The Blacklist – The Complete First Season: DVD Review
Season Overview:
For decades, ex-government agent Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader) has been one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives. Brokering shadowy deals for criminals across the globe, Red was known by many as “The concierge of Crime.” Now, he’s mysteriously surrendered to the FBI with an explosive offer: he will help catch the world’s most elusive criminals, under the condition that he speaks only to Elizabeth “Liz” Keen (Megan Boone), an FBI profiler fresh out of Quantico. For Liz, it’s going to be one hell of a first day on the job.
I had heard about this show a bit before it premiered on T.V. and thought it was interesting. Unfortunately I never got a chance to watch it but since the first season is being released on this is the perfect opportunity to see the show that I’ve heard so much about. Spader has always been a favorite of mine. There’s something about the tone of his voice and delivery of his lines that gets me to pay attention and there’s plenty of that in this show. This show poses an interesting premise with a guy that is a wanted criminal that knows so much just willing to work with the FBI to catch all of these other wanted criminals. It’s his performance that makes the show what it is and I can understand why so many people like his character. Reddington exudes confidence and precision which makes him come across cocky and arrogant. Sometimes it’s those qualities that makes for the greatest anti-heroes. The show began to kind of feel like a “villain of the week” type of scenario but it still managed to move the story along. Without giving anything away, from the first episode you can tell that there is something there in the relationship between Red and Liz. It’s actually fairly obvious……now if they intentionally made it very obvious to cause a misdirection then that’s a different story. The show has a really great start and keeps it interesting enough for me to see more but it also does pose a lot of questions that unfortunately don’t really get answers to at all. That’s actually pretty ballsy for a show to do because you can easily run the risk of a viewer becoming uninterested with the payoff at the end of the season but I foresee that this show isn’t going to have that sort of problem at all. I know I’ll be watching when season 2 premieres Sept. 22nd on NBC.
Special Features:
The Insider: Behind The Scenes of Season 1 – A really cool BTS feature that includes interviews with cast, crew and writers. They brainstorm on the creative process of including Blacklisters every week and they dynamic between the two stars.
22 Episodes Of Beyond The Blacklist – A BTS look at all 22 episodes of the show.
