Finally, an episode that’s a breather for viewers.
The fugitives end up running across Europe, attempting to locate the missing Gardner paintings on Blindspot Season 5 Episode 6.
Fortunately, Ice Cream proved to be a pussy cat.
He tried to pull off being menacing, but once team members confronted with how badly he had protected them in Iceland, he changed his tune.
He was willing to trade a back door to a network that Madeline frequented in exchange for the Gardner paintings, which he had promised to a scary Russian hitman.
Here’s hoping that finding some dirt of Madeline was worth the insanity which the squad had to go through.
The theft of 13 works of art from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in 1990 has ended up a storyline on many TV series since then, to the point that “the Gardner paintings” has become shorthand.
Even on Blindspot itself, back on Blindspot Season 1 Episode 18, when Rich first teamed with the FBI to track down the paintings.
So what we got was larger a good, old-fashioned caper episode, with Ice Cream, Patterson, and Rich supplying the brains and Jane and Weller providing the brawn.
And naturally, since it was the Gardner paintings, they weren’t alone in looking for them.
Granted, it wasn’t at all clear who those other people were. Just random art thieves, I guess.
It was enjoyable to watch Patterson, Rich, and Ice Cream bounce ideas off each other while they attempted to determine who had the paintings.
The art restorer Sutton was a good guess. Too bad Kurt shot first; they couldn’t ask questions after that.
Also, with the release of Sutton’s video upon his death, that fired up the search for the paintings based on his obscure clues.
Fortunately, obscure clues are Patterson’s specialty. Or, as Rich put it to Ice Cream, “Just let her go.”
The musical clue led Jane and Kurt to Croatia, where they discovered the obscure, upside-down clue only after they’d been tied up on the robbers who took the contents of the safe.
It was then that plugging numbers into a lesser-used computer program led to the Irish monastery where Sister Patterson and Brother Rich went (Ice Cream can come up with anything at a moment’s notice, can’t he?).
Solving a couple of more puzzles led to where the paintings were hidden after the other thieves had absconded with forgeries (of course, the restorer left forgeries).
Wasn’t it convenient that Ilya the hitman got killed so that Ice Cream was off the hook? Zapata then made her only contribution to the episode, appealing to his ego so that he would give the paintings back to the museum.
Now, let’s see if that happens. Anyway, all the other shows can still have the artwork at large.
Now, why was Tasha mostly benched this hour?
Her being pregnant hasn’t kept her sidelines so far, although word did just leak out to the team on Blindspot Season 5 Episode 5.
And she still was able to go to Germany on her own to bring home the hallucinating Weller.
Zapata isn’t going to stand for any special treatment very long.
Patterson has turned into an overbearing auntie, protecting Tasha from lunch meat and inadvertently revealing her condition to the sharp Ice Cream.
And Rich, who has evolved into a fine judge of human behavior, nailed her on it.
It made perfect sense that Patterson can’t help her father, who is on the run in Europe. (But come on. He’s Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Can you imagine the Bondian gadgets which he could develop?)
So instead, Patterson has become overly protective of Zapata, worrying about childproof locks in a bunker.
If they aren’t back home before Tasha gives birth, they’ve got more significant problems than that.
But at least Rich got Patterson to speak out loud what she was doing, so maybe she can deal with it during a quiet moment.
Then there’s Jane and Weller, who were overanalyzing themselves and their actions.
Shouldn’t they have been able to take Sutton alive, which would have rendered much of what followed moot?
There were two of them with guns before he could even draw his weapon. So, yeah, they probably should have been able to wing him at worst.
That shouldn’t have been a cause for philosophical debate. They’re good people doing bad things for the right reasons.
They have to get in the mud to take down Madeline and her people, who, it appears, want to wipe out people’s memories.
Yes, it’s an ends-justify-the-means situation.
Eyes on the prize, guys. Eyes on the prize.
After an absence of two episodes, Weitz returned. Madeline couldn’t be bothered to deal with him, sending her sleazy lawyer in her place.
His brainstorm was to have Afreen send a wire transfer from the NSA to his offshore account, sullying Shah’s reputation.
Only after Weitz met her and found out she was a sweetheart, he couldn’t follow through.
Then her jealous husband killed her because of the wire transfer? Huh? That was convenient, like Ilya getting gunned down.
So, even though Shah was out of the running for V.P, Weitz was still in trouble because he didn’t handle that himself. Plus, now he had his only in-house ally, Afreen, suspicious of him.
It’s a good thing the fugitives aren’t waiting for Weitz to save them.
To follow the adventures in the Czech Republic, watch Blindspot online.
Did you enjoy the paintings caper?
What did Weitz add to the episode?
What’s the deal with Zapata?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.