The Blacklist Refugees » Episode 7.01 Lous T. Steinhil: Season Premiere

Honey West · 10/06/2019 1:19 pm

Tuxie400 wrote:
Eastcoast - If this is KR, Red must have done something horrible to her. There's no humanity in this evil woman. Perhaps Masha was what gave her the humanity we saw in the flashbacks. But I'm not buying this is the Lotte version grown old and bitter.

Well, Dembe did say, exact quote: "Raymond, I'm not sure Elizabeth will ever be ready to learn about what you did to Katarina."

Like Red, Katarina is a cold-blooded killer. It's what makes them so alike, at least from Red's point of view. "There aren't a lot of us. You learn to recognize it." My take on it is that it's Liz/Masha that gives either of them any humanity at all. And maybe they are both desperate to have that humanity again. All Liz's life she's been fought over by invisible absent parent figures.

Last edited by Honey West (10/06/2019 1:20 pm)

Honey West · 10/06/2019 1:38 pm

I don't think Cooper's 30 years ago question shows anything as far as a clue to their past. He even told the team that they had set up a number and a code to show that Red was in really big trouble but was still alive. They could very easily have agreed to the Daniel Hutton name and incident whether or not this Red really was involved in the actual event 30 years ago or not. It proves nothing. But it sounds like it might. A red herring perhaps?

Another take on the shared soulmate could even refer to a third person they were both close to. Maybe we have met him/her, or maybe not yet.

Big Badd Bazzer · 10/06/2019 2:13 pm

Cooper's test question to Red could also be a coded warning or clarion call for help. Once processed, Cooper is charged with doing a number of protocols. Then again, the show-runners might not even think of such a cool thing.

Tuxie400 · 10/06/2019 2:53 pm

Honey West wrote:
They could very easily have agreed to the Daniel Hutton name and incident whether or not this Red really was involved in the actual event 30 years ago or not. It proves nothing. But it sounds like it might. A red herring perhaps?.

Very possible

IowaWatcher · 10/06/2019 8:08 pm

Big Badd Bazzer wrote:
Cooper's test question to Red could also be a coded warning or clarion call for help. Once processed, Cooper is charged with doing a number of protocols. Then again, the show-runners might not even think of such a cool thing.

That's a cool idea!

I don't know what all to think just yet. I need to see another episode. Some really great points have been raised so far and a shout-out to KathyN for posting the dialogue.

Honey West · 10/07/2019 12:17 am

IowaWatcher wrote:
Big Badd Bazzer wrote:
Cooper's test question to Red could also be a coded warning or clarion call for help. Once processed, Cooper is charged with doing a number of protocols. Then again, the show-runners might not even think of such a cool thing.
That's a cool idea!

I don't know what all to think just yet. I need to see another episode. Some really great points have been raised so far and a shout-out to KathyN for posting the dialogue.

Cooper even said it was a 0100 line for Red to call them in case he was arrested. He would ask for his lawyer and the task force would say they'd just arrested him.

Eastcoast · 10/08/2019 12:27 am

Tuxie, I can't say if she is or isn't KR yet. I just thought they had her Display some of the same mannerisms as Lotte showed, the same way they had done with Gabriel in Rassvet.

Tatiana, I never thought KR was a compassionate person.
She was overall a very cold and selfish woman to me.

BBB,
I was thinking the same thing about the Cooper phone call to Red, especially after the way they set up that coded call about Marvin.

Eastcoast · 10/08/2019 12:35 am

TheYeti wrote:
Honey West wrote:
Tuxie400 wrote:
Tatiana - Oban tells Red he is like an illusion. But Red says Katarina is the illusion. I think Red's exact line was "Katarina is a figment of the collective imagination." That kind of matches up with the idea from Season 2 that she was an amalgamation of several women.

