‘Thor’ star Jaimie Alexander is in a New York state of mind in NBC’s ‘Blindspot’ – but that’s all she knows. But in Blindspot’s case, sex is only the initial draw. A fast-paced action thriller with gee-whiz special effects and a moral about the triumph of free will over determinism?
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A policeman stumbles upon an unattended duffle bag in the middle of Times Square with a luggage tag that reads “CALL THE FBI”.
JAIMIE ALEXANDER: It was insane! She is clearly not a threat; not in the ticking time bomb sense anyway. Who is Jane Doe?
With just the right amount of twitchy unworldliness, Sands is quite convincing as a man who spent 10 years in drug-induced flotation and another 10 in isolation, though any fear he has of replicating the sins of the past are quickly glossed over. Jane’s body has been flooded with the stuff, wiping clean all narrative memory.
That would be Stapleton, who’s already miles away from his performance as Damien Scott (ironically while Strike Back is still airing on Cinemax). The stubble and the gravelly voice would have been enough.
The producers of Blindspot had a few ideas for tattoos they wanted to see incorporated into the mix, including FBI agent Kurt Weller’s name and a barcode.
In an attempt to remember why that might be, she runs her hands over his arms and ever so gently brushes his flexing jawline. A life intertwined with violence and tragedy? “That’s rude.” So she made him practise on her. The chemistry is weird, sad, and overly heavy. This despite the fact she didn’t want to bulk up to the point of being Linda Hamilton, the actress who plays Sara Connor in the Terminator movies. They get Jane Doe into risky situations in which she discovers that one of the abilities she doesn’t know she had is crack fighting skills. No doubt she’ll adapt and harden, but for now, her demureness is boring. She liked theater, but isn’t a singer, so switched to sports. She enjoys being able to look in the mirror and feel like she’s somebody else. Weller heads out to track him down, but Jane Doe insists on riding shotgun. We didn’t paint anything out.
“When I get out of the bag in the pilot, I have only a sticker over my lady parts”, she said.
At the location, Jane Doe begs (again) to help. She has obviously been trained, and trained well. Alexander brings a depth and realism to the character that pulls the audience in. The bearded man from the flashback waltzes in dressed as a doctor.
After a bit of investigating, the FBI realizes that Chao’s phone has been turned off and all of his emails are in Wenzhou, aka “the Devil’s language”.
Weller has a revelation: “Mother of Exiles, it’s from a poem…”
Is it hard to find a balance with the way you perform the action because she’s an expert, but she doesn’t know she’s an expert? Jane goes with Weller after Chao.
Flash to a house, which has multiple women handcuffed, chained and being held hostage by a bearded, heavily armed man. There are people screaming and at least one crying baby, but that’s just drowning out the sounds of the FBI closing in downstairs.
What about the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents?
No matter; you-know-who comes to the rescue. “Somebody saw us and called the cops”, she recounted. In steps a handsome, bearded man, angry as hell and ordering Jane to repeat the course.
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Blindspot could become a fascinating treasure hunt as the team tries to figure out the meaning behind Jane’s tattoos; or it could be a frustrating puzzle that is never solved. It’s mostly redacted, but there are some choice buzzwords like “murder” and Mayfair’s own name, and the file number is a number tattooed on Jane. “That was the deal”, he says. What I like about that moment and what is great about how we’re doing Jane’s flashbacks is that they are without context and extraordinarily vague. “Once I insert this, you will be permanently erased”. Whether or not they work, you know you gave it everything you have to help it succeed. Reviews for the first episode are a little mixed, and we do have some concerns that we are going to just fall into a pattern here of giving us the same sort of cases week after week with nuggets of clues as to who Jane Doe really is.
