s fears are a little bit more complex than worrying about scuttling little demon spawns with eight legs. She’s afraid of who she’s become now that she’s on the run.

About half-way through “Marvin Gerard,” Liz defends herself against a man who tries to pull her gun and attack her. What she does is beat the man so badly that she breaks his rib and punctures his lung. And she’s horrified because she ends up turning the gun on Red –– in her fear. She sees the way that people in the diner are looking at her. They’re looking at her like she’s a monster and you know what? I think Liz believes them. And I think that is why the scene at the end of the episode between Red and Liz is so utterly important and why the threads of identity are woven throughout the episode as well (especially with Ressler).

“Marvin Gerard” is one of the strongest episodes of The Blacklist that we have seen thus far and I’m trying to not get my hopes up too high, but if this is the direction that season three is taking, then I am totally and completely on board. When Red and Liz manage to escape from the FBI (again) in this episode, he says something which I believe to be indicative of the season as a whole, moving forward:

We’re not going to be able to fight our way out of this, Lizzie. We’re gonna have to think our way out of it.

Seasons one and two of The Blacklist were flashy, sometimes gruesome affairs. Ressler nearly bled to death in one of the most violent episodes of the series. People have been blown up, dismembered, shot, stabbed, and tortured in all sorts of ways. And while that makes for very dramatic and cinematically gory television, it also often leaves a lot to be desired.

And that’s where season three comes in.

So far, this year of The Blacklist is all about tactic and strategy and patience –– where chaos and destruction dominated for two years, the third year is all about outsmarting opponents. And I love it. We’ve already had more character development in two episodes than we have had in the majority of the last few seasons. I’m not rolling my eyes at dangling plot threads and unanswered questions anymore. Again: I hope I don’t have to eat these words later, but I really do think that this show has turned itself into a more compelling drama because of its choice to focus on its characters first and its drama second.

Last week’s episode ended with Liz hopping the fence into the Russian embassy. This week, she meets with consulates and tells them about the Cabal’s plans and how Karakurt turned. She seems to convince one of the higher-ups that she isn’t a traitor and is just being framed. Unfortunately, thanks to a bit of intel he got by blackmailing, Red learns that Liz is in more danger than she knows –– the Russian who makes the call to send Liz to Moscow for debriefing is actually working for the Cabal. Uh-oh.

That’s when Red calls Ressler, who has been standing outside of the Russian embassy since Liz hopped the fence. And Ressler is fuming because there’s nothing he can do to get Liz out of the embassy without essentially declaring war on Russia. (Oh, trust me, he wants to do that but he can’t.) Samar tries to talk him down and as Liz’s car pulls out toward the airport, he draws his gun on it and says:

I can’t let her go.

Ressler is such an interesting character to me, and I could weep at the amount of character growth we’ve seen in the past two seasons. He upholds justice and the law. He values order and loyalty and structure. He hates Red, but he still puts a lot of faith in him. And he once viewed Elizabeth Keen with disgust and disdain. He didn’t like her at all in the pilot episode and it took a while for him to see her as his partner.

Last week, he used the past tense to describe her (“she was my partner”), but this week The Blacklist makes it abundantly clear that Ressler knows and trusts Liz. Heck, he might even love her. He’s so guarded that we can’t tell for sure, but that line he delivers feels heavy with multiple meanings.

After an intense stare-down (Ressler and Liz, by the way, have still not yet properly reunited without at least a barrier of glass and people between them), the car pulls away and Ressler –– angry –– watches as it does. The very next moment, he gets a call from Red who explains what just happened. And both men realize at the same time that if they don’t stop the convoy that is transporting Liz to the airport, the moment she steps on the plane, she’ll be dead.

An intense chase sequence happens next where there is a lot of ramming as Ressler tries to crash the car carrying Liz. There’s also a lot of shooting, as the Russians try to kill Ressler and Liz does all she can to stop them. The car crashes and Ressler gets out, gun drawn, approaching Liz’s car. In the nick of time, Liz manages to kill the driver –– the person who was mere seconds away from killing Ressler.

