The Blacklist - S4E6 - The Thrushes

Previously on The Blacklist, “The Lindquist Concern”

The Blacklist - S4E6 - “The Thrushes”| Starring: James Spader, Megan Boone, Diego Klattenhoff, Harry Lennix, Hisham Tawfiq, Ryan Eggold, Amir Arison, Mozhan Marnó

Alexander Kirk is still 12 moves ahead of Red and the Post Office team and thanks to the DNA report in his SVR file, Liz and Red are now at odds. Snarky jabs about his selfishness and the tension between them prove to be convincing, judging from the rest of the team’s shock when they realize the two are in cahoots. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, Red and Liz supply a fake Blacklister, Rene Le Bron, to the team. He’s a bad man who has ties to Kirk, so it’s no surprise, at least not to Red, that Kirk has Le Bron killed before he can spill the tea on their relationship. Le Bron’s death leads Red to the real Blacklister, a group called The Thrushes.

The Blacklister

The Thrushes are a hacker group created in Bulgaria in 1982, specializing in difficult to hack systems and not leaving a trace of the hack. The Thrushes only take jobs that pay well and have a high degree of difficulty.

Based on Le Bron’s death, Red realizes the Post Office has been hacked. He invites the team to a mystery location so they can discuss how to find Kirk’s asset and lure him into a trap. Aware of how much sensitive information is at fingertips of The Thrushes, Cooper elects to shut down the Post Office. But Red has another plan, of course; one that root out The Thrushes and lead him to Kirk and Agnes back to her parents.

Though he’s happy in his new relationship, Aram believes it’s too good to be true. And although Navabi secretly agrees—not with the part about Elise being too cute for him—she doesn’t try to dig up dirt. Clearly, Navabi is more mature and restrained than me. Instead, she stumbles on it, while investigating one of the hacks and eventual disaster The Thrushes caused. Elise must have been new to The Thrushes; how else to explain how she was dumb enough to be photographed as one of the victims? They don’t make Blacklisters like they used to. Of late, they’ve all been rather lame and uninspiring, with no real purpose save getting close to Kirk. Navabi fills Cooper and Ressler in on her findings as Aram announces he knows how and by whom the Post Office was hacked.

He plans to have dinner with Elise, wired and ready to use a hack of his own, but no one save Navabi is sure he can follow through without getting himself killed. He’s able to get his upload started, but a combination of him acting flaky and Elise getting a phone call from Odette makes Elise suspicious. Armed with a safe word and a point and shoot gun, Aram confronts her, but she kicks his ass but good. She shakes off a vase to the head and jump kicks him in the chest. Navabi had to force Aram to take the gun and he could barely defend himself against Elise. True, it looks like she’s had some type of martial arts training, but he’s an FBI agent; he better get some hand-to-hand combat training under his belt. He’s in the field too often to not be able to handle himself.

As expected, Kirk reaches out to Liz. Now she’s speaking Russian? Kirk should have known it was a trap from that. She agrees to meet with him, as long as Agnes is brought to her, but she’s worried about betraying him because once he’s caught, she’ll lose the only person who can tell her about her past and her mother. At the meet, which just so happens to be on the roof of a building, Liz accuses him of only wanting her so she can help with his illness. He denies it, saying he’ll only take her help if it’s given freely. He’s slow getting Agnes front and center, so Liz lets her gun do the talking. But Red and his team arrive, before she can get the baby and Kirk takes Agnes to the edge of the building, threatening to jump, and shooting Red before Liz gets him down by calling him father. Kirk is a criminal mastermind of some sort, how is it he doesn’t realize Liz is playing him by speaking Russian and calling him father?

The creepy man in the woods who has Kaplan outright threatens her. He doesn’t like visitors and he’s worried whoever tried to kill her will dump another body on his land, notice she’s not there, then come looking for her, or any number of other scenarios that has people knocking on his door. To calm him, she lies about trying to kill herself, but she doesn’t understand his level of paranoia. The motion activated cameras in his trees have video of her arriving with Red and Dembe, but them leaving without her.  He doesn’t know what to do with her, but he gives her the opportunity to be straight with him about what happened. Who is this guy?

Best line

“But they better get there before I do, because I will mess that bitch up.” ~Navabi, to Aram

Best exchange

Panabaker: “Okay, Harold, let ‘em rum out some line. But you best keep your thumb tight on the like to find a bird’s nest on your reel. Understand?

Cooper: “Not a word. Absolute gibberish.”

Panabaker: “Well, let me translate; don’t screw up.”