Blood & Treasure Review: The Secret of Macho Grande (Season 1 Episode 4)
After three episodes chasing down a Nazi photograph, Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 4, “The Secret of Macho Grande,” is the first hour of CBS’s young adventure series that offers the opportunity to refine the show’s personality on its own terms, comfortably divorced from the broadness of its opening hours.
With a sparse plot and plenty of room to fill, “The Secret of Macho Grande” occasionally uses its time to embrace that possibility.
When not bogged down by silly teases or mindless exposition, it offers a glimpse of what a more driven, markedly more fun version of Blood & Treasure could be, one with surprising plot twists, addictively ludicrous logic, and much more playful characterizations of its main characters.
Unfortunately, the superior version of Blood & Treasure mostly exists in the final ten minutes of “The Secret of Macho Grande.”
The rest is a haphazard collection of characters rattling off expository details and emotional beats, refusing to do anything but nibble off tiny bits of narrative across its 40-minute running time.
Less a rounded plot than a trio of bullet points, “The Secret of Macho Grande” reiterates multiple times, the journey from Rome to Bavaria even lacks the middling action elements of previous episodes, only further highlighting the cursory approach to storytelling and character Blood & Treasure continuously displays.
Disappointingly, it appears this part of Blood & Treasure‘s blueprint is set in stone: Danny rattles off a bunch of vague historical details, increasingly ridiculous assumptions are made, and Lexi teases Danny about what a Good Boy he is.
These scenes continue to lack in ingenuity — more disturbingly, they give the impression that Blood & Treasure is willingly chasing its own carrot, only able to introduce concepts and stories, with no ability to bring depth or coherency to any of its decisions. Instead, it presents stories as assumptions and characters as vague representations of stereotypes.
There are few things worse than a show coaching its audience on how to think and feel, an early sign of a show’s creative desperation.
Take Chuck the priest, who sees Lexi and Danny share one look before he’s talks about them being in love forever: Blood & Treasure‘s most compelling argument for Lexi and Danny to be together (to this point) is the existence of the song “Opposites Attract,” not anything they’ve actually done to develop their dynamic together.
But it is assumed we’re going to buy into their assumed attraction for each other — even though Danny’s proved to be nothing but a talking beige sweater vest, lacking in any kind of interesting character quality beyond “guy who wears knee pads over his jeans during an FBI raid”.
That isn’t to say Blood & Treasure should aspire to be a niche historical fiction drama, or some complicated romance (please no); but it desperately needs to find more organic ways to advance its stories and characters, if it even wants to succeed as an escapist popcorn show.
At least Lexi is driven by some semblance of vengeance; it gives her character some internal conflict outside of “am I going to bang my ex?” and “isn’t my moral complexity sexy?,” even if the latter two still appear to be her primary traits.
It’s the little touches; like her friendship with Chuck or her willingness to immediately embrace the most dangerous option in any situation. If Blood & Treasure invests the time to develop these layers of character, it will pay off for the show in spades, her personality a much-needed anchor for the world-hopping drama.
“The Secret of Macho Grande” teases this lighter, more energetic version of Lexi — and clearly Sofia Pernas notices it, rising to the occasion to firmly establish herself as the show’s most enigmatic, talented performer (her Southern accent alone is better than anything we’ve seen out of Matt Barr to this point).
Finding small ways to disengage from the archetypes of the genre, both in character and narrative, are where Blood & Treasure can really begin to make its mark — that and bringing some life to the action, rather than rely on lifeless gunfights (which the hour does manage to sneak in, during the Iraq flashback) and ignorant historical references.
The introduction of The Brotherhood of Serapis, surprisingly, offers Blood & Treasure a chance to really ignite its central mystery.
There’s some serious potential for Blood & Treasure to kick its dull story of chasing blood antiquities to life, if it commits to making the organization a coherent, visible presence on the show (rather than something vaguely shadowy and goofily ominous).
Like a good Bond film, Blood & Treasure needs its enemies to embrace an operatic sense of purpose, and if it really wants to be as distinguished and sexy as its many cinematic influences, it needs to stop yelling at the audience to like Lexi and Danny, and instead let the action talk for itself.
One well-delivered erection joke does not make for a sexy adventure, but the scene of them hiding in the closet of a German castle inches closer to something slightly more dramatic and sweat-inducing, a rare example of the show embracing a bit of flair without having to justify or explain itself.
“The Secret of Macho Grande” utilizes a rapid crescendo of drama to reach an unexpectedly intriguing conclusion, abandoning the formulaic nature of previous episodes, isolating its protagonists, and offering the first true sense of conflict the show’s been chasing since its explosive opening scene.
Embracing complications and offering a brief surprise is but a tiny step in the right direction for CBS’s young drama, but it is an important one. It’s the first tangible glimmer of hope for the series as it begins to reveal the central players of its story.
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.