‘The Blacklist’ season 4, episode 11 review: Red’s guilt (and a new problem) in ‘The Harem’

Last week, “The Blacklist” gave you the first full episode of the show in a long time that felt like a season 1 episode — while there were some larger stories at play in it, “The Forecaster” still had that strong case-of-the-week element to it.

Tonight, the show gave us something similar in “The Harem,” and in the process reminded us of one thing more than anything else: This show really is at its best when you’ve got an interesting villain, or villains in this case, for Liz to take out. Her target tonight was a group of female thieves, ones responsible for stealing from other thieves to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars. Red informed Liz of the group, and then in the process encouraged her to go undercover.

Meet Liz Crawford – Did anyone else think that the show was giving us their version of “The Mentalist”? Well, we kind of had it here given that Liz’s alter ego was exceptional at reading people — and she couldn’t actually read minds. She was able to get through to the group’s leader Margot, and take part in one of their latest complicated operations. At the same time, she had a very simple operation of her own: Trying to find a way to take back a list of people in the Witness Protection Program, the sort of thing that could be sold to the highest bidder.

There were a series of different signature twists that came about over the course of the hour, with one of the biggest ones being a chance to learn that Liz wasn’t the only member of the Harem. Emma was also thrown in there by him, but she had potentially turned and Red wasn’t sure that she was interested in communicating with him anymore. Eventually, Red convinced Emma to give up the list, and he did so without having to kill her off. Instead, he was able to get her out of the group and still breathing.

Here’s the issue – Liz, knowing now that Red killed Mr. Kaplan, wasn’t all that inclined to believe him. Red is a man who clearly operates under a strange code, and we learned that as he seemed to show some regret over killing Mr. Kaplan in cold blood. He told her that the reason he wanted that list was because Mr. Kaplan’s sister was on it, and he didn’t want to do anything in order for her to be found. This right, unfortunately, doesn’t eliminate his previous wrong.

Just for the sake of clearing the air, Dembe then revealed to Red that he was the one (obviously) who told Liz about what he did to Mr. Kaplan.

The aftermath – Margot was arrested, so all was right in the world there. Unfortunately, it was very wrong for Red elsewhere as he learned in the closing minutes that one of his accountants had died (of a heart attack — supposedly, and in a way that is very suspicious), and a substantial amount of money of his was gone. Basically, there is someone out there determined to cause quite a bit of chaos — or potentially start a war with him. That certainly can’t be good.

Overall – “The Harem” was great. It was fast-paced, intense, and stuffed full of a series of interesting twists and character stuff. Also, great cliffhanger — it’s a shame we now have to wait for two weeks to see what’s next. Grade: B+.

(Photo: NBC.)