Ressler waxes poetic in the season premiere about valuing justice and wanting to bring Liz in to charge her. But every chance that he has gotten to stop her so far, he’s let her get away. He had sixty seconds to arrest her at the FBI headquarters last season –– he let her escape. He could have probably chased Liz down, in spite of his injuries in this episode –– but he let her run. He wants to catch her, but he also wants to protect her. And in a weird way, I think he knows she’s safer on the run with Red than she would be if she was caught by the FBI.

Ressler and Liz save each other’s lives this episode, but Liz does not know that until Red tells her at a diner. They sit and eat and drink coffee at a place where Red has connections, and Liz says that Ressler tried to kill her. “Ressler wasn’t trying to kill you –– he was trying to save you,” Red notes. Liz is taken aback, obviously.

Everything that takes place at the diner is super important for what happens in remainder of the episode. It is where Red sees a man verbally abusing his wife and intercedes with threats –– this is the same man who will later try to attack Liz and whom she hurts. When the FBI shows up at the diner under a tip that Liz is there, Red holds everyone hostage and makes demands for Ressler to comply with.

There’s this great shot of Ressler looking at Liz through the door as he approaches to negotiate. Liz is clearly scared. She’s terrified. She cries in the diner’s bathroom and tells herself to pull it together moments before. Her life… well, nothing makes any sense to her anymore. She doesn’t even make sense anymore.

And it’s beautiful and heartbreaking to watch Liz unravel and to see how Megan Boone understands all of those layers of the character. So in the midst of Liz spiraling, Ressler says something extremely important to her (as Red threatens the lives of the hostages):

You’ve got zero leverage. Because I know you. And I know what you’re capable of. You’re not going to hurt these people.

Two men –– Ressler and Red –– tell Liz who she is in this episode and it’s so important she hears this from both of them. Because both tell her that she is not a bad person. She is not a monster. She has made mistakes but she is a good person who wants to help people. They know her… even if she doesn’t know herself.

But Red still threatens hostages and still makes demands to Ressler. One of his demands is that the FBI deliver to him a man named Marvin Gerard. Marvin is currently imprisoned and serving time for kidnapping his own child away from his wife. He’s extremely brilliant, quick-witted, and a really great lawyer.

So the FBI brings Marvin to the diner and he begins to help Red find a way to defeat the Cabal. Not, as Red notes later, by force but by strength of mind. And it turns out that Marvin DOES find something within the text of the Fulcrum that Red missed. We don’t know what it is, but we know it’s extremely important moving forward in Red’s quest to defeat the Cabal.

Outside, the FBI is working alongside a police force or military force (I’m really not sure which, but I’m inclined to believe it’s the former) that wants to extract the hostages and take down both Red and Liz, which is dangerous, obviously. Samar and Ressler are not fans of this idea, and when the head honcho points out that Liz is the person who assassinated the Attorney General, Ressler says: “That was different.”

Let’s just ruminate on that, shall we? Ressler –– the man who constantly wants to uphold the law and values bringing people to justice –– essentially excuses Liz murdering Tom Connolly by saying that it was a different circumstance and that she would never hurt hostages. And when the same man who questioned Liz continues to question Red’s motivations and the fact that he could hurt or kill any one of the hostages, Ressler replies yet again with confidence in Liz: “Keen won’t let him,” he assures. #charactergrowth

As Red, Liz, and Marvin escape –– thanks to their diner comrades –– the FBI realizes that someone didn’t call a tip in on the diner because they spotted Liz; they called in the tip because they spotted Red. Ressler finds this extremely odd and he should: as it turns out, Red called the tip in on himself (does no one check these things out BEFORE a hostage situation? Come on, FBI!) in order to plan a jail break. So, for those keeping score at home, we have Red: 1,000,000. FBI: … 0.

Red and Liz manage to escape, as they are want to do, and find themselves on a shipping liner sailing out to sea. In what is perhaps the sweetest moment yet on this show, Liz asks Red how he deals with people looking at him with fear –– how does he deal with the fact that others see him as a monster?

