The Blacklist - S2E13 - The Deer Hunter (No. 93)
Previously on The Blacklist, ‘The Kenyon Family’
A hooded man is stalked down a dark alley and is shot in the heart with an arrow.
As the killer guts the victim and strings him up, Liz speaks about the crime at a graduate seminar. She should be teaching a seminar on how to not get kidnapped, but that’s beside the point, I guess. She describes the Deer Hunter as a slight man, who stalks large men as an act of dominance. As the Deer Hunter leaves the scene, it becomes clear it’s a woman. Well, how do you like them apples, Agent Keen?
An upset Sam is talking to Detective Wilcox, who says he’s holding Sam until he testifies against Liz. Because that’s how snitching works.
Red is on a payphone, talking to the mystery man. A pay phone!! Who knew those still existed?
As Liz approaches, they set up a time to meet the next day at two. Red asks her about The Fulcrum and she says she doesn’t know where it is. Red hits her with a quick, “liar, liar pants on fire,” then offers to help the team find The Deer Hunter in exchange for the truth about The Fulcrum.
Red tells the team they’re wrong about one part of their profile: the Deer Hunter is a woman.
Liz and Ressler head to the M.E.’s office to see the victim’s body, and find out an unauthorized person has been there. They catch a guy who was at the graduate seminar. During their interrogation, they accuse him of being The Deer Hunter. He denies it and goes into a suspicious amount of detail about how there is a copycat killer.
Detective Wilcox calls Sam and she tries to brush him off with that classified bullshit again, but he tells her he has Sam. Close up on her strained face.
Red meets with a cop who owes him a favor. The cop tells him there’s a window between two and four the next day to meet with Sam and that’s the only window he has. Damn, Red has other plans!
Back at HQ, Liz is looking sick to her stomach and not paying attention to Ressler. She tells him the detective has Sam. And here she goes, getting more people wrapped up in her bullshit. While trying to talk her down, Ressler has an epiphany about The Deer Hunter case. By comparing the bite marks on the most recent victims’ livers to those on the ones from the past, they realize there IS a copycat.
Copycat is talking to a woman about their plans. She tells her since the legal way hasn’t worked, this is the only way to eliminate evil and the woman agrees.
A woman and her daughter, walking to the bus stop, spot the body of the latest Deer Hunter victim.
Liz and Ressler interview the wife of the latest victim, who just so happens to be the woman working with Copycat. And they aren’t buying any of her shit. Well, Liz isn’t anyway. They realize the copycat is targeting a specific type of victim and they need to find a connection.
On the corner of too much noise and too many people, Dembe answers the ringing payphone, as a stand-in for Red. The mystery man wants to know why Red isn’t there to answer the phone. “See what had happened was…” The mystery man tells Dembe he hopes whatever kept Red from the meet was worth it.
Across town, Red intercepts the prison transport of Sam. He tells a story because he’s Red and that’s what he’s gotta do. He knows Sam’s brother needs a heart transplant and he offers a heart to his brother, within the week, for free. Well, sorta-kinda free.
At HQ, the team discusses the latest round of Deer Hunter victims and learns that they all had a history of violence against women.
All of the wives or girlfriends of the victims received help from organizations with the same parent company. Circle takes square and huzzah. Liz and Ressler meet with the head of the parent organization and she agrees to give them any information they need, as Copycat overhears their conversation.
At HQ, Aram tells Liz and Ressler that the wife of the latest victim wants to speak with them again. Red is there to ask Aram to run a trace on the missed phone call to the payphone.
Copycat goes to see the widow, to tell her the Feds are onto them. She sees Liz and Ressler outside the house and hits the widow with a wooden cutting board, then runs out the back door.
With no answer at the door, Ressler goes in to find the widow and Liz goes around the back of the house. With her eagle eyes, she sees disrupted snow on the back fence and goes over in pursuit. Of what or who, she doesn’t even know. Ressler finds the bleeding widow and yells for Liz, but she’s too busy getting molly-whopped with a shovel and kidnapped. I don’t know why she doesn’t just surrender to the bad guys from the beginning.
Back at Copycat’s lair, she’s busy losing her shit because it just hit her that she kidnapped a federal agent. What to do, what to do? She drags an unconscious Liz into a room and begins to truss her up on a beam. Liz comes to and head butts her but old girl has done this before and hits a mechanism that pulls Liz up from the floor.
At HQ, Cooper wants to know if they have any more clues as to who the copycat is. Aram finds the connection; the wife of the first victim. She began working for the organization after her husband was killed, unlike the other women.
In the lair, Copycat tells Liz that her husband was the original Deer Hunter, and a real asshole-domestic abuser. When she caught him with a victim, he came after her so she shot him with an arrow. To hide what happened, she did to him what he did to his victims. Then she decided to keep it going and help other women, because that’s not crazy at all. Liz talks smack to get to get Copycat angry enough to rush her and drop her weapon. Liz gets her in a head/leg lock and almost chokes her ass out until Ressler shows up to stop her.
Back at HQ, Liz tells Ressler she’s going to turn herself in to Detective Wilcox, on account of all her guilt. Ahem, her new-found guilt. Ressler chews her out and tells her turning herself in will jeopardize the team. Finally somebody put her in her place.
Sam revokes his statement, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of Detective Wilcox.
Aram gives Red the address to the secret location of the mystery man, but when Red and Dembe get there, the apartment is empty. Except for the puddles of blood and abandoned cell phone.
Liz decides to not sacrifice herself and instead meets with Red. She admits she has The Fulcrum, but she won’t tell him where it is until he gives her more info about it. He tells her she won’t give it to him because she’s afraid that once he gets it, she’ll never see him again. Yeah, he’s got her number.