And don’t you have to just wonder - is Raymond Reddington an amalgamation of several men? We know of two at least! Dead Red and Faux Red. Maybe there were others?
This is a really interesting idea. Maybe Reddington and Katarina are both made-up names that became mythical as they were used time after time by important people. This reminds me of the Natalie Luca episode in which Red asked Tom Keen to play the mythical assassin Edgar Legat (sounds French), a character that was known and feared by many, but was completely made up by Reddington.

I love how they are playing with the themes of illusion and new identities. How many blacklisters did we have that took the identity of other people or whose identity was taken by someone else? I recall Ilyas Surkov, the Deer Hunter, Lady Luck, the Djinn, Bastien Moreau, Ivan, Lord Baltimore, Zal Bin Hasaan, Vanessa Cruz, the Capricorn Killer, Mako Tanida and of course Ian Garvey and mr. Gregory Devry, and there's probably some that I missed.

The Illusionist is a perfect blacklister to start the season with and I hope he will return after this two-parter, maybe working for Reddington. I wonder if Red knew about this guy or suspected Katarina was behind the investigation. It makes sense then that he protects her to make her believe he's not part of the Townsend Directive.

I think I brought up a long time ago that it made no sense that they said there were no pictures of Red.
The Naval yearbooks should have had pics. I had said I thought there were 2 of him, but maybe there are more?

Big Badd Bazzer · 10/08/2019 2:52 am

Aspects of a coded phone call that could lead to upgraded action:

1. The actual phone number - exceptional agents (spies) at hi-levels will easily memorize series of phone numbers, using mnemonics or other memory devices. The actual number will provide certain aspects of actions expected, citing specific locational & surroundings info.

2. The actual name - could be the Part B of the coded instruct. More information that verifies or expands upon the initial phone # placed.

3. Tone of voice - exceptionally trained agents who have penetrated the enemy web can used voice tone to provide more instructions, even nuances without the enemy even knowing whats coming. Could signal amount of resources required to overwhelm & subdue enemy forces, etc.

4. Pauses - especially unexpected could punctuate necessity & urgency for action.

Just a few thoughts. There could be more. If you have more - feel free to add. This non-linear communication is quite fascinating.

Tatiana · 10/08/2019 8:33 am

Big Badd Bazzer wrote:
Aspects of a coded phone call that could lead to upgraded action:

1. The actual phone number - exceptional agents (spies) at hi-levels will easily memorize series of phone numbers, using mnemonics or other memory devices. The actual number will provide certain aspects of actions expected, citing specific locational & surroundings info.

2. The actual name - could be the Part B of the coded instruct. More information that verifies or expands upon the initial phone # placed.

3. Tone of voice - exceptionally trained agents who have penetrated the enemy web can used voice tone to provide more instructions, even nuances without the enemy even knowing whats coming. Could signal amount of resources required to overwhelm & subdue enemy forces, etc.

4. Pauses - especially unexpected could punctuate necessity & urgency for action.

Just a few thoughts. There could be more. If you have more - feel free to add. This non-linear communication is quite fascinating.

This is how I took the communication between Cooper and Reddington when establishing phone contact.
Cooper was establishing authenticity. Interestingly, it would be a double secure authenticity because Red would have to call the back channel phone number to the task force set up specifically for him and known only by Coopr and Ressler (maybe Keen as well). And the second would be Cooper telling Reddington about an event and asking for a specific detail from that event.

Big Badd Bazzer · 10/08/2019 10:17 am

Tatiana wrote:
Big Badd Bazzer wrote:
Aspects of a coded phone call that could lead to upgraded action:

1. The actual phone number - exceptional agents (spies) at hi-levels will easily memorize series of phone numbers, using mnemonics or other memory devices. The actual number will provide certain aspects of actions expected, citing specific locational & surroundings info.

2. The actual name - could be the Part B of the coded instruct. More information that verifies or expands upon the initial phone # placed.

3. Tone of voice - exceptionally trained agents who have penetrated the enemy web can used voice tone to provide more instructions, even nuances without the enemy even knowing whats coming. Could signal amount of resources required to overwhelm & subdue enemy forces, etc.

