The Blacklist Refugees » Use of Clocks in the Blacklist

Tuxie400 · 2/21/2017 10:25 pm

lara1 #14 - Fascinating observations about the powers of 3. Thirty-six and 21 do seem to get used a lot. I can't wait to see what else you find.

Colleen · 2/21/2017 11:59 pm

Hi Everyone! Get this - there's a 1965 movie titled "36 Hours" about a hospitalized Word War II soldier with blocked memories - there's more to the story, but I'm rather limited when posting from my phone. But if you google the title, you'll find more info.

How fun is all of this?!

Honey West · 2/22/2017 12:37 am

Colleen wrote:
Hi Everyone! Get this - there's a 1965 movie titled "36 Hours" about a hospitalized Word War II soldier with blocked memories - there's more to the story, but I'm rather limited when posting from my phone. But if you google the title, you'll find more info.

How fun is all of this?!

Cool! I'll have to go check it out!

Tuxie400 · 2/22/2017 12:54 am

Colleen - I really like the plot of this movie - 36 hours. It has blocked memories, a fake hospital, and a watch used to bribe a corrupt border officer. The fake hospital really reminds me of that time in Season 2 (The Scimitar) when Liz and Ressler were in a car crash and taken to the fake hospital. Bokenkamp was the main writer on that episode. How much do you want to bet the BL creator has watched that movie?

lara1 · 2/22/2017 10:41 am

Colleen - wow! Great find. Last night I was looking into special significance/ meaning associated with 36 but hadn't got far. I will definitely look at that!

Tuxie400 · 2/22/2017 1:35 pm

There's a travel show called 36 Hours in __________. Fill in the blank with the city. I don't know why the show picked 36 hours. Maybe that's the approximate time of a business trip.

Last edited by Tuxie400 (2/22/2017 11:58 pm)

lara1 · 2/22/2017 2:11 pm

Had a chance to look at this. interesting, the promo blurb for this movie says "give me any American for 36 hours and I'll give you a traitor". !!!

Tuxie400 - yes, a watch! LOL. and very similar to the Schmitar fake hospital.

So I just had a really wild thought. Red has said that Liz has answers that he needs. Well suppose Red has memory loss - his memory extinguished, or memories replaced etc, after the fire - maybe while he was held captive. In any event my point is that suppose its not that he didn't know where the fulcrum was - but that he didn't remember? Suppose he knew on fire night, but not afterwards. WE don't know for sure if he was with the men who came to look for it, or the person arguing with the woman in the fire memory (and that person seemed to know where it was). Maybe that explains some of the confusion over who put the fulcrum in the bunny if Red didn't "know" where it was (in the present)...and that same man in the fire memory does call Masha "Elizabeth"...hmmmmm

So that would be one "answer" that Red needed rom Liz. Suppose she has others?

I know in the film, the memory loss was faked, but suppose Red's memory loss is/was real? Is that partly his way back home? To get his memories back? Is that why he watches the home movie - to try to remember? Maybe we don't see the woman because he can't remember her?

OK maybe far fetched but would be awesome if part of that were the case!

Last edited by lara1 (2/22/2017 2:14 pm)

lara1 · 2/22/2017 2:32 pm

OK so thinking about my wild idea in #27, suppose this as well:

Red doesn't tell Liz what happened on fire night when she asks. He probably doesn't want her to know, but suppose he doesn't tell her in part because he doesn't know - maybe he doesn't remember it, or all of it - maybe his memories are like Liz's, only partial - and maybe what he remembers is only what someone else who was there - Sam? Kaplan? told him after the fact.

The answers Red seeks about his family - Diane Fowler almost taunts him "I know what happened to your family that night" or words to that effect. "Don't you want to know what happened? ". Maybe Red can't remember, or remember enough to find out. Is that part of his "way home" - to be able to remember?

Is that why Liz is so important to him?

Just a wild theory, probably not the case, but interesting to ponder that while thinking about some of Red's actions and words through the series...

Edited to add: here is another curious thing - - or thing I found curious. When Liz is in the memory recall in Luther Braxton, at one point, in the part where she is with Red, she screams and kind of hyperventilates.

Red asks: What is it? What did she see? Which I always thought was curious, if he was there. But at the time I put it down to him not being sure specifically what point Liz was remembering.....or was it? heheh

Last edited by lara1 (2/22/2017 2:40 pm)

lara1 · 2/22/2017 3:11 pm

OK, I'm going to add one more post to my wild idea in #27 and 28. Last one!

So, if Red's memories, particularly of the fire, were wiped or partially wiped:

is that why, in explaining to Liz how she came to be taken to Sam's, Red says "The way Sam told it..." At the time I figured its just Red's way of fudging the truth. But suppose it really was how Sam told it, how he told Red after the fact as Red did not remember...

if Liz's memories of the fire were altered....yet Red's flashback to it is very similar. Just coincidence?

