Blindspot Review: The Tale of the Book of Secrets (Season 4 Episode 12)
Jane is facing her final days on Blindspot Season 4 Episode 12, “The Tale of the Book of Secrets.” Fortunately, Rich Dotcom and Patterson have her back and have a way to get the stem cells they need to synthesize her cure.
Since it was introduced, I have been hoping that The Book of Secrets would lead to something big. A quest to Peru is probably about as big as this storyline could go since the book doesn’t further the plot.
The Book of Secrets is really just a tome of herbal remedies, but Patterson realizes it could be a bargaining chip and their quest suddenly becomes urgent. The urgency is much needed when it comes to this because otherwise, there’s really no reason to send the team off to Peru to look for what everything thinks is a fairytale.
Kurt even says so when Patterson tells him what’s going on and he says that he wants to stay at the hospital with Jane. Solid choice on Kurt’s part. There’s no way to not look like an asshole if you leave your blind wife who is may have only two days to live in the hospital while you go off playing Indiana Jones.
Plus, the absence of Kurt, Jane, and Reade on this trip, also gives Patterson and Rich a chance to shine in their own right. Putting Ennis Esmer and Ashley Johnson together on this adventure makes for a brilliant, funny, and entertaining episode.
Their banter doesn’t disappoint, and their little rouse to get a room at the hotel is entertaining. Especially, after that scene in Blindspot Season 4 Episode 11, “Careless Whisper,” where their book alter egos were engaging in an illicit affair.
The adventure plot with Patterson and Rich plays in perfect counterpoint to Kurt and Jane’s storyline back in New York.
When any show has a character with a terminal illness they either need to cure them or they essentially become a hospital figure until they die. It was no surprise that Jane would live, it’s hard to imagine Blindspot without its central character.
There was a need to resolve this plot, and that’s why Jane’s ZIP poisoning had a pretty rapid downhill slope from the last episode. For a show like Blindspot, this progression suits it well. Since the show is usually driven by plot and action losing the two lead characters to a multi-arc illness storyline might have caused the season to drag a little bit.
Jane and Kurt’s characters this episode get a chance to slow down enough that the audience can see some really touching and meaty moments between the pair.
When there are such high stakes, it sometimes feels like the gravity between the FBI power couple can get lost in the mix. “The Tale of the Book of Secrets” really lets the drama behind Jane’s illness play out, and it’s heartbreaking.
To their credit, the scenes also aren’t just emotional fluff, Jane is able to solve a clue without her vision using Remi’s memories. Still, even that is heartbreaking when you consider that this is essentially a dying gift from Roman.
Even his note about the map carries emotional weight as Kurt reads it to Jane and she realizes that if Roman couldn’t solve it, then there’s no hope for her. Both Jaimie Alexander and Sullivan Stapleton give really great performances this episode, and it’s something I wish we could see more of when it comes to Jane and Kurt’s romance.
We get little moments here and there, but with the time skip between Season 2 and Season 3, we never really saw the relationship develop. “The Tale of the Book of Secrets” really lets the audience feel that weight without being overly maudlin.
By the end of the episode, Jane’s been cured and she’s recovering well. We don’t get to see the cure being synthesized or administered, and that’s okay. I think that had we seen the process it would have gone on too long.
At the end of the day, the Blindspot team functions better as a unit, and the sooner all the characters are back in fighting shape the stronger future episodes will be.
Which brings me to the Madeline storyline. I love Madeline, I think she is a formidable character who has the potential to cause a controlled and calculated mayhem.
The plot to pass Boston off as Del Toro didn’t really work for me. I wanted to focus on Jane and Kurt and Patterson and Rich more and kept desiring to go back to them as a viewer. I wanted to care about what Madeline was planning, but whenever we went to that storyline I wanted to go right back to one of the other two stories.
It’s a necessary storyline for this episode, but when you have something comedic and something that is very emotionally heavy, adding this third storyline falls into a flat middle space and doesn’t elevate either. However, it is vital to setting up next week’s episode, and I am hoping that Blindspot can launch it into a well-crafted episode.
Stray Thoughts:
- Was no one thinking about Avery during this whole thing? I know they weren’t exactly the warmest pair but wouldn’t there be something in Remi’s memories that might cause Jane to want to reach out?
- I’m kind of disappointed nothing was done with Rich’s hospital history. I kept waiting for him to get emotional about something from his past, but it never really went anywhere.
- Speaking of Rich, why did he have to shout at Jane when he saw her at the beginning of the episode? That whole, “she’s-blind-so-clearly-it-affects-her-ears” bit pretty tired.
- Understatement of the night goes to Reade saying: “Those are countries Rich, large countries!”
- I love how Boston’s primary reasoning for going along with the plan to be Del Toro is that he misses Netflix and Grindr. Does this mean that he and Rich have officially called it off? (No, I have not forgotten how Rich was torn about calling Boston during a crisis.)
- The end to the Peru storyline is a very happy ending and the perfect twist. I think that somehow managing to negotiate so that the billionaire ends up back in the States, the book ends up in a museum, and Jane gets her stem cells was the best outcome.
What did you think of this episode of Blindspot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Blindspot airs Fridays at 8/7c on NBC.
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.