Blindspot recap: 'Mum's the Word'

At the heart of Blindspot right now is two very dysfunctional families. There’s the FBI team, a ragtag group that, later in the episode, Jane reminds is really a family that never turns their back on each other. They’re in shambles right now though, torn apart by secrets that were kept and other secrets that probably should have stayed that way. The other family is the one that includes Roman, Jane, Avery, and Weller. The first three share a connection with Shepherd and Crawford, and the last is just lucky enough to fall in love with a woman who came into his life in a duffle bag in Times Square with no memory of her life before that moment. Fate’s a funny thing that way.

Everybody here is just trying to find a way to move forward with all this dysfunction. They’re trying to move past betrayals, lies, and the violence that seems to follow all of them. Even the villain of the season, Roman, is looking to find his place with people who care about him, something he’s never had before. By the end of “Mum’s the Word,” he’s maybe found that place, but at what cost?

Zapata has her own way of working through issues: a whole lot of kickboxing. While the episode opens with Roman buying a bunch of diamonds for Crawford to use in the impending land deal with Jean-Paul Bruyere, it quickly shifts to Zapata beating the hell out of a punching bag. She keeps replaying Patterson’s reaction to the secret about Borden. Coupled with the perhaps self-destructive move of telling an engaged Reade that she loves him, she’s dealing with a lot of regret at the moment.

Eventually, the team has to come together to make their plans for Blake’s gala. A visit from a prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office confirms that this could be their only chance to truly nail Crawford and, along with him, Bruyere, who the team has determined is actually a most-wanted terrorist that goes by the name the Serpent. The trick to unpacking Blindspot is assuming every single person is a terrorist.

Patterson is doing her best to freeze Zapata out, but Reade won’t let it happen. Whatever personal issues there are, they have to work together as a team or, you know, somebody dies and the bad guys get away. Once the team figures out the secret location for Blake’s gala — it takes place in a mansion on a secluded island off the coast of Croatia — they have to figure out how to actually infiltrate the party without Crawford recognizing them. After stealing some information from a famous wedding planner’s computer (a scene where Reade and Zapata have to awkwardly pretend to be getting married), which gives them everything they need to know about the location of the party, the plan starts to fall into place. Not unlike The Americans, that plan mostly involves wigs.

The key to the plan, and the biggest variable, is Avery. She knows a fair amount about Crawford because of her dad’s apparently shady work with him, and she’s the team’s way into the party. She knows Blake, and she’s sure she can secure an invite. She does and, as a result, gets everybody in. Avery, like her mother, proves to be quite adept at working in the field, unlocking a window for Jane and Weller, and then placing a tracker on Crawford during a conversation about her father. Though the FBI is initially hesitant to put Avery out there, she responds with a passionate, “I’ll be fine. I can handle myself,” a line that is all Jane. Like mother like daughter. (Recap continues on the next page)

Everything comes to a head at the gala when Jane and Avery are “introduced” to Roman/Tom Jakeman, and he leads them to a room to discuss the plan to take down Crawford. He gives them access to a safe room where Crawford will be making the deal with Bruyere so that they can set up cameras and get evidence of the exchange. Roman has a kill switch that can block the signals if need be, meaning he’s in control of everything. If the FBI tries to get him, he’ll kill their chance at getting Crawford and Bruyere.

Everything is going according to plan, and the land deal is about to go down, when Roman storms into the room with Blake and kills the FBI’s audio and video feed. Weller is worried that he’s had to change the plan, but Jane knows that’s not it. Rather, Roman has flipped and is working with Crawford. But why? Why would he suddenly change his mind after months of leading the team on this chase?

Simply: for love. He’s risking everything because of Blake. “Mum’s the Word” flashes back to four hours earlier, and we see that Roman has grown truly close to both Blake and Crawford. He’s so good at this Tom Jakeman stuff that the family has made him one of their own. When Blake pours her heart out to him, he returns the love and decides he’s not going to give up this life he’s worked his way into. He grabs Blake by the arm, leads her into the meeting, kills the feed, and urges Crawford to quickly get the deal done so that they can escape.

The FBI does everything they can to stop Roman, Bruyere, and Crawford from escaping. Bruyere ends up dead, shot by the FBI after Roman moved Crawford’s tracker on to him, but the other two escape. Weller can’t believe this opportunity has slipped through their fingers, but in some ways Jane understands Roman’s motivation. He’s never had love or a family, and now he does. In that moment with Blake, he saw what he’d be losing after Crawford was captured, and he couldn’t let it happen. Like I said, there are a lot of dysfunctional families here.

Still, the FBI is trying to piece their strange family back together. Maybe it’s working, maybe not. Reade is trying to tell Zapata that he can’t lose her as a best friend, but she feels like there’s no going back now. She put herself out there, years too late, and now their relationship is ruined. She can’t go to the wedding. She can’t watch him get married. She can’t watch him create a future without her.

If there’s any hope here, it’s that Jane, Weller, and Avery seem to finally be forming their own little family. They’ve overcome a lot, and now they’re bonding over vegan burgers (to Weller’s dismay). Considering it wasn’t all that long ago that Jane was ready to cut Weller out of her life, this turnaround is pretty remarkable.

But, the threats aren’t going away. Roman, the FBI’s lead on Crawford for months, is now working with the enemy. Not only that, he needs the FBI team gone and he puts hits out on every single one of them. Soon, assassins will be going after Jane, Weller, Zapata, Reade, and Patterson, and that could be the end of this dysfunctional family.