The Blacklist was one of the best shows on television for much of its run, but its labyrinthine plots rife with double-crossing and subterfuge always risked turning viewers off. Particularly during the later seasons of the series, certain episodes simply went too far, leaving me and many others questioning why we should carry on watching.
From the betrayal of characters integral to The Blacklist’s success, to subplot and twists that just made no sense, the show had its share of dubious moments. Some might argue that the season 5 finale ruined The Blacklist by irreparably damaging Raymond Reddington as a character, while others might point to Liz Keen’s death at the end of season 8.
However, here we’re covering episodes that, entirely on their own terms, the show would have been better without. These are cases where The Blacklist went so far off the rails that it made us wonder whether a series capable of producing such episodes really knew what it was doing.
8. “16 Ounces”
Season 8, Episode 3
Coming right after one of The Blacklist’s most shocking deaths in the previous episode, “16 Ounces” was the final straw for many fans of Liz Keen, who were beginning to lose patience with her plotting against Raymond Reddington. The character’s apparent vendetta against Red for killing the woman she thought was her mother played out in farcical terms.
No one suffered lasting injuries from the episode’s events except Liz Keen herself, whose credentials as a sympathetic character lay in tatters.
Liz’s botched attempt to kill Red by planting a bomb under his hospital bed is utterly cartoonish and pushes the boundaries of believability beyond the pale. What’s more, the way she uses those around her to act on her feelings throughout the episode tests the patience of even the most loyal Liz Keen fans.
To make matters even worse, Liz almost blew up her love interest, Donald Ressler, while trying to kill Red. Of course, everyone lived to tell the tale, and no one suffered lasting injuries except Liz herself, whose credentials as a sympathetic character lay in tatters.
7. “Between Sleep and Awake”
Season 9, Episode 7
Season 9 is The Blacklist’s worst set of episodes, which effectively put an end to its untouchable status as a masterpiece of modern television. This particular episode is one of the worst of the lot, barely even qualifying as filler by stretching Donald Ressler’s personal struggles and flashbacks to recent events in the show far too thin.
For regular viewers of The Blacklist, “Between Sleep and Awake” was borderline unwatchable, as it made the writers of the series seem completely out of ideas. It felt like fans were being exploited for investing in the show during previous seasons. If the following episode, “Dr. Razmik Maier”, hadn’t been so action-packed, I would have switched off altogether.
6. “Misère”
Season 8, Episode 14
“Misère” is another episode of The Blacklist you may as well skip. It does nothing more than recap recent plot points, via the conceit of Liz Keen congratulating herself for a plan she concocted. The episode insulted the intelligence of fans who were following the series closely and had already spotted the patterns in season 8’s plot threads.
A “misère” is a bid in certain card games aimed at winning as little as possible, which is usually an indication that the player has been dealt a bad hand.
As much as The Blacklist needed Liz as a key element in Red’s characterization, she’d long exhausted the sympathy of fans as a character in her own right. So, it was galling for most of us to see Liz reframe recent events in the series, which were well understood from the beginning, as some kind of masterplan on her part.
5. “Elizabeth Keen”
Season 8, Episode 4
Megan Boone had already decided to leave The Blacklist before season 8 had been plotted in full, allowing the show’s writers to give her character a proper sendoff. Instead of paying their respects to a major figure in the series, however, they turned her into someone completely unlikable, with designs on Red’s position as The Blacklist’s protagonist.
Liz Keen becoming the FBI’s number one rogue agent purely because of her personal issues with Raymond Reddington was far-fetched to say the least. It took the ties between Red and Liz to an illogical extreme, undermining the credibility of their relationship over the previous seven seasons.
If Liz was going to leave The Blacklist, she should have at least been allowed to do so with dignity. Her trumped-up efforts to take down all Red’s associates came across as amateur, and unbefitting a show which had built its reputation on Raymond Reddington’s uniquely enigmatic position as an FBI informer.
4. “The Skinner”
Season 9, Episode 1
To kick off the show’s worst season, The Blacklist writers decided to ruin Dembe Zuma, Red’s moral compass and loyal bodyguard of eight seasons, by having him join the FBI. This move was a major step too far, given that the entire basis for Dembe’s FBI links was nothing more than his personal connection to Red.
In addition, the episode jumped forward for two years without a good reason for doing so, meaning that all the loose plot threads from season 8 were inexplicably shelved. This episode was arguably the moment when most fans felt they no longer knew the show they’d spent nearly a decade enjoying.
Dembe Zuma was suddenly a completely different character, and he was far from the only one behaving inconsistently. Aram Mojtabai and even Raymond Reddington himself were not the characters we’d come to know and understand.
3. “The Kenyon Family”
Season 2, Episode 12
One of the few genuine missteps in the show’s early seasons, “The Kenyon Family” is generally considered one of The Blacklist’s worst episodes because of its focus on appalling, unrelenting cruelty to children. The leader of the Kenyon cult wasn’t even really made to account for his crimes, being killed before the full extent of the cult’s horrors were revealed.
The Blacklist wasn’t really addressing the phenomenon of sadistic family cults in a serious way here. It was just exploiting the theme gratuitously for shock value. This episode failed to handle such a sensitive and traumatic subject with the delicacy required, and put many of the show’s viewers off as a result.
2. “Gordon Kemp”
Season 7, Episode 15
On the subject of gun crime, the earlier James Spader TV show Boston Legal did much better than The Blacklist. “Gordon Kemp” was another episode that ventured into the territory of cartoon villainy, which was exactly what wasn’t needed for such a serious topic. Gordon Kemp was a total caricature who made a mockery of the debate on gun control.
Moreover, this episode was The Blacklist’s number one example of the pot calling the kettle black, as there was no more enthusiastic gun user throughout the series than Raymond “Red” Reddington. This clumsy attempt to deal with serious topics, in stark contrast to political issues being handled far better in seasons gone by, indicated that The Blacklist was on its way out.
1. “Genuine Models, Inc.”
Season 9, Episode 13
“Genuine Models, Inc.” earns its place at the top of this list thanks to the sheer ludicrousness of its story. If any episode of The Blacklist matches the exact definition of jumping the shark, it’s this one, which strayed so far from plausibility that the only reasonable response to watching it was to laugh.
Not only did the episode’s main plot involve a humanoid robot sex worker who went on a killing spree of high-profile clients, but the FBI invited the inventor of this killer robot to a classified site to discuss the matter with them. The Blacklist’s last three seasons had many bizarre, problematic and incredible storylines. But this one surely takes the biscuit.
