After 13 episodes of Blindspot, Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander) is finally starting to cause some suspicion! Doesn’t it seem like that should have happened on day one? Okay, at least on day two then?
At the end of last week’s episode, some of the FBI team was looking at Jane Doe sideways. And really, why wouldn’t they? Aside from the obvious “who is this woman and where did she come from” thing, I still have to wonder: If Jane Doe has been identified as Taylor Shaw, why are we still calling her Jane?
Those questions will have to wait for another week, though. “Rules in Defiance” (which scrambles to “Find a Secure Line”) has the crew dealing with a group of corrupt Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Also, Zapata (Audrey Esparza) is the superstar of the night!
• BLINDSPOT recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Episode 7 | Episode 8 | Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13
The episode kicks off with a dead woman being dragged across a hotel floor. The action quickly shifts to a different room, where Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) and Allie (Trieste Kelly Dunn) obviously had a rockstar-style evening. Is he completely over Jane now or what? For Allie’s sake, I certainly hope so!
Sarah (Jordana Spiro) and Reade (Rob Brown) are also up and showering — together. Zapata is out for a run, where she spots Matthew Weitz (Aaron Abrams), the guy who called her at the end of last week’s episode. He’s an assistant U.S. attorney who wants to know more about Carter’s obsession with Jane Doe. Zapata is all about the side deals, isn’t she?
The only one already at work is Mayfair (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and that’s a good thing, since Jane Doe is calling in to take a sick day.
While she’s out (sort of), the rest of the crew has to deal with not one but two tattoos this week. One is a lion and the other is a bull. Only Patterson (Ashley Johnson) can put these two things together with a Shakespeare quote and a bunch of numbers and get… well, nothing. Instead, an anonymous email tips the team off to a location in Queens.
When Weller, Reade, and Zapata go to check things out, they are immediately greeted with gunfire. Magically, the police are there to back them up. They don’t seem too happy, though. Apparently, our FBI friends just blew the NYPD’s undercover operation.
As the crew is wrapping up their mistakes, Weller notices a mural on a nearby wall. It’s a memorial for the dead woman we saw at the beginning of the episode. Her name was Paloma Diaz. She was a singer and her band’s logo is part of the picture, as well as part of Jane Doe’s body art. It turns out that the tattoo was leading the FBI to the mural, not the house with the undercover operation.
During the briefing, Patterson tells the crew that the Paloma was killed by her boyfriend, Ronnie Vargas. He’s being put to death for that crime in exactly 24 hours.
Weller and Zapata go to meet with Ronnie, but he doesn’t seem interested in being helped. He seems ready to die and says he’s guilty. However, the fact that he previously stated his innocence, wouldn’t take a plea deal and applied to the Innocence Clinic says otherwise.
Jane shows up at the office, but only to meet with Dr. Borden (Ukweli Roach). She sees Mayfair, who mentions the death row case. Jane then realizes that this is the “time-sensitive tattoo” that Oscar (Francois Arnaud) mentioned in last week’s episode.
And it’s a good thing that the FBI got that tip because it’s looking more and more like Ronnie is innocent after all. However, after he initially met with a lawyer, his sister’s house burned to the ground. The group decides to bring in an I.C.E. agent, who was supposed to serve as a witness for Ronnie’s case. It turns out he had his own string of bad luck for being associated with Ronnie’s innocence thanks to his boss, a guy named Scott Stern.
After a little bit of digging, Patterson finds out that Stern was associated with a lot of bad immigration forms — specifically, for hundreds of women. Weller then announces to the room that Stern and a guy named Maxwell Tate (Neal Matarazzo) are trafficking women. In order to catch these guys, Zapata offers to go undercover as the woman who is earmarked for the next bus. The crew arms her with a locket that has a listening device and GPS inside.
Zapata gets on the bus, with Weller and Reade following closely behind. During the ride, Reade tries to talk about Sarah, but Weller isn’t having it. Reade throws something about Jane Doe in Weller’s face, but when the bus comes to a stop, so does the conversation.
Zapata gets out and enters a nearby building. As she enters through a doorway, Stern injects her with something that makes her pass out. He then takes her ring and the magical FBI locket. How the crew thought she would make it through with that thing intact is anyone’s guess!
Stern gets back on the bus, so Weller and Reade assume Zapata is with them. Instead, she’s being loaded into a separate van.
When Zapata wakes up, she realizes her locket is gone. She meets a woman named Camilia Solis (Rosa Arredondo) and another captive named Natalie (Maria Rivera), who explains that the girls sleep by day and work “parties” at night. However, she’s been given the night off, since she’s covered in scars from a recent beating.
Oh, are you missing Jane Doe in this week’s caper? She was definitely around. She met with Borden and told him she wants out of the FBI. Was she ever really in? I mean, she has a gun and goes out on cases. Does she collect a paycheck? It’s so hard to tell if she ever got an official job offer.
