Review: The Blacklist “The Kazanjian Brothers”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

In the season finale of The Blacklist, the Task Force sets out to look into a strange accountant who is rumored to work for some big criminal bosses. They’re trying to locate the Kazanjian Brothers, two goons working to protect him. And on top of all that, Liz has to make a big decision about her future… and which side she’s really on in the end.

Our Take:

The Blacklist is an NBC primetime show about an ex-government agent nicknamed Red and the woman he chooses to be his protege of sorts, an FBI profiler named Liz. It’s also usually a live-action show. But due to COVID-19, the cast wasn’t able to shoot the season seven finale, and thus, tonight’s episode The Kazanjian Brothers is a bit of a mashup of genres and styles.

The plot was admittedly a bit out there, especially since I haven’t closely followed the show recently. But it has all the hallmarks of a deep-thinking spy story, including questions like ‘has our hero gone too far off the path of good?’ and ‘is she destined to follow in her parent’s evil footsteps?’. Liz has to make a major choice by the end of the episode, and the situation with the two Kazanjian Brothers forces her into thinking in a way she might not have previously. Choosing to align herself with her mother rather than the man she’s worked with all these years is a bit hard to watch, and definitely begs the question is blood thicker than anything else.

Since I’m all about animation, this was a very interesting episode to watch. Obviously, The Blacklist is not normally an animated show, and it definitely felt a bit jumpy in parts when switching between the live-action and animated portion. And the animation itself was kind of cool, but at the same time, still very low-budget video game-esque. But what I do have to say is I give the show major props for trying to pull something this crazy off in the first place. We always get animated shows rebooted as live-action adaptations, so turning a live-action show into an animated one is quite novel when you think about it.

There was even some benefits to having to do things in animation that Jon Bokenkamp talked about, like how normally they’d shoot some scenes with green screen and limited background actors, but because the animation allowed for different kinds of settings and backdrops, they were able to change scenes around and shoot in settings they wouldn’t typically be able to do. This behind the scenes trivia is super cool and helps make the episode feel more like it belongs rather than merely being a shadow of what was originally intended.

The Kazanjian Brothers was a pretty thrilling episode that, while it felt a bit oddly-paced in parts and was definitely kind of confusing for a relative newcomer, in the end was certainly entertaining… especially the animated sequences!