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Tag: Red Reddington

  • Katherine Heigl, ‘State of Affairs’ Filling ‘The Blacklist’s’ Slot

    Katherine Heigl stars in State of Affairs tonight (Monday, November 17th) in the NBC slot that housed The Blacklist throughout its intense and wildly popular fall season. Can Heigl draw in fans the way The Blacklist’s James Spader lured them on Monday night TV?

    The former Grey’s Anatomy star plays the role of Charleston Tucker–known as Charlie–who works as the president’s most trusted national security adviser. The president is played by Alfre Woodard.

    The New York Times describes State of Affairs as having “some of the sex and high-stepping melodrama of Scandal on ABC, but actually resembling Madam Secretary, the CBS series that stars Téa Leoni as Elizabeth McCord, a maverick secretary of state who suspects that the death of her predecessor was no accident,” even more. Like Elizabeth, Charlie, “is more enmeshed in current affairs than extramarital ones.”

    The Times continues, saying, “the narrative of State of Affairs is not as outré as the one in Scandal, but it’s still preposterous and at times laughable. That’s not a disqualifier; it’s pretty much a prerequisite for a network action-adventure series. Plausibility isn’t the measure, panache is. The Fox series 24 in its heyday had it. So does Scandal. Now, The Blacklist on NBC has it–mostly because James Spader is the star.” That said, can Katherine Heigl do for NBC during this run of State of Affairs what James Spader did? She definitely has huge shoes to fill. The Blacklist is, after all, returning for its upcoming season in a coveted slot following the Super Bowl in February, in what will be a two-part season premiere. Grey’s Anatomy experienced a draw of 37.9 million viewers when it premiered in that slot back in 2006.

    Katherine Heigl, as most everyone knows by now, has a reputation for being difficult to deal with. Will her reputation follow her on to the set of State of Affairs?

    Will you be tuning in to see Katherine Heigl in her new role as Charlie Tucker Monday nights on State of Affairs? Will The Blacklist fans watch, too, hoping it fills that void that likely no one but Red Reddington can fill?

  • ‘The Blacklist’ Season Finale: Did It Live Up to the Hype?

    The Blacklist season finale aired on Monday night with a dead FBI agent, the noted identity of a man who calls himself Berlin, and an even stronger feeling that Agent Elizabeth Keen (played by Megan Boone) is Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington’s (James Spader) daughter–even though he tells her that her father is dead. The season ended with the show being the most watched new series in prime time–not a bad way to go out, and a positive note to offset the blood bath the ensued during the finale.

    Meera, played by Parminder Nagra, was killed shortly after the finale began. Her throat was slit in a night club and Lizzie Keen arrived too late to save her. Director Harold Cooper (Harry Lennix) was the next to fall–being strangled in his car. His name, too, is scratched off Berlin’s list of targets, but he lingers in a hospital on life support.

    Tom Keen, played by Ryan Eggold, was also a casualty on The Blacklist season finale. Shot by Red, he didn’t go down without a fight–and not without whispering in Lizzie’s ear that her father is alive.

    Megan Boone talked with Jimmy Fallon prior to the airing of The Blacklist season finale, and each did their best not to spoil the outcome.

    Later in the show Lizzie confronts Red about killing her ‘father’ Sam–the man who took her in and raised her as his own when her own father was killed in a fire from which she was saved. Sam was in a hospital dying when Red snuffed him out. He told Lizzie it was an act of compassion–that her father was ill and wanted to die, and that he loved her father as his dear friend.

    Shortly before Monday night’s finale ends, Lizzie and Red chat once again–this time about what Tom Keen told her before he died. Red assures her that her father died in that fire. A moment later, however, as Reddington tends to a bullet wound, it is plain to see that his body is horrifically scarred–by what one can only assume are burns.

    Do you think The Blacklist season finale lived up to the hype created in the weeks before its airing? The Blacklist returns in the fall, and then in 2015 gets that coveted post-Super Bowl slot.

    Will you be tuning in to see the saga continue?

    Image via YouTube

  • James Spader: ‘Blacklist’ Compared to ‘Columbo’

    James Spader keeps fans coming back week after week to watch the NBC hit show The Blacklist. He and costar Megan Boone have some kind of chemistry that outweighs any of the show’s absurdities and the cast of characters behind Elizabeth Keen and Red Reddington’s bizarre interactions. One must admit it’s a bit far fetched to watch Keen observe a high profile international criminal like Reddington walk in and out of the FBI headquarters per his will. But that’s how it is–and fans love it.

    Time magazine compares The Blacklist to Columbo.

    “Perhaps Peter Falk was one of those actors who, like James Spader, is so easy to pay attention to that the idea of applying any kind of critical thought seems almost frightening, in case you realize that the show was actually kind of terrible and coasting on the lead actor’s charm all along,” they recently published in their entertainment section.

    They later take a bit of a softer approach, saying, “But at least The Blacklist has the ingredients necessary for contemporary Columbo-esque greatness. We have Spader at the center (or, center-adjacent, at least), gleefully enjoying the larger-than-life quality of his character, as well as villains played by recognizable actors, who we can root against for reasons beyond their criminal activities. On Falk’s show, there was always an element of class warfare in play as Columbo regularly proved that being rich and successful didn’t let you literally get away with murder, while in Spader’s we have characters who are not only criminals, but also on some level misrepresenting themselves within society and fooling the common man for nefarious, selfish reasons.”

    The comparison between the two hit TV shows likely won’t gel with most, even when looking past the upgrades in technology, criminology and even acting that have taken place between the time Columbo reigned in the late 60s to late 70s and the inception of The Blacklist this past September. James Spader has a special finesse Peter Falk lacked–not because he wasn’t a good actor, but because that’s not what the character called for. And The Blacklist seems a bit more intricate than a standard “whodunit.”

    This past Monday on The Blacklist a mole was revealed, and fans were likely surprised to learn who it was.

    James Spader was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Blacklist but didn’t win. By this time next year he will likely have an award or two on his shelf for his unique (read: non-Columbo-esque) hit show.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons