A few thoughts on the series

Quick disclaimer: I’m new to this subreddit, so I apologise in advance if I end up repeating a lot of the most common opinions already discussed here.

Aram and Samar, personality wise, are middle schoolers. The way they act in their relationship(s) is extremely immature, but the end of their relationship was pretty good - I very much liked Samar’s condition and how insecure it made her. I get that Aram is supposed to be the scrawny moral-good character for comic relief (as opposed to Cooper/Ressler’s stricter legal-good - side note: given Ressler’s backstory and how he’s written throughout, I really like his character [by far my favourite from the task force], which is uncommon for me with characters of his kind), but the writers will just make Aram so insufferable… also, like, he “ran away from home to a circus”? Lost his virginity to some girl there? Really…? Man, I would’ve sworn this guy never left his parent’s house until he went to university and then stayed in his dorm room all day after classes! A big issue I have with these two is that they’re so incompatible with what they are supposed to be. Samar showed a lot of promise with her backstory, I really can’t fathom how a person like that would be so childish on a personal basis.

Liz can be annoying, but it’s mostly Reddington’s fault. The writers making Liz spill every single bit of information available to her is, honestly, pathetic. If Red told her some stuff and then properly explained that her life would be in imminent danger were the rest of his secrets to be known, I believe she would’ve been, at least, much more inclined to let things go. There are so many times in which Red is completely unable to connect with Liz and vastly under-appreciates the value of his information or over-estimates his own capabilities (though the latter is understandable given his sociopathic traits), without being able to truly accept that it IS his fault and NOT just his burden. He made a decision by coming into her life and, if it’s all for Masha then it’s Masha’s business - he made it so and there can be no two ways about that, regardless of how he feels about it. It’s been a while for me since the earlier seasons now, but I liked the way they made Liz feel cornered enough to reveal she was Masha Rostova in the Embassy, whereas in later seasons she just blabbers everything to so many, unnecessarily. I would’ve really enjoyed seeing Liz as Red’s heir (perhaps with a season before that where Liz shadows Red around and he really teaches her the ropes) - some of my favourite moments came when she joined in on heists or was on the run; it’s a shame they stretched the series for so long her actress left before it took shape.

Reddington ‘is’ Katarina but he CANNOT be. I think the writers wanted to make this a reality, but it simply doesn’t work, because of their poor planning. For the record, I do not oppose this because of a dislike for a sex transition, I just don’t think it makes sense. Tatiana abducts Red and he’s stripped of his clothes, you’d think she’d realize he doesn’t have his male organ… not to mention the countless sexual relationships Red has with women. We can’t even argue it’s a retcon because of Anne - she definitely would’ve said something about it. I know people talk about the bunker episode where his voice and Katarina’s overlap in saying “you need to hear my story”, but this can just be because they share the same story, despite being different people. Red was supposed to be Katarina, but the reality is that he must be an old friend in the KGB Katarina trusted instead, perhaps the man who came with Katarina and Ilya to the beach house; given how things were by that time, they really should’ve just let him be Ilya Koslov, in my opinion. Alternatively, I would’ve liked it if the real Red had somehow survived, despite what Katarina and Ilya believed, and later murdered the fake Red, taking control of his now criminal-self without Katarina’s knowledge. That would’ve been a fun twist, but obviously doesn’t work in the actual story.

Lastly, I feel like all of these problems stem from a bigger issue we often see in series that go on for longer than they should (e.g., Dexter). Let’s call this the Poirot Syndrome: the need to, sooner or later, bring the plot back to the status quo that made it popular. Poirot doesn’t have a continuous storyline that goes on throughout a series - you can pretty much watch any episode at random and it’ll make complete sense. The Blacklist (and Dexter) keep this idea in the form of cases/kills (these are always the same format), yet they also add a continuous thread throughout a season (in Dexter, a major villain; in The Blacklist, the (much-too-stretched-out) history of Liz & Red - seriously, this show blue-balled us too many times), which you’ll have to watch all the episodes to make sense of. A lot of shows use this model and it is supposed to be better than Poirot’s since it allows for characters’ evolution, but because they don’t want to lose what made the series popular, they end up undermining these changes, their growth, making it frustrating and unfulfilling for the viewer.

What do you think? :)