“But, I’m not”.
— Louie De Palma (Danny DeVito)
On February 25, 1982, Ted Danson made a guest appearance on the Taxi episode, “The Unkindest Cut”, playing an effete, snobbish bullying hair dresser named Vincenzo Senaca. The plot revolved around Elaine (Marilu Henner) going to get a haircut. Deciding that Elaine was not worthy of his genius, Senaca gives her an outrageously bad haircut. The gang gets together to confront the man. Senaca treats them all with distain and contempt, so their heartfelt protest is dismissed. Near the end of the episode, Elaine takes a huge bowl of shampoo and threatens to dump it on the evil hairdresser’s head. Her buddies talk her down, advising her that an act of retribution would lower her to Senaca’s level. Elaine put the bowl down, and leaves proclaiming she’s better than him. In this scene, the writers and producers fulfill one of the most honored tropes of television: the good character rises above the bad character. They set up and fulfilled the cliché. That is, until the diminutive Louie DePalma grabs the shampoo, pours it all over Senaca’s head and body, stands in front of him, and proclaims that Elaine may indeed be better than him, “But, I’m not!”
It’s one of my favorite moments. A smart, well written show parodying one of the most ubiquitous tropes in television. As a show, Taxi had a stellar cast, including DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, and Andy Kaufman, but wasn’t really groundbreaking television. This tells you how hackneyed the trope was and still is.
The convention is no fresher now than it was 34 years ago, so it was shocking when Blacklist creators Jon Bokenkamp and Daniel Cerone decided to included it in the latest episode, “The Director”. Worse, in order to shoehorn this trope into the episode, they had to change the basic personality of two of the shows main characters. At one moment in the episode agent Donald Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) has one of the series’ villains, Matias Solomon (Edi Gathegi) in his sites. He’s talked out of acting on his baser instincts by none other than his arch nemesis, Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold).
The end result seemed like the writers were trying desperately to hit a home run, but missed it badly. There is a nice role reversal built into the conflict and resolution. Ressler is the archetypal good guy. He wears a suit, unflinchingly goes by the book, and acts like he was potty trained with a metronome. Keen, on the other hand, is the archetypical bad boy. He spent most of the season in a tank top, pretty much doing whatever he wants and killing people indiscriminately with almost no trace of regret. To have the latter become the conscious of the former would’ve been a great trick, if the writers could’ve pulled it off. Unfortunately, they couldn’t. To have it make any sense, the set up would ‘ve had to last a lot longer. The only thing the scene does is explain an earlier scene where the two adversaries bond over Ressler telling a personal story. This moment seemed completely out of place and out of character, but apparently the writers needed to violate the consistency of the two characters earlier in the show to blow them up by the end.
This embrace of television cliché is atypical for the series as a whole. One of the things that makes this series strong is the consistency of the lead characters. The central character, Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader), hasn’t evolved. In every episode, he’s the smartest man in the room. In the few instances where he’s been equaled or surprised, he defaults into the most ruthless man in the room. The great strength of the series has been how uncompromising the writers have been with Reddington. For all of his charm, loyalty and wit, he’s still a dispassionate sociopath. He only kills out of need, but once that decision is made, he shows no remorse.
As per example .there’s a scene near the end where he meets up with an ally by an empty grave. The audience wonders the entire time if the ally is going to end up in the grave. For no other reason, that ally could be or become a loose end, and Red does not tolerate loose ends. Drawing him like this adds tension to the show.
That scene was the highpoint of the episode, although there were a few other good scenes in the episode. The episode introduces a new character, US Marshall Cynthia Panabaker (Deirdre Lovejoy), currently providing a deus ex machina function in the show. At this point, the character came off more as a caricature: the smart lady with the southern accent who talks plainly but thinks complexly. Her introduction was out of the blue and improbable, but ultimately satisfying.
With all its ups and downs, the main point of the episode was to create lines of allegiances over the fate of Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). Red assembles a team to take on and take down “The Cabal”: Peter Kotsiopulos (David Strathairn), Laurel Hitchin (Christine Lahti), and the aforementioned Matias Solomon. The table is set. Ultimately, we know that Red will triumph and Liz will survive the season, but hopefully, the ride to the conclusion will be entertaining.