Blindspot
Created by:
Martin Gero
2015-
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
NBC
TV-14
It’s Times Square. A cop sees a bag. “Whose is it?” he thinks. A tag on the bag says, “Call the FBI.” Oh boy! The cop does just that. Cut to a completely cleared-out Times Square, if you can imagine. An NYPD Bomb Squad officer approaches the bag. His device detects no radiation, but he knows something’s up. Something’s in the bag. Welcome to NBC’s “Blindspot,” everyone!
The something in the bag is a woman. She’s naked, which allows us to see that her body’s covered in tattoos. She comes out of the bag shivering. They arrest her only to find out that she has chemically induced, permanent amnesia. She’s Jane Doe.
Cut to rural Kentucky. FBI Special Agent Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) leads a rescue squad into the home of a kidnapper. The squad successfully frees the kidnapper’s victims, but that’s not the end for Weller. He’s whisked to New York City, because Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander) has his name tattooed on her back. No one knows why.
If that setup interests you, then “Blindspot” will likely be your kind of show. It opens with urgency and is a stylistic fit with “The Blacklist,” another NBC property. It has crisp, digital images, and it alternates between hand-held and steady camerawork. It looks good.
The best part of “Blindspot,” though, is its central character and the actress who plays her. Alexander is dialed-in as Jane Doe. She conveys a sense of confusion, vulnerability, desperation, and frustration without overdoing it. She’s the key to this show’s success. She makes the outlandish concept seem somewhat credible.
Another positive is that we discover the story as she discovers (or remembers) it. So, we’re connected to her, which makes the ubiquitous procedural structure palatable. Her work in the fight scenes, which are a low-grade version of Jason Bourne’s in the “Bourne” film series, doesn’t hurt either.
Her male counterpart, Agent Weller, isn’t as compelling, though. Stapleton is fine in the role, but his character is a bit boring. He needs some layers beneath his steely facade. We’ll see how he develops. I’m sure they’ll come up with something.
So, “Blindspot” presents a first episode that’s professional enough to warrant watching the next one. But will it find the right balance? Jane Doe is the draw here, and I want more of her and less of the procedural. (We get snippets of her backstory in the pilot, including a glimpse at a mysterious man from her past.) She’s this show’s distinguishing trait, and she needs to be treated as such for it to work. Otherwise, “Blindspot” will simply be “The Blacklist: Take Two.” After all, Doe’s body of tattooed clues could be viewed as a stand-in for Red’s blacklist, and Doe’s connection to Weller could be a distant echo of Red’s connection to Keane. I hope there’s much more to it than that.
Verdict: Good
About: (Source: blindspot)
A beautiful woman, with no memories of her past, is found naked in Times Square with her body fully covered in intricate tattoos. Her discovery sets off a vast and complex mystery that immediately ignites the attention of the FBI, which begins to follow the road map on her body into a larger conspiracy of crime, while bringing her closer to discovering the truth about her identity.
The cast includes Sullivan Stapleton (“300: Rise of an Empire,” “Strike Back”), Jaimie Alexander (“Thor: The Dark World,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Broadchurch,” “Without a Trace”), Rob Brown (“Treme”), Audrey Esparza (“Black Box”), Ukweli Roach (“The Royals”) and Ashley Johnson (“Much Ado About Nothing”).
