'The Blacklist' Recap: Liz Investigates Tom; Red Tells Liz He Picked Her Because Of Her Father

by UInterviewOctober 8, 2013, 12:00 amNews >

In The Blacklist’s third episode “Wujing,” Liz goes undercover as a hacker to take down Wujing, a Chinese assassin, with Red while also launching an investigation into her husband, Tom.

After finding Tom’s secret box of passports and money, Liz (Megan Boone) has to decide on a plan of action. In the middle of the night, she takes the gun she found and goes outside to shoot a bullet to do ballistics tests. Tom (Ryan Eggold) is still recovering from his attack, so his friend Ellie comes over to take care of him while Liz is at work. When Ellie and Tom leave the house to go to Tom’s physical therapy, a team of mysterious men appear and bug the house.

Red (James Spader) is approached to do a job for Wujing: get a hacker to help Wujing break into a CIA computer. He tells Liz that she will go undercover as a techie to catch Wujing, a man who is responsible for multiple CIA deaths. Liz will break the CIA encryption and retrieve the identity of Wujing’s next target. Red warns the FBI that Liz must give Wujing the correct name, otherwise he’ll know they aren’t who they say they are and they will both end up dead. The plan is to give Wujing and the FBI the name – they’ll just have to hope the FBI can get there first.

Liz and Red manage to fool Wujing and are brought to his secret D.C. headquarters. Unfortunately, his secret lair is deep underground, too deep for the FBI to track Liz or for her to have the time to relay the target to the FBI so that they can save him or her first. Desperate, Liz plants a transmitting device in one of Wujing’s men’s computers. She’s done deciphering the encryption, and it looks like all went according to plan, until Wujing’s alarms go off. Wujing sees that something has hacked into his system, and he immediately suspects Liz. He sees the origin of the transmission is coming from the computer of one of his own men, and then turns on him. Liz doesn’t want the man to die because she planted the device in his computer, but Red knows he has to die. When the man spots the FBI device, Red knows it’s over, and he shoots him before he has a chance to tell Wujing. Wujing is furious, but he lets Liz and Red go.

The FBI and Wujing are racing to get to Chow (the target). Wujing gets there first, but Chow is already gone, having received a head’s up from the FBI. Chow is saved, and the FBI manages to catch Wujing thanks to Liz, who put her FBI tracker on Wujing’s car when she left the building.

Alone with Red, Liz demands to know why he will only speak with her. He tells her, “because of your father.” But he refuses to elaborate. When Liz returns to her offices to read the report on Tom’s gun, she, again, gets no answers. All the real information is redacted and marked classified; the only thing clear in the report is that the gun was used in a murder. However, we see that Agent Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) has the unredacted version of the report, and it clearly states that the report is so top secret, discussing it involves the Director of Homeland Security.

Ray opens the envelope he received from Wujing as payment for his assistance hacking into the CIA computer: inside is a piece of paper with “042983” written on it.

The episode ends with an ominous look at the man who had Liz and Tom’s house bugged. He is watching the security feed on a set of television monitors.

The Blacklist airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on NBC.