Upon hearing about Zapata’s predicament, Jane has a change of heart — at least for now. Also after just a few seconds of being briefed, Jane tells Patterson that she thinks the women aren’t being trafficked, but are instead being held in one spot.
Back in the basement, it looks like Natalie is about to be attacked again. Zapata pounces. A guard throws her to the floor, but she’s not going down without a fight. More goons come downstairs and pull guns on Zapata and Natalie. Zapata is tied up and Max realizes that she’s not the woman that’s supposed to be there. The bad guys decide to torch the house with everyone in it, including several girls and Zapata.
Zapata breaks free and manages to get the bars off the basement window. She gets all of the girls out, but as she’s about to make her own escape, there’s an explosion. She’s trapped.
Weller takes down Max in two seconds and teams up with Reade to find Zapata. The two drag her out of the fiery house just before there’s another explosion.
Back at the FBI, Camilia confirms that a client killed Paloma, not Ronnie. Max then forced Camilia to get rid of the body. Ronnie is a free man.
As Zapata checks out her scars from the day’s mission, Jane Doe comes in to check on her. Zapata says Jane’s tattoos saved the day. Meanwhile, Reade tells Mayfair that he’s going to check out the area where Carter’s car was last seen. Weller then runs into Jane. She says she missed being with the team that day. He returns the sentiment and says, “You’re one of us now.”
Reade goes to track Carter’s car through footage from traffic cameras. He finds the car, but can’t quite make out who is driving it. It’s certainly not Carter. Is that Oscar? As he leaves, he sends a text to Mayfair about his findings. He wants to meet her, but he can’t, seeing as he gets knocked out.
At the end of the episode, Jane Doe meets up with Oscar, who confirms that they sent the anonymous tip to the FBI. She’s happy about that, but not about her overall situation. She doesn’t want anything to do with Oscar, claiming that she’s FBI now. However, Oscar says if Jane refuses to cooperate with the mission, “they” will kill Weller.
Oooh! Is Weller in trouble? Well, maybe not. As long as Jane keeps up appearances, Weller will be just fine. Will she change her mind when she finds out about Weller and Allie? One person that definitely seems to be in trouble is Reade. Who knocked him out? At first glance, I thought it would be Oscar, but he was off meeting Jane.
Either way, I’m hoping this means that Reade will get a bigger, better story line. We know he’s part of the team and he’s dating Sarah, but that’s about it. We see a lot of Weller and Jane Doe. Even Zapata and Patterson have been the focus of different episodes.
However, the big deal of the night was that this episode didn’t have very much Jane Doe. We knew she couldn’t leave the FBI. In fact, she couldn’t even stay away for a whole day. That said, this episode only had her peeking in here and there. I hope they don’t think about doing that too often. Even though I love giving the rest of the FBI guys a little spotlight now and then, this is all about Jane Doe — and her tattoos, of course. After all, who wants Alias without Sydney Bristow, right? (Speaking of which, I wish Jane Doe would have a few Sydney Bristow-style adventures!)
What did you think about having less Jane in this episode? Also, who knocked out Reade and why? We have to be getting him back, right? Sound off in the comments below!
Blindspot airs Monday nights at 10/9CT on NBC.
It’s good to give other characters some screen time
, however I hope that the storyline continues to focus on Jane. I wasn’t too thrilled with the Weller/ Allie hookup. Kurt has spent his whole life looking for Taylor/ Jane. He has always been very serious and focused. He never forgot or gave up Taylor. I don’t understand why he would go running back to Allie when things get a bit confusing. I hope the writers pull this relationship back in the right direction.
It’s good to give other characters some screen time
, however I hope that the storyline continues to focus on Jane. I wasn’t too thrilled with the Weller/ Allie hookup. Kurt has spent his whole life looking for Taylor/ Jane. He has always been very serious and focused. He has never forgot or gave up Taylor. I don’t understand why he would go running back to Allie when things get a bit confusing. I hope the writers pull this relationship back in the right direction.
I agree that the show should focus more on Jane. I would love to see more action for her too… put some of those skills to work! I do think that Weller “forgot” about Jane a little too quickly, but they can’t have those two get together so quickly. What if this show goes 5 seasons? They need to pull back on that a little bit.
…plus the fountain pen thing was too easy….and how did Oscar know exactly what the pen looked like unless he was told…..Mayfair !!!
Mayfair is in on this….she let the guards off Jane apt to easily….told her to stay home too much…and has Reade reporting only to her…..I think Mayfair is still Orion’ng it….
It’s tough to say. After all, they certainly let Jane into the FBI pretty easily. (Although, maybe Mayfair was in on that too!) I think you may have something with the pen thing though… never thought about that. How the heck did Oscar know she had that pen?