The Blacklist: James Spader’s Red Reddington the only smart one

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blacklist

The Blacklist is pure entertainment with high popcorn movie value, wrapped up conveniently in hour-long episodes in which we get to watch James Spader chew the scenery as Red Reddington. Even those who don’t care for the show just may be tuning in just to watch Spader drop his next sadistically clever line while doing the partially right thing for the entirely wrong reason. But as Season 2 of the Blacklist continues, it’s fair to ask the question: why is Red the only one on the entire show with a brain?

Many of the other Blacklist characters on the NBC TV show are likable enough. Elizabeth Keen, for all her angry bluster, is genuinely trying to do the right thing and is willing to go to great personal depths to make it happen. Ressler has his demons but fiercely has Lizzy’s back. And boss man Harold Cooper, despite being a timid bumbler who has yet to get anything right, is affable enough. But that’s the odd part – these are supposed to be the FBI’s top agents, and they’re all basically morons who would never solve a single case if James Spader hadn’t waltzed through the door in the pilot episode.

Perhaps the reason is straightforward: Red Reddington has been positioned as a genius mastermind, but the Blacklist writers don’t always know how to write a character who is ostensibly smarter than they (or any of us watching) are. So instead they make the rest of the cast overwhelmingly dumb in order to make Red stand out as being significantly smarter than the rest of the bunch. That’s not a crime. In fact Season 2 has remained highly entertaining, so long as you don’t think about it too much before or afterwards. But then that’s true of any good popcorn entertainment.

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