The Blacklist: Wish Fulfillment

Warning: Spoiler Alert

The NBC series “The Blacklist,”  could never be described as a light and breezy show, but in at least one episode per season they ratchet up the “creepy factor.”  The latest episode entitled “The Djinn” certainly qualifies for that category for a myriad of reasons, displaying how low humanity can sink when provoked by bigotry, greed and vengeance. However we also witnessed just how much these characters care for one another and that in times of need who can be counted on and who can’t.

The action begins with a middle-aged man wearing hospital scrubs marking a man’s torso displaying where all the major organs are located. An attractive young woman with a British accent climbs down a staircase and informs the man she’s got good news, his funds have cleared and he can use the facility until 9:00 am the next morning when the clean-up crew arrives.

The man starts to express his gratitude, but the woman cuts him off saying no words are necessary and then expresses sorrow for the man’s loss. The man says that the guy on the table destroyed his son by selling him drugs and the woman responds he can make the man pay for his crimes and then asks if they should wake him up? The man nods and the woman pumps something into the man on the table intravenously and says goodbye to the man in scrubs. Seconds after she leaves the man on the table wakes up and we see he’s strapped to the table and the man in scrubs grinds a carving knife and fork over him as the victim screams.

Red’s meeting with Leonard Caul the man who helped Raymond obtain the Fulcrum and he’s identified the man holding Dembe prisoner. He says the guy’s named Solomon and was born and raised in Ethiopia and for a time used as an asset by the CIA. However Solomon committed such atrocities that the Agency disavowed him and broke off contact and he’s been MIA for decades. Reddington tells Caul he needs to locate Solomon and the former CIA agent expresses his sorrow over Raymond’s associate but says the chances are between slim and none of finding them. Red tells Caul that Dembe’s far more than an associate and stresses he needs to find him.

Caul walks out the door and we realize that he and Raymond met in Aram Mojtabai’s apartment as Aram’s standing in the hallway when the former spy leaves. Mojtabai enters his apartment uneasily and doesn’t feel any relief when he sees Reddington in his living room. Aram asks if Agent Keen’s in any trouble and Lizzie walks out of his bathroom drying her hair and saying how good that shower felt. Aram runs over to her and embraces her and says he’s so glad to see her and she looks great.

Raymond halts the reunion by telling Mojtabai they need his help tracking down a woman known as the Djinn. She specializes in wish-fulfillment, usually he client’s are looking for vengeance and it’s said that if the client’s got enough money she can make any wish come true. Aram tells Red that if he helps them he’s got to inform Ressler and Raymond tells him Donald should welcome this information as the Djinn would be a huge bust for the Bureau. Mojtabai  reveals that Ressler turned down an offer of assistance by Tom, surprising Liz who didn’t realize her ex-husband’s back in the States.

Aram heads to Task Force headquarters and tells Donald of his meeting with Lizzie and Red and Ressler sends out an APB looking for them in the area. He tells Mojtabai he’s proud of him for reporting the meeting and Aram tells him Reddington wanted Ressler to know.

He then meets with Ressler and fellow agent Samar Navabi and tells them about the Djinn. He says at least two of the Djinn’s clients took vengeance on the same corporation, leaving it barely standing. We  leave that conversation and go to the building the Djinn operates in and we see her client’s a Middle-Eastern woman. The Djinn’s people bring in a man trussed up like a turkey and the Middle-Eastern woman softly says you got him, but the Djinn corrects her and says you caught him. The Middle-Eastern woman removes the bag covering the prisoner’s head and we see an elderly bald man look at the woman and we see the recognition and shock in his eyes. The woman says somethings just aren’t forgivable.

We see Dembe and Mr. Vargas on the floor of the warehouse they’re imprisoned in and Dembe’s making a scraping sound. Vargas asks him if he’s trying to torture him like their host’s are and Dembe says he’s fashioning a weapon for an attack. Vargas looks at Dembe as if he was insane and asks if he intends to attack them with a spoon, when Red’s right-hand man shows that he’s honed the spoon’s handle into a sharp  blade.

Vargas says he counted four guards and at best Dembe will take out two of them before they kill him. Dembe says so be it, once Solomon realizes he can’t break Dembe he’ll go after his daughter and granddaughter. If he’s dead they’ll have no reason to harm them.

Samar and Donald have connected the Djinn with Azeri Financial, a corporation facing a hostile takeover, whose CEO Bahram Bakhash just got kidnapped at gunpoint. We see security video of the kidnapping and it’s the same bald man that the Djinn handed over to the Middle-Eastern woman.

Raymond and Keen are hiding in a Broadway theater owned by an old friend of his. He tells Lizzie that the woman that owns the theater convinced Red to bankroll a play she wanted to direct and star in back in 1991. Unfortunately the subject-matter was far too deep for a Broadway audience captivated by the musical Cats. Lizzie’s cellphone rings and the Djinn sets up a meet for the next morning at 9:00 am. Raymond and an associate will try to tail Lizzie and intercept the Djinn, but the process doesn’t work out as easily as Reddington hopes. Before they finish talking Red makes Lizzie promise that she won’t contact Tom as it will put her in great danger.

Tom’s back at the Chinese restaurant studying the file Harold Cooper gave him on the Russian spy Karakurt. Cooper told him that the spy’s allegedly had extensive plastic surgery since he set Lizzie up last season and Keen’s studying photographs with a magnifying glass.

The next morning Liz arrives at the park bench in Astoria that she’s supposed to meet the Djinn at, when she hears a phone strapped to the underside of the bench ring. Keen picks up the phone and the Djinn tells he to walk across the street and slip through a gap in the fence then follow the trail till she reaches a group of port-a-potties. Keen follow the instructions and steps into one of the portable toilets, when Reddington and his associate arrive seconds later they find the structure has no back wall and Lizzie’s now in a car on a way to meet with the woman.

