The Blacklist Review: The Troll Farmer (Season 3 Episode 1)

Well, The Blacklist is officially back. And its season three premiere, “The Troll Farmer,” is a stellar debut and return to form for a show that struggled a majority of last season to find its footing and purpose.

What the writers and producers decided to do in having Liz murder Attorney General Tom Connolly set up a really captivating foundation for the rest of this season. The more answers we’ve gotten about Liz’s past, her connection to Red, and her Russian spy mother, the more we’ve been able to build up Elizabeth Keen as a complex, conflicted character.

Liz is on the run now. She is from the moment “The Troll Farmer” opens and she continues to be until the very last second of the episode. The Blacklist’s premiere picks up nearly right where the finale left off –– Red and Liz are on the run together because she just murdered the Attorney General. As Liz panics, Red remains calm and assures her that they’re going to get away from the FBI. And… they do.

(Side note: Why do Ressler, Samar, and Aram underestimate Red when he and Liz sneak through that tunnel? I mean, this is Raymond Reddington – the world’s most notorious and dangerous and, oh yeah, elusive criminal. They should have known that he would have some sort of trick up his sleeve and that he’s only caught if he wants to be caught.)

But unlike most episodes of this series, the focus of the premiere isn’t necessarily on the blacklister of the week. And I really appreciated that. Because the focus is, instead, on the show’s very complex characters. Red spends most of the episode monologuing (oh how I’ve missed the monolooguing), or else trying to keep Liz safe. And Liz?

Well, after she dyes her hair blonde, she spends most of the episode waffling between feeling guilt, fear, and confidence. The last bit comes toward the end of the episode where Red and Liz get separated and it seems like capture is imminent for her. Liz tells Red that she can’t do this –– she can’t outrun the FBI, can’t stay hidden forever, and can’t fight anymore. But Red tells her to remember who she is –– the daughter of a Russian spy. He reassures her that she will be okay. She is not as certain.

The Red/Liz dynamic is something “The Troll Farmer” fixates a lot on, with good reason. Red does all he can to protect Liz in the episode with the same sort of calm rationale we’re used to seeing from him. And while Red is calm, Liz panics because she murdered someone and knows that her life will be over if she’s caught. The Cabal will make sure of it.

Red plans a way for them to escape the city after their safe house is compromised, in the form of this week’s blacklister nicknamed “The Troll Farmer.” What he does, essentially, is set up a giant social media diversion tactic. Red explains to Liz that this man (a young man and a team of young people, as it were) strategically plot out social media posts in order to cause distractions. The team blows up social media platforms with confirmed sightings of Red and Liz (even reaching as high as CNN) very tactically so that the two fugitives can escape, unnoticed because of the distraction surrounding them.

Honestly, this blacklister was super compelling to me. I appreciate the line The Blacklist occasionally toes between a procedural like CSI and a procedural like Criminal Minds, but in a season premiere with as many moving parts as this one, I am glad the show chose to focus on a low-key, normal blacklister instead of an insane criminal bent on murdering others.

That isn’t to say that there weren’t creepy murderous people in this episode, because The Cabal was out in full-force, coming after Dembe’s daughter… and granddaughter. Yes, that’s right –– Dembe is a grandpa. As it turns out, a previously unseen member of the Cabal named Mr. Solomon. He’s calm, collected, and super duper creepy because he abducts Dembe’s granddaughter and injects her with some sort of nerve virus that only he has the antidote for. The kicker? He’ll let the baby die in three weeks unless Dembe follows his orders. Eesh. I like this integration of a story for Dembe though. I thought the story of his past was one of the most compelling in The Blacklist and I love the relationship he has with Red. I’m definitely interested to see what it means now that the Cabal has leverage over Dembe though. Would he ever betray Red or Liz to save his family?

Back at FBI headquarters this week, Cooper is detained and Ressler is trying to be the same “I only value the law” guy we saw in the pilot episode. Here’s the kicker though: he’s not that guy anymore and he proves it in this episode. While Ressler is acting director of the FBI since Cooper is arrested, he’s doing his very best to find Liz and bring her to justice. He states multiple times that he only cares about that –– about getting the truth and bringing her in.

But there’s a lot more emotion at play in Ressler than he lets on, and the characters (Red and Samar in particular) are starting to notice that. Take, for instance, a scene this week in which Samar is held at gunpoint by some sketchy dude in a warehouse and Ressler –– with no remorse whatsoever –– shoots the assailant and luckily (Samar makes sure to emphasize that it was pure luck) doesn’t hit Samar instead.

