Blood & Treasure Review: The Ghost Train of Sierra Perdida (Season 1 Episode 6)
Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 6, “The Ghost Train of Sierra Perdida,” is another incremental step forward for CBS’s young drama, continuing the promising trend of tighter narratives and more dynamic characters.
There’s still hints of the one-dimensional monotony its opening hours struggled with, but there are plenty of signs Blood & Treasure is beginning to construct a more intriguing world around itself.
Where Blood & Treasure does noticeably continue to struggle is the core story. The continuous hunt for Nazi breadcrumbs is quickly becoming repetitive fare, as seen whenever Danny starts talking about Cleopatra’s coffin, and everyone’s eyes slowly begin to glaze over as he prattles on with historical context.
“The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” is at its worst when focusing on these elements.
Revealing the more mystical, ominous elements at the heart of Blood & Treasure‘s story so early has rendered these expeditions mostly pointless affairs, at least in a narrative sense. It’s clear there is a deeper game at play, and until Blood & Treasure engages its carrot-on-a-stick approach with these grander ideas, its dramatic propulsion is going to be limited.
Thankfully, “The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” has plenty to offer beyond the lame central arc, chief among those continuing to refocus on Lexi as Blood & Treasure‘s main character — which, as it did in “The Brotherhood of Serapis,” makes for an exponentially more entertaining watch.
Using her as the fulcrum for Blood & Treasure‘s story (and emotional core) is already paying dividends; “The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” begins to hint at even greater potential, as Lexi contends with the (eventually revealed as forged) sponsorship of her father to Kareem Farouk.
Blood & Treasure doesn’t necessarily engage with the central father/daughter relationship in any particularly unique or deep fashion (kind of hard when one of them is dead), but it still gives “The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” a layer of resonance it so desperately needs.
“The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” also benefits from being the most beautiful episode yet.
Directed by Craig Siebels (whose previous credits include Burn Notice), this week’s episode is partly set in the mountains of Spain, offering visual freedom from the constrained film making of opening hours (being mostly set inside, or contained to extremely confined locations).
It’s simply gorgeous: Siebels and cinematographer Anthony Wolberg take full advantage of shooting outdoors in natural light, giving the episode a distinct visual palette unlike anything else in the series.
For a show’s that’s lived in tight two-shots and short pans, the long, wide shots in “The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” are a delight, offering an unexpected texture to the carrot-on-a-stick narrative.
That freedom is also felt in Gaia Violo’s script: “The Ghost of Sierra Perdida” takes a completely different approach to the Lexi/Danny dynamic, to its immediate benefit. Early on, it felt like their inevitable romance was being forced into the story, with each ‘cute’ moment annoyingly pointed out to the audience.
Those attempts to be just a little bit sexy felt flat and forced: here, Violo lets these moments be extremely understated, which makes them feel a lot more organic — and as a by-product, actually able to effectively convey the network-approved awkward steaminess between its two leads the series so desperately wants to capture.
It is clear Blood & Treasure is still finding itself: a rather large portion of “The Ghost Train of Sierra Perdida” is spent fumbling through the story of a tech billionaire with an antique fetish or winking about the importance of the amorphous Simon Hardwick.
But what is also evident across “The Ghost Train of Sierra Perdida” is Blood & Treasure slowly iterating on its own formula, reworking its internal chemistry to find a more enticing mixture of history, action, humor, and character.
With an expedition to Casablanca on the horizon, next week’s adventure will be an interesting litmus test for Blood & Treasure‘s growth, and it’s ability to embody the cinematic classics it overtly nods to each week.
As it reaches the midpoint of its first season, Blood & Treasure is still an arm’s length away from being Can’t-Miss TV, but each week it gets just a bit closer to being something worth investing in.
What did you think of this episode of Blood & Treasure? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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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.