Blindspot Review: Rules in Defiance (Season 1 Episode 14)

After the nail-biter that was “Erase Weary Youth,” this episode of Blindspot seems to pale in comparison. It starts off promising and then quickly becomes an example of rookie mistakes and lack of foresight.

We start with an info dump from Patterson. In about two minutes, she explains how the lion and bull tattoos on two different parts of Jane’s body are connected through Shakespeare and trigonometry.

Then she reveals this information came from an anonymous email.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the email was probably sent by Oscar. If the tattoo was really that time-sensitive, we’re sure he has resources to reach out to the team through other methods. However, the brief suggestion that Patterson was getting these emails from Santa was a nice little laugh. (And then Jane came out of his magic sack! Is that taking the metaphor too far?)

But can we also take a moment to point out that Patterson has learned nothing? She justifies acting on the email on the fact that no one is getting hurt, but as Mayfair points out, it’s still a security breech. The loyalty of the guy on the other end is the real question and Oscar is not exactly trustworthy.

This all leads to a death row case; with an execution set for the next day. This is a common plot in procedurals: the race to stop an execution. The case isn’t the focus of the episode however, it’s the impetus. The emphasis is not on the murderer but on why he’s there and how some very powerful men are keeping him in prison.

So, the team attempts to exonerate the inmate by looking into the case. And they do it. We don’t see the man again until the very end: free and pardoned. It’s almost like we forgot he existed in between all the excitement of the team finding hundreds of women being trafficked by way of an officer marking the wrong birth dates on deportation forms.  Which is when suspension of disbelief starts to fail. Are we supposed to just accept that no one caught a repeated clerical error of this magnitude? Someone at the Department of Immigration should have looked at the deportation of time travelers.

Also, when the team tries to set up a sting and Zapata volunteers to go undercover, they give her a necklace with a one-way microphone and absolutely no backup method of communication, which makes no sense whatsoever. A whole trove of computer equipment and no one thinks to put a chip in the agent going undercover in what could be a very dangerous scenario?

Zapata ends up in a brothel, and of course, gets found out. Apparently she looks nothing like the picture in the file. Moral of the story?  Bad guys can suck at their jobs too. When the man in charge gets spooked and orders the house be burnt down with the girls inside, Zapata breaks them out, but gets trapped in the basement herself, to be saved by Weller and Reade.

Still, Zapata is the standout for us this week. She chooses to go undercover, and once there, she saves everyone. And not only is she saving human trafficking victims from a burning building, no. The ringing phone in last week’s episode leads her to an Assistant District Attorney who wants to investigate Jane, Carter, and how it all leads back to Mayfair. And, surprise, surprise, he wants to use Zapata to do it. We don’t know how this woman hasn’t handed in her letter of resignation yet. She’s made of pretty stern stuff.

In the end, the girls get saved. The innocent man goes free. Justice is served. All in a day’s tattoo.

Jane has a much more passive role in this episode. She doesn’t trust herself and her role in the team. She wants to leave the FBI because she believes she’s a mole. We wish the series would deal a little more with Jane’s identity. Not in the sense of who she was, but in trying to reconcile that with the person she is now. Maybe that will come in time as more of “the big picture” is revealed.

Her role in this episode is to point out the obvious, that they may not be moving the girls out of the city. Which was another thing we can’t believe no one considered. Has no one on this show seen Room? Or better, read a newspaper in the last year or so.  The moment serves to help Jane get her head back in the game. When Zapata is in danger, she wants to help. The team is her family and she’s not going to leave them behind.

The last few moments, when Jane goes to meet with Oscar, are all setup. Jane is adamant that she doesn’t trust Oscar or Taylor, and Oscar really raises the stakes with his last line:

OSCAR: If you refuse to cooperate, they’ll kill Agent Weller.

Here we thought “Orion is where you died,” was a cliffhanger. This line in the sand is sure to make things interesting.

Stray Thoughts

• The hat tip Project Innocence did not go unnoticed.
• Mayfair is a mother hen. Jane shows up for an appointment with her psychiatrist and she points out that Jane should be home if she’s sick. However, realizing Jane may have just called in sick to nurse her wounded pride, she tells her she should be home in that case too. Mayfair is a pretty awesome boss.
• The idea of Reade looking into Carter’s disappearance doesn’t sit right with us. It’s not going to bring good news. He’s already on Oscar’s trail, and while we would love to see Oscar get found out; we don’t believe that’s going to end well for the team. Or Reade.

What did you think of this episode of Blindspot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Blindspot airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.

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