4. Pauses - especially unexpected could punctuate necessity & urgency for action.

Just a few thoughts. There could be more. If you have more - feel free to add. This non-linear communication is quite fascinating.
This is how I took the communication between Cooper and Reddington when establishing phone contact.
Cooper was establishing authenticity. Interestingly, it would be a double secure authenticity because Red would have to call the back channel phone number to the task force set up specifically for him and known only by Coopr and Ressler (maybe Keen as well). And the second would be Cooper telling Reddington about an event and asking for a specific detail from that event.

Great points - couple other value codes that could be used in these so-called authentication calls =

- Coughs in certain ways
- A sneeze after a certain word or phrase
- An arranged request to look after a particular person (the person is a lock-box where more information is provided). In this case perhaps Red's travel plans for Paris.

KathyN · 10/09/2019 3:01 am

Slaps hand on forehead: of course the dialogue about sharing a soul mate is a redarina clue/red herring (depending). I don't know why I didn't think of that! Bokencamp did say though that everything has two meanings so he can keep the Redarina theory alive. So I'm still left wondering what the non-Redarina explanation of that statement is. Unless the soul mate is mother Russia herself, or whoever they worked for together, and they are both spies for the cause which means he could never betray them.

But now I want to go back to Red's conversations with the Stranger at the end of last season. I think that was a classic case of 'misdirection'. First Dembe, who had left Red, comes back from Miami, much to Red's surprise and relief (!) to warn Red that the Townsend Directive is in effect. Right after that, Red meets with the Stranger and they discuss that Moscow is actively looking for Katarina and Red wants the Stranger to do something for him before Agnes goes home to Liz. The next time they meet, the Stranger gives him the file of a woman. Red asks if he's sure it's her and the Stranger says yes. But he never names the woman he found for him.

Stranger: I found her.
Red: Where?
Stranger: Paris.
Red: You're sure?
Stranger: It's her. I'm telling you, Raymond. Paper trails. The passports. The travel. It's her.
Red: You have an address?
Stranger: Raymond, are you sure about this? If you're not sure
Red: I'm sure.

We all assumed it was Katarina, (especially because that's how Red greets her), but it's an assumption. As I said - classic misdirection! The only thing we know for sure is he needs to find this woman because of the Townsend Directive, it's urgent and he wants to do it before Liz brings Agnes home. And that had the Townsend DIrective not been activated, he had no reason to look for her (evidenced by the fact he hadn't looked for her until now). And apparently she wasn't too hard to find - pointing again to this not being the real Katarina.

What if Raymond meets her, says the name "Katarina" to get her attention on the street, like some secret password, or because he knows it will get her attention in general. Or what if Raymond gave this criminal a fake identity - something he was doing for the last 20 years and was very good at - and the identity he gave her was Katarina, which now that the Townsend Directive is in play, puts her in grave jeopardy because she's using the name of a most wanted person. Maybe Red needed to warn her and maybe that's why she's so pissed at him now. And why she wants to know who Katarina is and what it's all about.

Remember when Cooper asked Red why he never put Alexander Kirk on the Blacklist and Red said he had no ill will towards him and had Alexander left him alone he never would have looked for him or targeted him, it was only in response to him coming after Red and Liz. Maybe that's the same way he felt about this woman. Until the Townsend Directive, he had no reason to look for her. But he couldn't risk her finding out about it and exacting revenge on Red or Liz or Agnes.

Just some ideas I've been tossing around....

Last edited by KathyN (10/09/2019 3:05 am)

Tuxie400 · 10/09/2019 8:45 am

KathyN - Your ideas about the coversation between The Stranger and Red and our present Katarina are exactly what I've thought since the Season 6 finale. I do think that coversation and Red calling this woman Katarina are misdirects.

