Blindspot: Persecute Envoys Recap

Synopsis:  The team investigates corruption within the NYPD, Mayfair finally tells Weller about Operation Daylight.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

It’s all come down to this: Operation Daylight. The mysterious black cloud hovering over the CIA/FBI tension, Mayfair’s involvement with the team, and the lack of communication between them. She finally tells Weller: It was an NSA program to illegally collect data and information on all American citizens and use it to expose black market deals and other criminal activity.

They used Guerrero as a fall guy every time they acted on this information, pretending they got it from him, in order to make it actionable and to use it in court. The theory was, he was a believable source of the information, since he was the FBI’s most wanted, but he was too good to be caught and interrogated, exposing the lie.

Mayfair was initially horrified at the program – essentially spying on American citizens – but eventually came around because she realized the autonomy and lead time it offered in terms of getting things done. No more red tape. They could sweep up the bad guys right away instead of waiting around for warrants or wiretaps or for bad things to happen in order to get anywhere. Weller is livid, claiming the file number for Daylight must have been tattooed on Jane to expose Mayfair’s corruption and lies, just like everyone else the tattoos have led to so far. They part on bad terms.

Meanwhile, the news triggers an alert on one of Jane’s tattoos – the 65th police precinct. Two officers there have just been murdered by the “Brooklyn Butchers,” a violent street gang. Body cam footage from the murdered officers reveals that they had stumbled upon extortion within the police force, and were killed to silence them. The team tracks the officers down, and everyone gets into a shootout, one of the corrupt cops is killed, the other badly injured.

Finding out about this, Mayfair and the police captain ride out to the scene, only in their conversation along the way, the captain accidentally reveals he’s in on the whole racket. Mayfair, being a damn badass, crashes the car on purpose, injuring herself, to keep him from getting away after he pulls a gun on her.  It was actually pretty brutal.

The evildoers are caught, and Weller finds Mayfair in the hospital. They have a brief, awkward scene where he essentially tells her that he still doesn’t approve of what happened with Daylight, but he knows she’s one of the good guys. He goes home and finds his father there – his father graciously tries to leave, but Weller lets him stay.

At the end of it all, Zapata, Jane and Patterson all go out for drinks. It was a hilarious scene where they’re all getting super wasted trying to figure out what kind of drinks Jane likes. She comments on how nice it is to actually have friends, and confesses that she sometimes sneaks out of her safe house at night to walk around and feel normal.

Patterson is appropriately shocked, but Zapata basically says “nah man I would do that too.” Later, Jane and Patterson share an Uber, and Zapata walks off towards home. She’s cornered by the deputy director of the CIA, asking for more information on Jane. He reminds Zapata that given what he has on her, she’s in no position to be doing anything less than what he asks.

Honestly I felt like the episode was a bit of a letdown. I thought Daylight was going to be something way darker. But the show does a good job of not pushing the boundaries of disbelief too far on anything besides the tattoos. That’s the main story engine, and it’s got a lot of changing rules, so messing around too much with the world outside of that gets sticky. It’s time for the show to expand though, we’re getting too much procedural and not enough on The Story of Jane Doe. They dropped the bomb a few weeks ago that she might not even be Taylor Shaw, and last week the guy with the tree tattoo that she apparently used to sleep with found her, and we haven’t heard jack about it.

The bar scene was the highlight of everything though and I need more scenes of the girls just chillin’.