Blood & Treasure Review: Legacy of the Father (Season 1 Episode 12)

Burdened with the task of pushing all the pieces to the center of the table in 42 minutes, Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 12, “Legacy of the Father” faced a tall task in bringing the many disparate stories of the world-hopping adventure together in coherent fashion.

And it shows: “Legacy of the Father” is overstuffed with exposition, an episode that loses sight of its characters among the many plot twists, flashbacks, and last-minute revelations that comprise its story.

I spent plenty of time talking about the lifeless reveal of Reese as the season’s big bad on Blood & Treasure Season 1 Episode 11, “Return of the Queen.”

“Legacy of the Father” doubles down on the ineffective twist, attempting to build out even more conflict and intrigue around Reese’s ultimate goal, but all it really does is make the already-nonsensical arc of Blood & Treasure‘s first season even more confusing in retrospect. 

“Legacy of the Father” certainly doesn’t lack for detail, bullet pointing every important step of Jacob Reese’s adult life.

He had a nasty father, he fell in love with Zara Farouk after taking up his dad’s obsession with Cleopatra, building on the dynastic fortune of his family while hiding his parentage of a son, who eventually grew up to be the terrorist known as Kareem Farouk.

The arc begs so many questions “Legacy of the Father” is not interesting in exploring. Problem is, it ignores the most fundamentally important part of Reese’s heel turn: his plan needs to make sense, to have some sort of dramatic scope to make him the larger-than-life villain Blood & Treasure tries to build him into.

Most importantly, it never distinguishes Reese’s identity as a father or son in any meaningful way.

It’s impossible to discern why he would take up his father’s obsession with Cleopatra, just as it’s hard to understand his whole reasoning for letting Danny’s father rot in prison for years, when we’ve seen the influence he has on domestic and international law enforcement. 

Even though it is giving voice to the shadowy events on the fringes of its main story, “Legacy of the Father” fails to build the necessary blocks to bridge the gap between “Reese, enthusiastic art collector” and “Reese, cold-hearted killer,” skipping about twelve steps to end on the ‘shocking’ ending of him poisoning Anna, a thoroughly pointless, empty death of Blood & Treasure‘s most underdeveloped supporting character.

The closest “Legacy of the Father” comes to giving Reese’s villainous turn coherency is his twisted perception of fatherhood: he thought putting Danny on a track to eventually investigate him (a thoroughly dumb idea on its face) was an appropriate penance for screwing over Danny’s father. 

Though the episode doesn’t necessarily engage with this idea on a meaningful level (after all, there are 71 other plot points to burn through), it offers a hint into the twisted sense of morality and responsibility Reese has developed over the years.

Of course, when this is all conveyed through explanatory dialogue, it’s hard to make this land as a deeply compelling turn of character for Reese, who’s barely been a presence to this point. (And seriously, does he think killing Anna is going to draw less attention to him right now?)

Plus, it obfuscates so many other parts of the story to focus on this: the Brotherhood is clumsily mentioned at one point, but arcs like Lexi’s blood line and her family plight are lost among the Bad Daddy/Sad Son dynamics “Legacy of the Father” thinks are more exciting.

Which is disappointing, particularly for Lexi, who remains an exponentially more interesting character than Danny (and Reese, for that matter) — backgrounding her story in favor of Danny’s is a wild miscalculation, a frustrating shift in dynamics the material of “Legacy of the Father” can never fully justify.

Where Blood & Treasure does briefly find some vaguely compelling material is the team (finally all together in the room, for the first time in ages) trying to open Danny’s mind to the idea he’s been duped his entire life.

Though Danny still remains the most milquetoast character alive, watching Lexi, Shaw, and Gwen help him come to terms with the truth is, admittedly, reassuring, a sign there’s still some humanity to be found in the series of silly twists and overwrought explanations of recent episodes.

Unfortunately, it’s the only faint praise I can offer “Legacy of the Father” — well, that and the wonderfully claustrophobic chase sequence at the beginning, arguably the single most exciting, satisfying moment Blood & Treasure‘s had in weeks.  

But that is a two-minute sequence, lost in a sea of half cooked plot twists and a rather narrow view of its characters: “Legacy of the Father” is a thoroughly disappointing penultimate episode, a strange, confusing primer for next week’s showdown between cops, terrorists, and art lovers in Cairo. 

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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