Watching Jon Bokenkamp’s The Blacklist was a project.
I saw the first season and a handful of episodes years ago, and then the unwatched remainder hung around my neck. The premise was interesting enough, and the character development in those opening episodes was strong.
As I progressed through the final semester of my undergraduate degree, I found myself losing hold of my ambition. My younger brother’s death, the years of unemployment, and a host of other factors pushed me to distraction.
I needed a show to complement the video game playing that often comes with these lulls. I started this run of The Blacklist near the end of my playthrough of Saber’s Snowrunner and concluded it with a return to Grand Theft Auto Online. For the most part, Raymond Reddington’s antics perfectly complimented my crime sprees.
But fatigue set in somewhere around the seventh season. Keep in mind, this is classic network television: Twenty-four episodes a year, for as many years as they can milk it. And when a major arc came to a sudden end with season eight, I wondered where the next forty-odd episodes were going to come from.
This kind of “industrial design” television—where the showrunners establish a recognizable pattern that the viewer ends up accepting and digesting like junk food—is not for me. The Blacklist had just enough long-term mystery to hold my interest despite—or because of—the formulaic approach. But those last two seasons... phew. I later learned that the creator, Jon Bokenkamp, had left the series with the end of season eight, and I wish I’d joined him.
I’m going to toss The Blacklist into the file alongside Lost and Dexter as shows that had brilliant beginnings yet failed to stick the landing. And I’m going to interpret that final scene at the end of The Blacklist as a symbol for the audience. It at least perfectly captured how I felt as the final credits rolled.
No more network television for me.
2024.12.15 – 2025.03.25