Is that why through the series, Red sometimes forgets things when he is telling a story - not often, but occasionally - or maybe messed up the high school lifeguard story that he told to Nico by the swimming pool? did some selective memory alteration inadvertently mess up some other memories?

Well I guess you could take this to the 9th dimension - why not? LOL....suppose the military was trying to create a "perfect" spy by wiping memories or selective memories - So that the operative not only "learned" a "new backstory" and identity but totally absorbed it and "became" it as his old one was repressed? I keep thinking of that scene with Red and Ressler in , I think, the "Tom Keen" episode - how Red and Tom are alike because once they take on another persona, they themselves believe they are that new person....suppose Red underwent some sort of memory extraction/replacement/brainwashing and his young adult memories are fabricated?

Is that why Red was interested in "the science" from the doctor in the Longevity Initiative? He wanted to know whether it would help restore Liz's wiped memories. but does he want her to remember some of "his" memories?

Maybe just science fiction, LOL! but it's fun to think about.....

now, back to reality......

Last edited by lara1 (2/22/2017 3:12 pm)

Tuxie400 · 2/22/2017 3:53 pm

lara1 - I had your idea about Red's memory being blocked too - I think it was about a year and a half ago after I rewatched Luther Braxton. I think there's a very good possibility that Red's memory of the fire night was wiped. He doesn't seem to know exactly what happened. My theory was that he had his own memory wiped because whatever happened to him was too emotionally painful to recall. I think your point about him watching home movies trying to remember the past is a possibility. Also, I wondered if his burns in the fire were so traumatic that it caused him to lose his memories. Shades of Jason Bourne! I this scenario a lot.

Last edited by Tuxie400 (2/22/2017 11:59 pm)

Tatiana · 2/22/2017 5:31 pm

Lara - I love it when you or one of us gets and idea and it builds upon itself! So do keep writing!

Tuxie - I thought of Jason Bourne too.

TPBL keep telling us, he's not her father. But Daniel Cereone said, "BAM! There it is" when Red says to Kirk, "Yes, Elizabeth is my daughter".

The only way I can reconcile the two is if Red is father to a daughter named Elizabeth, the child he speaks of when he talks about coming home on Christmas Eve to "blood, there was blood everywhere"

Or, Red is Liz's father because he "conceived" of her. An experiment? Use Katerina's DNA to create a superspy?

My head hurts.

lara1 · 2/22/2017 6:14 pm

Tuxie400 #30 - that's interesting, and yes, Luther Braxton himself had painful memories erased....and notice how what I'll call "significant" blacklisters - those who know about Red's backstory or part of it - have those significant numbers too - Fitch, The Director , Luther braxton...maybe each (of their stories) has a piece of the answer....

Tatiana #31 and Tuxie400 - someone on the Blacklist Exposed theorized that Red is actually responsible for what is now happening to him - I can't remember exactly but something about how he perhaps has a split personality, and the stress of what happened with Kaplan kind of made the hidden one come out, and that personality is doing things that the other personality is unaware of (like the Mills twins in Lord Baltimore).

Whereas that's interesting, I'm not convinced that's the case but it got me thinking - back to my wild "super spy" idea above - what if Red's "former" life and identity were erased, but his former identity is just buried kind of like having two people in one...and parts of his former identity peek out from time to time....maybe when under stress who knows, LOL! So in my science fiction scenario, "Red" is telling the truth when he tells Liz he is not her father...but telling the truth when he tells Kirk (his former self kicks in).

OK I just re-read that and its really over the edge wild! But I do think there is something to the Mills sisters and one part of a person not knowing the other part.....if not quite as extreme as what I've just written....LOL

Last edited by lara1 (2/22/2017 6:17 pm)

lara1 · 2/22/2017 6:16 pm

Tatiana #31 - yes, I too have thought of both those ideas. Red had another daughter Elizabeth, or he somehow conceived of her without being her "father"....and back to my DNA ideas too, Liz somehow has either Red's DNA or his daughter's DNA. I do think though that Liz is somehow connected to Red's "lost" daughter in some way.....

lara1 · 2/22/2017 8:00 pm

So I was looking at the pilot script again and have one last idea for today. In discussing, above, what Red needs from Liz, and does she have some memories he needs - what if she was at the house, as a child, and witnessed what happened to his family? And when her memories of fire night were wiped, that was wiped too? Is that the memory that was replaced with the Christmas tree lot memory? (That might also have been the memory of shooting her "father" or who she thinks was her father.)