Tatiana · 10/09/2019 12:36 pm

KathyN - excellent insight. From the moment we watched season 6 finale I felt certain it was a misdirect. After all, they have a whole season to fill with stories and episodes (22 to be precise and that's a lot of story!).
We've been subjected to this tactic before, being mislead with suggestion and innuendo. Kirk is an excellent example of this as we were introduced to him at the very end of the season 4 finale (much like the season 6 finale introduced us to this "Katarina" at the very end of the episode). Remember how much discussion there was about Kirk being Liz's father? It went on ad infinitum.

So I have no reason to believe they're being straight with us now. They never have been. It would be inconsistent with their storytelling.

Great write up!

KathyN · 10/09/2019 5:15 pm

Exactly! They mislead and misdirect all the time. Remember when they led us to believe Tom was dead, only to find him locked up on the boat with Liz. And all the promos and interviews about him being dead. Until he wasn't. That is the modus operandi for the show, which is why I am now questioning if Red is dead.

from season 5 episode 3:
McGee just called. Said he was able to extract DNA from a tooth.

How easy it would've been for Red to pull one of his own teeth and bury it with the bones so if an ID was attempted they'd assume it was Reddington in the suitcase. Kate definitely could have pulled off substituting a tooth in the skeletal mouth, and she was dead when Tom got the bones so she never got to tell Liz their importance. The only hint she left was to Dom's fake identity, and obviously Dom is keeping the secret with Red.

If you think about it, wouldn't Kate have just told Liz Red was a fake instead of all of the mystery around the bones. I think the bones are something much more important and it was worth it to Red for Liz to think he's not RealRed than for her to know whose bones those were.

I guess we're left with 3 possibilities on Red: he really is Raymond Reddington; he is a fake - although the fake being Ilya is the least likely scenario, if he is a fake he's someone else; or Red is Katarina.

In the meantime whoever this woman is, Red thought she was a threat to Liz. And that's why Red went to meet her, alone without back up. And she's very angry, which means she's still a threat to Liz.

Ha! I just thought of this: What if Liz isn't Masha?! What if Red really is Red, but Liz isn't Masha and that's why her DNA didn't match Kirk's? What if she's a different daughter of Reddington's? what if the whole Masha identity story is the ultimate misdirect? That could explain why if this is Katarina, she doesn't feel any love or protection towards her. Maybe Red switched out Masha sometime after Kate left her off to make sure she was absolutely safe. Maybe Liz is another (illegitimate) daughter of Red's into whom he implanted false memories, ie: Masha's memories, and that's why he's been watching out for her all these years. If Katarina was alive and came looking for Masha at Sam's later on down the road, or if the Russians came looking, they'd know that whoever Sam was raising, it wasn't Masha. And if this is Katarina, maybe she has been looking for the real Masha all this time. That could certainly be the thing that Katarina would never forgive Red for doing. This would be a most excellent twist (doubtful, but so much fun to think about!) (also considered he switched Jennifer with Liz but I can't believe Naomi would have gone along with that so I discounted it immediately)

Honey West · 10/09/2019 5:43 pm

Heehee, I said that before - what if Liz is not really Masha. I kinda wonder due to her fluctuating year of birth. Masha was born one of those years and Liz was born in one of the other years. Okay, technically, "Elizabeth" was born after she was given to Sam to raise, I guess.

It would not surprise me one bit to find that Red is the real Raymond Reddington after all after faking his own death. But why become Imposter Red? Doesn't that just undo what he went to great lengths to achieve earlier?

KathyN · 10/10/2019 2:07 am

I hope they explain why they have so many different years for her birth. Sloppiness on the writers' part or a deliberate reason?

I don't think Red ever planned on becoming imposter Red, it happened out of necessity once the bones were in play and his tooth was going to be found by the wrong people (ie: not the ones they intended to fool with the tooth). Maybe the bones were so hot that as a precaution if they were ever found they wanted people (the Russians? the Cabal?) to think it was Red and Kate deliberately made the bones unreadable, leaving only the tooth for whoever found the corpse. For this to work, they had to know there was a sample of Red's dna somewhere to be used for comparison and that they were using that type of indentification back then. Then again, the tooth could have been put there to rule out who it really was - maybe they knew there was dna of whoever the corpse was and they knew Red's tooth would never match that DNA so the bones wouldn't be identified as belonging to who they really belonged to because the tooth wasn't the tooth of the dead man. There's a lot of stretching to make this work because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's the Blacklist and the Blacklist likes to mislead and pull surprises on the audience, so in that world, it could make sense. You just can't think about it too hard !

