Photo Credit: NBC
During the first season of Alias, the show reached a point where ABC requested J.J. Abrams and his staff to come up with a clip show that would refresh newer viewers on the series’ mythology and characters as they headed into the final episodes of its freshman season. In the episode, titled “Q&A” and featuring the first appearance of Terry O’Quinn as FBI Assistant Director Kendall, Sydney is detained and interrogated about her connection to the Rambaldi doomsday prophecy. However, seeing herself being railroaded, she’s aided in an escape with the help of her father and C.I.A. handler just before an all out manhunt is waged to find her. Ultimately, the structure and final moments that see Sydney escape arrest thanks to her ability to breathe underwater with the help of a car tire results in one of the finest episodes of the program’s history… and similar statements can now be applied to the season three premiere of NBC’s The Blacklist.
Picking up immediately where the season two finale left of, The Blacklist rejoins Keen and Reddington as they run from Ressler and his assembled taskforce following Keen’s murder of the Attorney General. With the world seemingly out to get them, Red realizes the only chance they have is to lay low until they can safely maneuver out of the city once the perimeter has been lifted. However, those plans suddenly change when a wrinkle Red never planned on ruins everything in a matter of seconds.
There’s a lot to like about The Blacklist’s season premiere. It’s fun, it’s exciting but, most importaly, it’s full of passion. Last year, what hurt the show more than anything, from a story perspective, was the Super Bowl episode. Despite being the highest rated broadcast in series history, NBC ultimately decided to use the hour as a chance to create a second pilot that would hook new viewers into the show (the episode itself was good, but it did nothing for mythology beyond introducing what would become the group behind season two’s primary macguffin, The Fulcrum). Then, much like ABC and Alias, a psudo-clip show was created, titled “The Major,” that forced the show to recount its entire premise in order to get new audience members up to speed. Thankfully, with all of its timeslot madness now behind it, the show is now getting back to what it does best, putting Liz and Red in impossible situations they must figure a fantastical way out of.
Concerning the matter of ratings, The Blacklist is at a pivotal point at this stage of its existence. While the show suffered from its move to Thursdays against the powerhouse that is Scandal (it never managed to achieve the magical 9-10 million viewers it was seeing on Monday night post-Voice), it’s still managing to serve as a worthy second place contender to the Shondaland machine. This season, however, The Blacklist is more than just NBC’s competitor against the ABC dynasty. It’s also the anchor upon which the network’s Thursday night line-up is built. The hope, right now, is that it can both retain the audience of NBC’s big event of the fall, Heroes Reborn, while also helping to sustain the next big star driven series on the network’s slate, The Player (which is produced by the same executive producing team behind The Blacklist). However, the concern here is that The Blacklist is not a fully Universal owned property, but only partial along with Sony, so even though it’s merely one more renewal away from the magical number required for syndication (88 episodes), NBC's incentive to do so is lessened (but not eviscerated) if the ratings don’t hold through May 2016.
Earlier this year, executive producer John Eisendrath told TV Line, "The hunt for Red and Liz... is a slightly more serialized story than we've told in the past." At the moment, this statement is holding very true. While the premiere does have its title blacklister of the week, named “The Troll Farmer,” the individual in question serves as small potatoes to the grander story of Red and Liz’s attempt to clear Liz’s name. But, more import is that fact that the arc doesn’t reach a conclusion by the end of the episode. Rather, come the final moments, we merely get to a point that leads to “the next chapter.” If Eisendrath’s statement remains as fact, then the season premiere is certainly promising that we’re going to be living with the “Liz on the run” storyline for a while (probably until the mid-season finale), and that’s totally fine if the show can maintain the level of excitement portrayed in its first episode back.
The Blacklist premieres Thursday, October 1st at 9/8c on NBC. To know more about the fall’s new offerings, check out Merrill’s review of Fox’s Grandfathered.