Here in the pilot is the exchange with Red and Liz re Zamani and Tom:

Red: I need you to tell me what Zamani said. In the house... what did he say, what did you see?
Liz: He, uh, he asked about the Chemist and about the girl.
Red: No. What did you see?
Liz: Uh, there was blood. There was blood everywhere.

Now when I re-watched in the summer, I thought that dialogue foreshadowed what Red tells to Maddie in the fake jail cell. But what if its a clue that ties in that Liz saw what was there? And is that what Red needs Liz to remember at some point?

And again, was Red's daughter, or family, taken? This piece of dialog from the pilot is echoed in other scenes in the series (the one I most remember was in Esteban when Red said to Liz he would come back for her). And the girls name is Beth - does it reflect back to Red's possible "lost: daughter, whom some of us have theorized was also called Elizabeth?

Liz to Beth: these men are gonna take you.
Beth: Are they gonna hurt me?
Liz: They're not gonna hurt you. I'm gonna find you, okay? Okay. Beth, I'm gonna find you.

Well that's it for today! LOL.

I will, over the next few days, start a new discussion thread and move theses posts there, as I have got a bit off the "clocks" track here! lol

Last edited by lara1 (2/22/2017 8:11 pm)

Eastcoast · 2/22/2017 9:28 pm

I have so much to catch up on!

lara1,
My dad was in the military and he use to say 36 hours. He said it was exactly a day and a half. No give or take. (like when he was telling us children how long we had to something he expected to be done) lol

Tatiana · 2/22/2017 10:31 pm

Yes, Lara! I was blown away when I read that first script the other day!
It's like there is a parallel universe.

Honey West - I also keyed into what you said about SubProject7. And Dr. Adrian Shaw brought up CRISPR, genetic re-writing.

Bokenkamp clearly said there will be no retcon, but what if these "chosen ones", Raymond, Katerina?, Masha/Liz were chosen for their genetic superiority, 'warrior genes'

And I wonder if Tom is the 'mirror' of those 'chosen ones'.

I keep thinking of the "Lebensborn" children who were
"Placed in German boarding schools. The schools assigned the children new German names and taught them to be proud to be part of Germany. They forced the children to forget their birth parents and erased any records of their ancestry. Those who resisted Germanisation were beaten and, if a child continued to rebel, he or she would be sent to a concentration camp.

In other words, their identities were not their own and their memories were, for all intents and purposes, erased.

Honey West · 2/22/2017 11:21 pm

I was going to call out some of these posts but I can't. They are all collectively terrific ideas! Many of my so-called theories play right along with a lot of what you all say. Does that mean we are on the right track?

lara1 · 2/23/2017 11:16 am

Tatiana wrote:
Lara - my mind works differently than others, but here is my take on the 36 number:
"Now the number 36 has appeared in other interesting contexts. And the show runners have asked us to pay attention to the script for the pilot. So, back in 1989, did something happen over a period of 36 hours in DC?"

I subtracted 36 from 1989 and I got 1963 which is when JFK was assassinated.

Tatiana - I missed this. that's interesting. and 63 is the opposite of 36,,,,and there was that presidential limo that had part of the fulcrum in the trunk....

lara1 · 2/23/2017 12:19 pm

Hello Everyone,

I created a separate post under "blacklist history" which lists out the common numbers used in the series and where they appear; and the times on clocks and references to where they appear. These are just off the top of my head, things I remember or viewed recently. If anyone has any others, let me know and I will add to the list.

The discussion of the numbers and clocks will remain here - just the listing will be in Blacklist history section.

And, when I did that exercise I noted two references I did not put together before:

The cuckoo clock in Mato had figures "dancing" as referenced by Red;
The post office clock tower diorama model in The Forecaster had a time - and a watch - but a tie in with the task force post office?

Tatiana, Honey West: if you think that list should be in another section, let me know and I will create and move. thanks!

Last edited by lara1 (2/23/2017 12:20 pm)

lara1 · 2/23/2017 2:53 pm

I am going to break out the threads here about Red's memory, having another "identity" that has been buried etc. into a separate discussion thread.

But while I was thinking of doing this, something else occurred to me. In Cape May, Red says to katerina that he doesn't recognize her. In fact, throughout the entire episode, while he is still "under the influence" he doesn't seem to have any idea who she is - she is just a stranger he found on the beach.

Until the last scene, when he is lucid again (well sort of!). This time he recognizes Katarina and says he is sorry.

So I got to thinking again about the dual identity/super spy idea. Suppose that entire episode was Red as his "former self" - perhaps before he met Katarina. This identity came out while he was on a bender. Then when he recovered, his "current" identity came to the front again.

Just food for thought. I'm going to re-watch that episode anyway for clocks! LOL