Blindspot recap: 'Warning Shot'

After a slight hiatus, Blindspot is back, and what better way to kick off its return than with a birthday party at the NSA!

This week’s cold open is the sort of cool as hell spy stuff that the show doesn’t do often enough. Usually we get a glimpse of some vaguely foreign terrorists doing something vaguely shady, but this week we get a full-on super-secret heist. We meet Betty, an NSA employee who has no time for the birthday celebration in the other room. It’s not her annoyance with cake that’s keeping her away though, but rather her mission. She pulls apart a number of presidential bobbleheads that innocently sit on her desk, and out of the pieces she forms some sort of keycard.

Then, she uses that keycard to enter a secure room, and when she comes back out she slides what looks like an oversized steel lighter into a secret compartment in the bottom of her shoe. She’s not done, though. She takes a pill out of her pocket and bites into it, causing her to immediately convulse and drop to the floor. The paramedics arrive and carry her out, and for now that’s all we know.

Before diving into this week’s case, “Warning Shot” takes some time to introduce us to the awkward dynamic within each team member’s personal life. Zapata is apparently more than happy to keep inserting herself into Meg and Reade’s life, giving Reade hell for not pushing his girlfriend to take a month-long trip out of the country for a story. That leads to Meg having no choice but to tell Zapata that she’s an undocumented immigrant, and that her uncle gave her falsified papers when she moved to the U.S. from India when she was six years old.

Over at Jane and Weller’s apartment, things are looking up for the couple. They’ve mended their relationship for the most part, but that didn’t stop me from laughing at Jane spending her morning sitting at the kitchen table working on a sketch of Avery. It’s so ludicrously dour—Rich does call her “Lord Dour of Dourton Abbey” later in the episode—that I couldn’t help but chuckle. My amusement aside, we’re meant to understand that Jane is longing for a connection with her daughter, because apparently weeks and weeks of her shutting out Weller didn’t get that across.

Anyways, their moment gets interrupted when Nas shows up at their door. She says she needs their help with something that’s related to one of Jane’s tattoos. When everybody heads into the FBI headquarters, Nas gives them the details. She has a lot of information. First, that Crawford was the initial funder of Sandstorm. Secondly, that she’s been doing freelance work for the CIA, which Zapata says she doesn’t know about (spoiler: She’s lying). Lastly, and relevant to this week’s case, she’s learned that the NSA office was breached and somebody made off with Negral, an extremely dangerous computer virus made by the NSA. Suddenly, we understand our shoe lady who hates birthdays and loves bobbleheads.

While Rich tries desperately to get Reade, who he calls “Assistant Director Eeyore” in the punchline of the night, to approve a trip to a famous dark web party so that he can keep up his façade while working for the FBI, he’s also doing some digging into “Betty” with Patterson. It turns out that she’s an infamous hacker that goes by the name “Pop Up Kid.” After doing a little more digging, her real identity is revealed: Delilah Dunny. They also find out that she’s already auctioned off the device.

Eventually they trace that purchase to Tropic Song, LLC, a name that screams shell company. Sure enough, some 16-year-old kid acted as a hacker for the company and purchased the device. He’s just the middleman though, and when he finds out that he bought the device for a bunch of Iranian terrorists, his teenage bravado vanishes and he gives the FBI the information they need: He’ll be getting a call on his phone from Delilah sometime soon to set up a location to trade the device for the rest of the money. (Recap continues on next page)

In amongst all this computer virus/tattoo case stuff is the continued travels of Blake and Roman. I remain intensely bored by this storyline, and by everything the couple does. Their forced romance and penchant for globetrotting just doesn’t add anything to the story. Eventually we’ll get some sort of twist, with either Roman’s identity being revealed or a true fake-out with Blake revealing that she’s been working with her father this whole time, but until then their storyline is a slog to sit through. At least by the end of the episode Blake has been kidnapped, a significant jolt to a plot that’s been stagnating.

But, back to the case! After Nas and Zapata have a shady, secret interaction, where we learn that Zapata totally knew her former boss was working with the CIA, and that something called Project Dragonfly is going to threaten Zapata’s relationship with her team members when the information gets out, the team gets to work on luring Delilah in. When the burner phone rings and Rich answers, he suggests doing the exchange at the famous dark web party. Much to Reade’s chagrin, she agrees.

While the team prepares for their night of dark web debauchery, Reade gets some bad news. He’s been using a State Department contact to try and “fix” Meg’s immigration papers, but with new management in charge, the guy can’t come through. Meg continuing to be in danger of deportation is one thing, but Reade’s bigger worry is certainly that he’s bending the rules he so steadfastly expects others to adhere to.

Once at the party, which takes place on a remote island only accessible by ferry, the team gets to work. Rich, of course, takes his cover very seriously, snorting coke and making himself the life of the party. Unfortunately, his actions draws the attention of Sho Akhtar, a dangerous criminal in his own right. What follows is an elaborate, chaotic set of scenes where everyone is trying to steal the Negral device.

Everything seems to be going the FBI’s way when Rich manages to keep Delilah confined to one room with Jane and Weller. The team, surmising that Sho doesn’t have a clue what Delilah looks like, uses Nas as a decoy. The ruse only works for so long though, and eventually everyone is fighting for the device. I wish I was kidding, but all of the action hinges on Delilah having an allergic reaction to nuts in some food, and that just creates more chaos. Eventually though, Sho gets a hold of the device, Jane tussles with him outside the party, and he escapes on an ATV, but not before Jane snags the device from his pocket.

And just like that, another crisis has been averted, which means the show can get back to its sloppy personal relationships. As Nas leaves, perhaps for good this time as she’s snuck the device out of the FBI in the hopes of buying her way back into the NSA, she gives Jane some sage advice. She says she needs to stop searching for a reason why Shepherd would force Jane to give Avery up, that Shepherd is a sociopath who only wanted to control Jane. Funnily enough, the words seem to sink in; apparently Nas, and not any other person in Jane’s orbit, is the one that finally gets through to her.

Then there’s Reade, who, after telling Meg the terrible thing he’s done with her documents, proceeds to propose. She says yes, and now we have that to deal with. I hate being so pessimistic, but Blindspot really struggles when it comes to romance. More promising though is the final bit of information in this episode: as Jane sits down for coffee with Avery in an attempt to build some sort of relationship, Nas calls Weller and tells her that she’s been doing some digging on Avery’s father and found shady dealings with Crawford. She sends along the information, and the look on Weller’s face suggests we’re in for a lot more drama in the near future.