The Blacklist season 5, episode 3 review: Ressler faces reality of blackmail situation

What’s in the suitcase? This is the burning question on The Blacklist season 5 and tonight we are hoping to get a few more clues. What’s an even more worrisome question is what’s going to happen to Tom when Reddington finds out that he has the suitcase? We’ve already seen a flash forward that gives us the impression that Reddington is going to murder Tom, but will it actually happen and if it does, is Tom really willing to die over protecting the bones in that suitcase?

Reddington’s latest problem

When we first saw Reddington this season at the motel he seemed to be living the high life as he sat by the pool, sipped cocktails and made new friends, but now the shine seems to have worn off. His neighbors don’t seem as fun, the ice machine is broken and someone has broken into his room looking to kill him. He’s moved out of his hotel and is now apartment hunting since he has a bit of money coming in now, but that’s not the only thing he’s hunting. He’s also hunting for the person that is trying to kill him.

Once he figures out who broke into his apartment to kill him he learns that they may be bought off for a pile of guns – unfortunately Reddington doesn’t have guns or money to buy any. This sends Reddington back to his favorite place on earth… the DMV! He asks Glen to borrow a million in cash for two days to buy the guns he needs and after he says yes, Reddington moves onto his next favor. This one is from Tom of all people, who decides to do it because Liz asks him too. When Reddington, and Tom meet up with the gun seller, everything goes according to plan where Reddington ends up with the guns (to pay off the contract killer) as well as a plane.

Ressler on a short leash

Ressler is still being blackmailed and this fixer is starting to call in some favors with the first one being that he wants a car that’s been sent to be impounded to be released. Ressler may have tried to say no, but there’s no stopping this. When he gets to the car, he finds a body in the trunk and realizes just how much trouble he’s really in. We are very curious to see how deep Ressler is going to get into this mess before finding a way out of it. More then that we want to know if he’s going to try to fix this situation himself or if he will ask someone like Liz or Reddington for help getting out of it – especially after we see Reddington offer Ressler help if he ever should “need it”. Ressler says he would never go to Reddington for help with anything, but we aren’t so sure he really believes that.

The suitcase

Nik has gotten Tom some help on finding out who is in that suitcase – someone named “Pete”, to pull DNA from them. He was able to extract DNA from a tooth, but of course we are left with the cliffhanger of who it is!

CarterMatt overall thoughts

There wasn’t much of Reddington and Liz together tonight, which is something that we really missed from this episode. That being said we are loving Ressler’s storyline this season, and tonight’s episode gave us a lot more insight in to just how far Ressler is willing to go to keep his secret buried. Especially when we saw him drop that car and body off to the fixer. We know that there will be a breaking point for him, but for now we are just enjoying the ride.

If you missed our exclusive interview with The Blacklist showrunner Jon Bokenkamp talking about what’s coming up this season you can check that out at the link here.

What did you think of The Blacklist season 5 episode 3? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts.

(Photo: NBC)