Ressler’s appearing to be a tough guy –– the stoic, rigid FBI acting Director. But he’s not. He’s extremely emotional this episode. He does things without thinking them all the way through. He talks about upholding the law and justice and truth… but there is more complexity to it than just that.

Because he genuinely cares about Liz and about his team. Cooper confesses to Ressler that he let Liz get away –– that he told her to run after she shot and killed Tom Connolly. And what does Ressler do with this information? Nothing. Because he confesses something to Cooper in return: he let Liz escape custody. He could have captured her, could have taken her back in… but he didn’t.

Ressler: I could have stopped her. I mean, I should have stopped her. But I didn’t. I let her go.
Cooper: You made a decision based on instinct. You should trust that.

For all of his waxing poetic about only wanting to capture Liz, he’s let her escape before. He cares about her (remember last season when he brought her birthday dinner disguised as a case file and drank wine with her because he CARED ABOUT HER THAT MUCH?) and he can’t separate that part of himself from the part of himself acting as Director. Ressler may care about justice, but he also cares about people. It’s why his thinly veiled threats to Cooper are just that – thinly veiled threats.

Ressler releases Cooper and never tells about how he encouraged Liz to run. Samar is catching onto the fact, too, that Ressler cares more than he allows anyone else to see. She tells him that after reviewing the surveillance footage, she knows about the missing 60 seconds (in which Ressler let Liz go). And her growing suspicions only illuminate Ressler’s emotions.

Red, in fact, calls Ressler after he’s made his valiant escape from the city and offers him the location of The Troll Farmer. Ressler rightly assumes that this is a bribe – that Red wants him to look away from Liz’s escape and ignore his duties. But that’s not the case at all. All that Red requests is that Ressler be a man of his word –– a man of honor –– when it comes to whatever happens with Liz. He doesn’t make him promise that he won’t bring her to justice, but what he DOES make Ressler promise is that whatever happens, Ressler will continue to be the kind of person Red knows that he is –– that he will continue to give Liz the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, these are Red’s exact words:

What you know about her, what you feel about her could make all the difference.

Red knows that Ressler still cares about Liz as a friend, as a partner, and as a person pretty deeply. And there’s a part of Ressler that still wants to believe Liz is a good person and a good agent, so he takes Red’s bait. And that is a really great exchange, mostly because we’ve seen so little of the Red/Ressler relationship that it’s still fresh and compelling.

The episode ends with Ressler and Samar figuring out where Liz is running to. And they nearly catch her in an extremely tense foot race that leads Liz to hopping the fence of the Russian Embassy (the RUSSIAN EMBASSY) in order to seek immunity. The episode ends with a beautiful shot of Ressler and Liz face-to-face, separated by the fence.

So close. And yet, so far.

Notes & things:

• “She was my partner.” Oh, Ressler. You should stop using the past tense. She’s still your partner if you’re protecting her like one.
• Liz: “If I didn’t know any better, I’d believe him.” Red: “But you DO know better.”
• Aram is so gleeful every time Liz escapes in this episode and it’s wonderful. He’s the only one who vocalizes her belief that she’s innocent the entire time.
• I missed Red’s pointless and beautiful monologuing so much. I could listen to James Spader monologue forever.
• Red: “You have every right to be afraid. Just don’t let it control you.”
• I would very much appreciate if the show steered away from anything remotely romantic between Red and Liz. Their dynamic was really fun throughout 99% of this episode, but the one scene where Liz debuts her blonde hair and Red is speechless was a bit weird. (To their credit, though, the show turns it back around by having Liz asks if she looks like her mother, since her mother had blonde hair. Red doesn’t answer, which makes it pretty clear that the answer is “yes.”)
• Ryan Eggold’s name was in the credits this week, but Tom was nowhere to be found. I would very much like to keep it that way. But alas, I feel like he’s bound to resurface once he figures out what Liz did.
• The Troll Farmer: “You’re crazy, old man.” Red: “You have no idea.”
• It looks like next week will feature more of Red and Ressler working together and I’m 100000% here for this, especially because it looks like the Scooby Squad (yes, that’s their nickname – deal with it) figured out that there is no way Liz is going to make it out of the Russian Embassy alive. Our gang has gone from hunting Liz to trying to protect her in the span of one episode. I love it.

What did you think of “The Troll Farmer”? Let us know in the comments!

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