KathyN · 10/10/2019 2:23 pm

Some additional random thoughts to tie up my earlier thoughts.

-Maybe the Katarina Rostova name has become like 007 in the movies. A title that is inherited by subsequent agents. So this agent goes by the name Katarina Rostova and that's why Raymond used it on the street. Remember when Red got the Rostova file from the teacher of the deaf whose daughter he saved? He looked at the file and said 'it's worse than I thought'. Maybe that's when he discovered the name was still in use. Maybe that's the file he gave the stranger to help him find this iteration of 'Katarina Rostova' .

- Maybe the DNA in the tooth buried with the bones was matched in CODIS to Reddington and it's not a mystery how that could have happened at all. Just more misdirection! Our current Reddington's blood IS in CODIS, it was entered twice. Once when he presented himself to the FBI and once after Anslo Garrick when they matched the blood on the floor to the blood of the man that presented himself to the FBI as Reddington. Maybe the tooth matched that DNA and Tom and later Ian Garvey never even questioned how recent that sample was or who it came from. They assumed since it belonged to Reddington, he was dead, making this one a fake, when it was our Reddington's blood they matched to in CODIS and from a tooth Kate pulled from our Reddington! Maybe Kate never thought Liz would think Red was an imposter, she'd question why his tooth was buried with some old bones and want to know whose bones they were and why he buried his tooth with them. Kate's plan backfired on her!

HYPOTHETICAL DIALOGUE between Kate and Red when they plant the suitcase:

Kate: open your mouth Red.
Red: are you insane. Take that wrench away from me. What in the heck are you doing?
Kate: I'm pulling out your molar and putting it in the mouth of this skeleton. I already destroyed all the DNA and now I'm going to bury some of yours with it.
Red: for heaven's sake, why?
Kate: if anyone should ever dig up these bones, they will find the only viable dna sample and it will not lead them to Mr. X that we're burying, it will lead them to you. You are in the wind anyway, it'll be a double win. They'll think you are dead and they'll never know whose bones these really are.
Red: (opens wide)

- Maybe Red lied to Liz when he said Katarina faked the DNA report proving Alexander was Masha's father. Maybe Alexander was Mashas' father and Liz's DNA didn't match his because she's not Masha. Maybe the reason Red orchestrated it that Dom could never see Masha/Liz while she was growing up was because he knew Dom would know right away the child with Sam was not Masha. So he insisted he never visit her. I hope one day Liz is wise enough to test her DNA against Dom's and find out conclusively if she's even Masha Rostova!

Tuxie400 · 10/11/2019 7:31 am

KathyN - You're coming up with lots of good theories. I don't think about this show as hard as I once did. Did you start watching when BL first aired in 2013 or later?

KathyN · 10/11/2019 2:35 pm

Tuxie,

I started watching right at the beginning. I used to post to the WSJ discussion board, that was the only (?) place to go to discuss the show in the first season and there was some really good analysis there at the time. In my opinion the first season of the show was it's best season.

I usually don't give the show too much thought either because after a few seasons in I realized they're strategy was to mislead and it was getting frustrating when the solutions to problems were totally new people or things to which they had never dropped a clue to lead you to, so it was futile to follow clues. I also lost interest most of the last two season when it took an entire season for what should have been a 2 or 3 episode arc. Even now while I'm having fun theorizing in the back of my mind I know it will be choice d) none of the above, because they will bring in a new character or new idea out the blue. If they drag it out again this season my interest will probably wane again after a few episodes until they move things along again and wrap things up at the end of the season and ramp things up at the beginning of next year's season (if there is one). So I'm in a wait and see mode as to whether or not this season will engage me or not !