‘The Blacklist’ season 2, episode 2 review: Did Berlin and Reddington finally meet?

For those of you who have longed to see more of Raymond Reddington and Berlin squaring off on “The Blacklist,” you got that during Monday’s episode in an excellent few minutes.

This installment was entitled “Monarch Douglas Bank,” and for much of the hour, we wondered why this bank was so darn important … until it started to make sense. Red wanted to use the bank in order to gain leverage against our current Big Bad. With Berlin’s money, he then used it in order to try and get Naomi Hyland back.

This is where things started to get a little bit testy. Red thought that he finally had everything in his favor, but then he learned that Liz and the FBI had managed to freeze his assets, knowing that all of this money going to save one woman would in turn destroy thousands. Allowing Berlin to have this money under any circumstance was not an option, at least for her.

Reddington did manage to free Naomi, and only because Liz was basically forced to protect her “asset” and allow him to transfer the money back to Berlin. It’s bizarre the level of devotion that he has for a woman he barely knows anymore, but that is Reddington for you.

The end of this episode was to us, mostly about Liz making moves to still gain an upper hand on the man who has basically held her hostage, and Red starting to wonder how long this would go on for. This episode was really quite fantastic from start to finish, with the biggest highlight of all being Red blowing in Berlin’s face. We don’t know why, but that may be our favorite thing on TV ever. Grade: A-.

What did you think of tonight’s episode of “The Blacklist”? Share your thoughts now with a comment.

Photo: NBC