Blood & Treasure Review: Escape from Casablanca (Season 1 Episode 7)
With Interpol, the FBI, and multiple heads of crime families on Lexi and Danny’s tail, Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 7, “Escape from Casablanca,” is far and away the busiest episode of the series — which turns out to be a double-edged sword for the young drama.
As every character descends onto the Moroccan city (seemingly simultaneously), “Escape from Casablanca” attempts to keep all these narrative plates spinning — and in doing so, paints a stark contrast between what’s working in Blood & Treasure‘s freshman season, and what isn’t.
Take Carlo, the Italian mob boss whose son was killed during the events of Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 6, “The Ghost Train of Pierra Sardida;” he shows up to Casablanca with the grim demeanor of a super villian, though he only exists to serve the role of occasional annoyance.
Meanwhile, the vaguely shady Salim Le Mar (played by Cas Anvar of The Expanse), is presented as the true antagonist of “Escape of Casablanca” and drips with slimy charisma until he suddenly disappears in the episode’s third act.
He’s utterly forgotten as Blood & Treasure suddenly shifts its attention to Lexi and Danny’s relationship, which is taking a dramatic turn when they get tipsy and sleep together in the middle of the episode.
I’m all for Lexi and Danny enjoying a bit of casual sex while traversing around the world for a haunted sarcophagus; but “Escape from Casablanca” clearly pushes them together for the sake of the plot, a feeble attempt to extract some extra dramatics from the events to follow.
To its credit, Blood & Treasure doesn’t waste time: they’re not even dressed when Danny’s violating Lexi’s privacy, discovering her secret side investigation into the Brotherhood by going through her phone. It quickly reveals their unexpected drunken coitus as nothing but tool to manipulate drama.
Leaving some ambiguity to the moment could’ve been used to lighten some later scenes with some awkward humor — rather than do that (or literally anything else to ground a meaningful moment of human connection in its characters), “Escape from Casablanca” reveals it to be a decision driven by plot, an empty gesture to be used as a melodramatic button to press later.
“Escape from Casablanca” is full of these melodramatic buttons, few of which are pressed to the exciting results Siavash & Dana Farahani’s script clearly want them to. Carlo’s re-emergence isn’t interesting, and neither is the cat and mouse game Interpol is playing with the show’s protagonists.
One can almost feel Blood & Treasure poking its many different stories — which also includes Shaw’s return, some chase sequences around Casablanca, and a thoroughly insensitive, pointless inclusion of a refugee camp as a locale — to see which ones might divert attention from the hollowness at the episode’s core.
Scene after scene, “Escape of Casablanca” can’t decide what story it wants to tell, instead over flooding the hour until everything mushes together in a near-incoherent mess.
There are vague threads connecting the many twists and turns, but none of them ever coalesce into something evocative, or meaningful (some even make no sense whatsoever, like why would Lexi turn herself in after Danny got arrested by Interpol?).
What it makes for is a disparate collection of scenes held together by the ever-beautiful set design and cinematography; “Escape of Casablanca” may amount to a lot of nonsense, but boy, is it pretty nonsense, again utilizing the natural light of its outdoor spaces to give each location unique visual textures.
Unfortunately, “Escape from Casablanca” will be remembered for its less-than-flattering portrayal of refugee camps than its ability to conjure an exciting narrative to mark Blood & Treasure‘s halfway point.
Though it is not a complete waste — the episode’s opening action scene is fantastic, and Sophia Pernas again continues to give Lexi so many interesting shades of character — “Escape from Casablanca” is almost immediately a forgettable episode of the series.
Its multitude of so-called “big” moments drowning themselves out in a loud, frequently empty spectacle.
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Blood & Treasure airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
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Randy Dankievitch
Randy Dankievitch is a TV critic living in Portland, Maine, whose obsession with pop culture began as a child, watching reruns of The Muensters while listening to Paul's Boutique on repeat. A writer since 2011, Randy is currently the writer of TV Never Sleeps, TV Editor at Goomba Stomp, and a columnist for Up Portland, with previous bylines at Sound on Sight, Processed Media, TV Overmind, and many others.