The Blacklist Declassified

[cross-posted rom WSJ Speakeasy blog http://on.wsj.com/1ranJJc search by time stamp]

@BC wrote (7:24 pm November 26, 2014): “…Liz has something ‘living’ under her scar. If she dies, then so does whats under there. Why she’s the ‘chosen one’ and why Red said he’s going to make her famous is because she’s the one who has the ANTIDOTE to the evil plan being hatched by the Alliance in 2017…”

@Belle wrote (6:37 am December 1, 2014):
“I know you (or someone else) listed all the episodes in an earlier post, but here’s another case of a scientist working on something that could be used as germ warfare.
Frederick Barnes
Project Whitefog from the Pavlovich Brothers
The Cullen Virus in Berlin part one
Eco-terrorists in The Front”

@Carolina Girl wrote (10:43 am December 1, 2014):
“…there is definitely a thread woven throughout regarding viruses, germ warfare, immunology, children. Could it be that these experiments were also to create a group of people who are immune to these viruses so that there will be people left to repopulate. You can’t unleash something that has the potential to wipe out mankind … Who would be left? So depending on who’s side these players are on, they needed to find a way to preserve and repopulate.”
__________

If we’re going down the rabbit hole of massive depopulation, whatever the cause, the Georgia Guidestones can’t be omitted. Deeply mysterious, they were erected by « someone » in rural Georgia in 1980, resemble Stonehenge and provide advice on how the earth should be governed, apparently following some calamity – nuclear, climate, biological … who knows?

Inscribed on them – in eight languages – are admonitions, including:

BE NOT A CANCER ON THE EARTH …

MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE …

LET ALL NATIONS RULE INTERNALLY RESOLVING EXTERNAL DISPUTES IN A WORLD COURT …

Sources:

WIRED (2009): American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse http://wrd.cm/1A9xwEW

Discover (2013): Georgia’s Own Doomsday Stonehenge Monument http://bit.ly/1yywqSX

NYT (2013): A Monument’s Mysteries Include Whether It Can Draw Tourists http://nyti.ms/1wfUqfi

P.S. This is me playing devil’s advocate again. In a world in which someone can give Newt Gingrich $100M, someone can afford to do this with pin money.
[http://bit.ly/12khpse]

———-⋙ end cross-posting

I’d say it’s pretty much up to the writers at this point. Personally, I’d like to see them take on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or TPP) http://bit.ly/1w0rWGS , but they’re just as likely to take on the environmentalists, labor unions, open Internet groups, and America First-ers who oppose it. If they do, expect Red/James to attempt to offset any aliberal excesses with one of Red’s ‘contextualizing’ opening monologues, which seem to have become a mandatory device for keeping lw viewers from simply going *click*.

Meanwhile, exec producer Joe Carnahan is ba-a-a-a-a-ck from State of Affairs to make the Blacklist Super Bowl double-header “more muscular” http://bit.ly/1B8CLI6 – along the lines of Anslo Garrick (IMDb: http://imdb.to/1zKa2oU). I personally thought those episodes were weak [1:9-10 Anslo Garrick]. Yes, Red’s “one more time” soliloquy was brilliant, but the producers blew it with garish set lighting (which they corrected when it was Fitch in the containment unit in 2:8 The Decembrist). Both Red & Ressler Type O? There’d better be an explanation for that sometime. Ritchie Coster was too, too much as Anslo Garrick; he was stage-acting, not TV acting. Learn from the master, James Spader, – a twitch here, a pursing of the lips there, a glance, a glare, a momentary twisting of the brow…

Red’s vendetta against the perpetrators in subsequent episodes seemed to me much better done, almost like Spader was trying to kill off the screw-ups in the Anslo Garrick two-fer. That vendetta, in contrast to the Garrick segments themselves, was absolutely first-rate through all of its long unfolding [1:11-13], culminating brilliantly in Red’s shooting of Diane Fowler [1:13 The Cyprus Agency] – probably my favorite scene to date.

So for the Super Bowl, forget the mythology and the human story – we’ll see explosions, a massacre (promo pic already tweeted out by @carnojoe), (Liz will be kidnapped, we know), probably torture, hey! maybe even babes-on-beaches-with-beer – how can they possibly resist? It’s the Super Bowl! Oh, and Mercedes everywhere, IOW: guy stuff. (I hate it.)