Samar goes to Azeri Financial to interview Hannid Bakhash the old man’s son and in charge of the company while his father’s missing. Hannid tells Navabi his father’s a very religious man and well-loved in his community and he can’t imagine why anybody would want to harm them. He tells Navabi that they emigrated to the States after their mother got killed during the Iran/Iraq war. He and his sister were very young and he raised them single-handedly.

We head to the woman whose holding Bakhash as a prisoner’s home and we see her nailing the old man’s arms to a wooden cross. She says you may consider this barbaric father, but it’s no worse than what you did to me.

Liz meets with the Djinn in a very ornate tent and the Djinn’s aware of whom Lizzie is and says you’re our first client who’s a wanted fugitive and then asks Keen her wish. Liz tells the Djinn she got set-up and she wants vengeance on all who wronged her. The Djinn says that’s not her real wish and if she can’t reveal it then their meetings over.

Navabi interviews Bakhash’s daughter Nasim and she tells Samar that she knows nothing at all  about her father’s company. Navabi asks her if her father discussed a hostile takeover bid and Nasim says that her father never discusses business with her and she expects Samar to relate to how Arabic women get treated as second-class citizens in their culture. Navabi admits she’s aware but says she took control of her life long ago, Nasim tells her that Samar’s far braver than her and the meeting ends.

Vargas comes back from a torture session and the two guards say it’s Dembe’s turn but first they want him to pull up his pant’s leg and show them his weapon. Dembe turns to Vargas who says I had to give them something and Dembe grabs the far smaller man and whacks him in face twice before one of the guards pulls him off Vargas. However Vargas then removes a stone from the wall where the spoon’s actually hidden and stabs one of the guards with it while Dembe snaps the other guards neck. The two leave the building and steal a truck to escape.

Red and Liz have used the tracking device that Keen attached to the Djinn’s shoe and they’ve located where she lives. The home’s a middle-class dwelling far less expensive than what a woman of the Djinn’s financial means should be living in. When she comes to the door Raymond looks at her and says she’s not the Djinn.

The woman actually named Alice tells Liz and Red that she used to be a model and spokesperson at car show’s but she caught the Djinn’s fancy. Most of their clientele are men who like dealing with an attractive woman and soon Alice became the face of the company. Reddington says that if she gives them the name of the Djinn he can arrange for her to take over the operation.

Back in Nasim’s bedroom she’s telling her father how long she dreamed of this moment to repay him for what he did to her. He says he did it to save her life, but she says he did it because she disgusted him. She then tells the old man about her escapades as the Djinn and she says she saved enough money to buy her own company. That company New Castle Financial just got approval of Azeri Financial to buy out his company.

Reddington and Keen arrive at Nasim’s home but she’s not on the premises. They do however find the old man and remarkably he’s still alive. Lizzie tells Red to call 911 while she frees the old man from the wooden structure.

Vargas sits in the passenger seat of the truck as Dembe returns to the vehicle with a newspaper in his hands and starts flipping through it as soon as he sits down. Vargas asks what he’s doing and Dembe tells him he’s looking at the classifieds. Dembe zeroes in on an ad from somebody selling a tuba-valve and says that’s it now we can contact Reddington. Vargas smiles and says that’s what I’ve waited to hear and shoots Dembe in his side with a pistol, then grabs the paper and exits the truck. A crowd realizes Dembe’s wounded and starts crowding around the vehicle.

Liz is bandaging the old man’s wounds when Nasim enters the room, Raymond asks her to join them and the pistol in his hand convinces her to down. Reddington then reveals the heinous act her father committed. Nasim was born Nasir, Bakhash’s oldest son but he was gay. The old man was so repulsed he kidnapped his son and forced him to undergo a sex-change operation. She says because I liked men you made me a second-class citizen in our culture.

The 911 operator recognized Red’s voice and a software voice recognition confirmed it was him so along with  the ambulance, police and the FBI arrive trying to capture Liz and Raymond. However Red’s arranged for a helicopter to fly Keen and Reddington to freedom. He tells Nasim that there’s room for her in the chopper in exchange for the leather binder she keeps all the Djinn’s client-base in.

The three of them walk to the chopper with Reddington holding the binder. Raymond and Liz join Alice and the pilot in the craft. but Keen tells Nasim she’s not going with them. She cries out she kept her end of the bargain, but Lizzie says her deal was with Red. He looks at her smiles, shrugs his shoulders and says women then throws the binder on the ground as the chopper takes off.

Tom’s done some digging and found out that one of Karakurt’s associate’s a wealthy young man named Asher Sutton. He says Sutton’s a trust-fund baby with a taste for low-life criminal types, he says to Cooper if he can intrigue Sutton with a story the two will become fast friends and he hangs out late-nights at this underground gambling joint.

Keen hones his story and arrives looking sharp at the gambling joint and shares his story with the crowd. Sutton realizes Keen’s lying but that only intrigues him more and he invites Tom to go and have something to eat with him.

Red’s sitting in the theater with the woman who owns it laughing and sharing a bottle of bubbly when Leonard Caul arrives with a grim expression on his face. He takes Red to the warehouse where they had held Dembe but it’s abandoned, but they see Dembe’s blood on the concrete floor.

Our last scene’s Vargas on his cellphone. He calls Solomon and tells him now they’ve got a way to track down Reddington. The screen fades to black.

The Story Continues Next Thursday Night at 9:00 pm on NBC.