Red doesn’t know quite how to answer that, and he earnestly tells Liz that he wishes she could see herself the way that he sees her. As Red trails off, he walks toward a giant door which leads out into the shipping liner’s deck. The two stare up at the sky and Red points out the North Star. Gesturing to it, he says:

That’s what I see when I look at you. … I see my way home.

After that moment, I literally tweeted: “okay, that was an adorable line.” Because it WAS. I don’t believe in Red/Liz as a romantic pairing –– the show has toyed with the “are you my daddy?” question far too many times for my liking to make that plausible –– but honestly, this moment was one of the best of the show and exemplary of its focus moving forward. I’ve loved the time spend on the Red/Liz relationship because it’s so foundational. The way that Red sees Liz makes all the difference in the world. Remember last week when Red told Ressler that what he knew about Liz and how he felt about her could make all the difference?

I think he was right.

I think that Red knows that how he feels about Liz –– how he sees her –– is his path toward finding his way home. It’s his road to redemption, to being a better person. Red loves Liz, there is no doubt about it. But that little moment under the stars was not just for Red to be reminded of who he is.

It was just what Liz needed in order to be reminded that no matter how far she’s fallen, no matter what mistakes she’s made, and no matter what she sees when she looks into the mirror, to other people… she is light and goodness and a way home.

Notes & things:

• TOM RETURNED AT THE END OF THIS EPISODE. You guys know from last season’s reviews that I hate Tom. Like… I really do. But he somehow, magically, finds Ressler and says: “We need to talk.” This is going to be amusing to watch, considering how much these two loathe each other. And I’m extremely excited to see them team up to try and find and help Liz because both men really care about her, so it should be fun to watch them duke it out.
• I didn’t talk about it above, but Cooper’s sub-plot this episode revolved around him getting assigned to desk duty because he refused to comply with a deal in which he admitted wrongdoing in the case of Liz. Turns out, maybe desk duty is just where he wants to be anyway –– at the end of the episode, he looks up Karakurt in the FBI database.
• There was not enough Aram in this episode.
• Dembe is apparently being tortured by our creepy new Cabal villain, Mr. Solomon, who continues to be super duper methodical and super duper creepy.
• Red: “Reciprocity’s a bitch.”
• Red: “The second she gets on that plane…” Ressler: “… she’s dead.” Red: “You need to stop that convoy.” I’m totally here for more Red/Ressler team-ups in the future, writers.
• Red protecting a domestic abuse victim is one of the best things I have ever seen him do on this show.
• Speaking of Red, again: He held up a diner and did so in the most polite way possible, including going around and pouring more coffee for the patrons. If I ever get held up somewhere, I hope it’s by him.
• Marvin: “My parole hearing is next week.” Red: “Christmas came early!”
• Apparently Marvin knows that Liz is the reason Red turned himself in. Spoiler alert, he is not a fan of what Red did and what Liz unknowingly made him do.
• Marvin’s backstory and the reason he was thrown into prison is SO sad –– his wife got their son hooked on drugs and the son spiraled into a really dark path. So Marvin tried to rescue him from that darkness, but because the wife was seen as such a princess among a high-powered family, he got thrown into jail and she got to keep abusing their son. The child ended up committing suicide at 15 years old.
• Even on the run, Red can’t forgo dessert –– he gets boxed-up pecan pie for the road from the diner.
• I didn’t mention it above, but when Ressler is approached about, you know, killing members of the Russian embassy and running the convoy off the road, he explains that it was to protect Liz. Ms. Deputy Attorney General is exasperated by this and when they discuss how Ressler knew Liz was in danger –– because of Red –– Deputy Attorney General questions Ressler’s source. And Ressler –– listen carefully –– agrees to resign from the task force if Red is wrong. This is a huge statement to make in a scene that wasn’t all that memorable. He’s literally betting his livelihood on Red and for as much as he snarks at him and dislikes him, Ressler knows that Red’s ultimate goal is to keep Liz safe and would never compromise that.
• Apparently Red has a banana plantation. Who is surprised?
• Red: “You can’t do every silly thing you want to do in life.”

What did you all think of “Marvin Gerard”? Let us know in the comments!

Reviewer Rating:

User Rating:

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