I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with The Blacklist episode 20 -- "The Kingmaker". If nothing else, I'm at least relatively disappointed; relative to the previous episodes, that is.
Sure, there have been other episodes where I wanted to walk out at a certain point, but literally in every situation I've encountered like that all I had to do was wait until the end of the show and whatever I disliked earlier was washed away either by something better happening, something being revealed, something that left us hanging, etc.
Example: I hated when Reddington killed Sam in episode 8: General Ludd. Regardless of what his true motives were, at the time I first saw it I hated it. But then right afterwards, we saw Reddington and Tom Keen in the same scene for the first time (and only time, to date); not that this was "redeeming" in any way (at the time) but at least there was the awe factor. Then later we saw Reddington access the VICAP system which led him to find Lucy Brooks (aka Jolene Parker) as the result of his search. Again, not necessarily a point of redemption but at least it got us wondering who she was.
Another example is episode 17: Ivan. I wish I could think of something positive to say about the first 38 minutes of Ivan, but there's literally nothing that comes to mind. The dialogue was bad. The acting was worse. Not only by Will Denton, the guy who played Harrison Lee, but even by the mainstream characters. Thank goodness for the remaining 3 minutes which, to me, totally made up for the previous 38. But I digress...
Back to The Kingmaker: the previews we saw showed Lizzie calling Reddington "... a monster." The narration therein also mentioned that this was to be "... the biggest shocker of all."
- I couldn't wait for Liz to call Red "a monster" so we could move past it.
- I couldn't wait to find out what the big shock was going to be.
#1 didn't happen when I would've liked it to, and #2... What was the big shocker? At no point did I feel shocked. I was really hoping, for whatever reason, that when Liz got home she'd arrive to find Tom there and then they'd just leave it at that until next week, or that Reddington would at least tell us SOMETHING about his connection to Liz, or any number of things really.
Maybe I'm just setting my expectations too high at this point, but if I am it's only because the writers have done such a good job in every other episode. In my opinion though, this was the wors-- well, I can only hope that there aren't too many more episodes like this one.
What are your thoughts on "The Kingmaker"? I'd be curious to know how others feel about it, and whether you agree with how I feel or not is irrelevant. In fact, I'd almost be more interested to hear from people who completely disagree with me, if for no other reason than the satisfaction of knowing that someone actually did enjoy this episode.
This is the preview I was referring to that built up to "The Kingmaker".