‘The Blacklist’ season 4, episode 4 review: Did Tom betray Liz?

At the end of this past episode of “The Blacklist,” Liz Keen made a major revelation when it comes to Alexander Kirk and his intentions: He was not solely interested in Agnes and Liz from a getting-to-know-you perspective. Instead, Liz’s supposed father wanted to ensure that he could used one of them in an effort to cure his own sickness. Liz had to find a way to get her back, and was willing to do everything that she could for it to happen — but she needed a plan.

Suffice it to say, she was not altogether happy to learn that Tom went rogue with plans of his own to get her daughter back, and potentially jeopardized their entire future and their safety. Suffice it to say, she wasn’t happy. He claimed that he did what he thought was right, and he did so with help from people in his past rather than Red. Agnes is still out there, and now, Kirk is being encouraged to use her rather than Liz to save his life. We’ll get to more of this in a minute in terms of Liz and Red.

Mr. Kaplan update – Tonight, we learned that the man responsible for rescuing her was some old guy living in the woods, and of course he had questions aplenty about who she was; unfortunately, she was either not willing or able to answer. She was able to speak briefly at the end, but certainly was not able to leave. The show is clearly taking this story piece by piece, but for now, we’re fine with that.

Helicopter down – This sequence (which contained clever computing and even classical music) was Aram’s finest hour in the episode, and probably the most exciting part of it from an action point of view. Cooper had to make a tough choice, and we feel for Aram since it was one that he had to bear witness to. As if this wasn’t awkward enough for Aram, having a conversation with Samar about his new love interest certainly was. This ended with a clearly-hurt version of the character saying one of the coldest things to her that we’ve heard from him so far in this season.

It unfortunately took most of the episode to understand what some of Red’s actions tonight meant in terms of what Liz was up to with Kirk. It just so terms out that there was a doctor out there who may have been able to offer treatment, and he wanted to facilitate said connection, but of course “facilitate” is a light term for what he did. He wanted to use said doctor to pay a visit to Kirk.

Episode grade: B. The case-of-the-week format tonight more than likely was a distraction for many of you from the meat of the episode, and that was all things Kirk, Liz, and Agnes in our mind.

(Photo: NBC.)