Warning: Spoiler Alert
Yes, we have seen the Fulcrum and yes, if the names on the blackmail file gets released to the public, the planet will go into chaos. The man that leads the International Cabal, known to us only as the Director Of National Security for the United States, decided to call Raymond Reddington’s hand on whether he actually possessed the file. The Director got to see the list himself, via FBI Agent Elizabeth Keen as the NBC series “The Blacklist,” returned with a tense and intriguing chapter.
When we last saw Red, he was bleeding profusely from his chest, after the Cabal attempted to assassinate him in the final scene of the previous episode. The action picks up later that day, as we join an older man in a dark-room developing photographs, as he listens to a reel-to-reel tape of the conversation Liz had with her ex-husband Tom, about getting him his phony passports. The audio then changes, to the police radio call that came when Red got shot.
We’re back at the scene as Liz and Dembe, engage in a shootout with the sniper, while trying to get Red away to safety. There’s another man walking up the street towards them, Dembe spots the pistol in his hand and shoots him down. Liz and Dembe take turns exchanging fire with the sniper, as they all get into the car and flee the scene.
Liz calls Agent Donald Ressler at the Task Force Headquarters, informing them that Reddington’s gotten critically wounded. As she starts to give Harold Cooper her location, Dembe grabs her phone and throws it out the car window. He says no hospitals, then gives Liz another phone and tells her to dial *77. Mr. Kaplan picks up the line and asks Liz her location. She hangs up, then calls Keen back telling her to get Red to a warehouse on Massachusetts Avenue. By the time the three arrive, Mr. Kaplan’s got a full surgical team in place and has transformed the warehouse, into a mobile surgical unit.
When they get there, Keen calls Cooper and asks him to send backup. However there’s a leak within the Bureau, and two men from the Cabal arrive instead. Mr. Kaplan realizes their impostors by the handguns and shoots them both dead. However, they killed the surgeon and Kaplan tells Lizzie they’ve got to move Red within 15-minutes, a nurse cauterizes the wound and they move Red to the building that Tom’s hiding out in. Tom tells Lizzie he’s allowing this for her, not to help Reddington.
Liz is trying to locate Leonard Caul, for Raymond. Caul’s the man that Alan Fitch wanted Red to contact before he got blown up via a bomb vest. He knows how to operate the Fulcrum, if Liz doesn’t find him soon, the Director’s soldiers will eventually get to Red and finish him off.
Turns out that Caul’s a former CIA agent, from the Reagan Administration. He was involved in a program, shut down in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal. Cooper contacts his former boss, Helen Jubal. At first she says she hasn’t seen him in decades, when Harold tells her that Tom Connolly’s involved in the investigation, she reveals where Caul’s hiding out.
Dembe pulls Liz aside and sends her to a small second-story flat, that Red’s got the Fulcrum’s interface and key hidden. He tells Keen, she must never let Reddington find out she was there. He tells her he’d normally go, but he can’t leave Raymond alone.
She gets the items, then sees a copy of her high-school graduation picture on the mantel. She sees a photo of herself as a little girl, being held by a man whose face’s faded beyond recognition, she takes a picture of it with her cell phone. She starts to leave the apartment, when she’s met by the guy in the darkroom, holding a gun. He suggest they go inside and talk.
She soon realizes, the man’s Leonard Caul, Red contacted him a few months before and Caul was badly roughed up by the Cabal. He tells her he went into hiding, until Red contacted him, by having Liz look for him. Reddington realized Caul would catch on quickly, his past was getting looked into.
She asks him what he knows about the Fulcrum and he asks her if the case she’s clutching is the interface? He suddenly realizes, she doesn’t know how it operates. He says to her, if she trusts Red, then she needs to trust him, as Red wants him to do this. She then gives him the key and finally the device he refers to as the Bubble Module, he says it’s about the size of a quarter, which is the device Liz found in the stuffed bunny, she had as a child. The interface comes alive and we see its projecting something on a wall, but we don’t see what it is.
Caul drives them to Red’s location as Liz clutches the interface tightly. As they approach the location, she sees the Director’s soldiers lined up outside ready to storm the place. She has Caul drive past, then calls Cooper, who sends backup he can trust to the location. She also calls Dembe and warns them of the attack. She wants Caul to take her back there, he tells her there’s nothing she can do. So she comes up with a backup plan.
The Director’s in the midst of a meeting with advisers for the President, when an assistant comes in and tells him Keen’s in the building to talk about the Fulcrum. He dismisses the advisers and tells them to apologize to the President for him. Keen comes into his office, he says she’s too late, she replies if she is, this will be all over the front page of the New York Times, the next morning.
She then shows him the file and we see page after page of articles, incriminating VIP’s across the globe, she tells him to call off him men. The Director makes the call just in time, as five soldiers are ready to shoot Reddington at point-blank range. One receives the call and they all just walk away.
She heads back to see Red and he tries to explain why he hired Tom to watch out for her. He says Tom was supposed to remain the friend of a friend, when he realized they’d gotten intimate, he terminated Keen. He then went to work for Berlin, so Tom could pretend he had a real life with a woman he loved.
Tom meets Liz on a bench, she says that the situation with Reddington will consume her. Tom tells her it would consume most people, but she’ll withstand it. She then says Red says that Tom has things he can tell her, she asks him to tell her all he knows about Reddington.
The Story Continues Next Thursday Night at 9:00 pm on NBC.
