- Agents Keen, Ressler and Cooper pursue an eco-terrorist cell in search of a destructive weapon. Meanwhile, Liz tries to lose her guardian. Elsewhere, Red uses manipulation to pursue someone close to his heart.
- "The Blacklist" - "The Front (No. 74)" - Oct. 20, 2014
We open on a woman the phone telling someone that she has to go to the police. The woman on the other end tells her to meet her. When she arrives a man is with her and grabs the first woman and calls her selfish and wants something from her bag. As they fight over the bag the woman is pushed into traffic and hit by a cab. The man grabs something from the bag and leaves with the other woman in the ensuing chaos.
Liz is in her motel room and sees minder in a room across the way. She meets Red in his workspace and tells him to get rid of he bodyguard. He says he won't and turns the conversation to the woman hit by the cab. Her name was Carrie Ann Beck and the man who assaulted her was her husband Maddox. They are the leaders of an eco-terrorrist group called the Front. Red used to admire him but says his methods have become too extreme.
At the Post Office they go over the Front's long list of bad eco-terrorrism deeds. The wife was pregnant and is in the hospital brain dead, they are waiting to deliver the baby. The M.E. says she had 700 year old clay under her fingernails.
The gang discovers the clay came from a stolen painting from Madrid and wonders why they stole it.
We cut to Maddox who unrolls the painting and hangs it on a wall. Under a blacklight it is revealed to contain some kind of map or code. We pull back and see Maddox is looking at the painting in a lab full of rats.
At the DMV Red waits impatiently. He finally sees a man named Glenn. He has asked Glenn to find "the girl." Glenn has failed. Glenn gets angry and says he didn't have much to go on and it takes time and his mother is ill with cancer. Red yells back at him and stalks off.
The Post Office figures out about the codes and brings in an expert to explain what they are.
Liz goes to the psychologist. But when she gets inside she gives money to a woman who resembles her and slips out the back door so bodyguard doesn't follow her.
Expert Lillian Sharp says the code is a map that corresponds to a legend about the plague, not the Bubonic plague the Pneumonic plague which is airborne and even deadlier and was actually a weapon that was developed and went awry. The map tells of a plan to take the plague to "the end of the world." Cooper asks if she can determine where that is. She dismisses it as a fairytale and calls the map worthless.
The Liz doppelganger emerges and Liz exits the front as she exits the back. Red calls her.
It turns out he's with Lillian, who says the map is actually priceless and explains that, as far as she can tell, the plague strain is actually buried here in America at a burial ridge in Staten Island. Liz calls it in but it turns out that Beck beat them there and dug up the grave. But whoever was buried was moved 100 years ago and in the place a marker was left with Cyrillic markings. Aram and Samar figure out the markings mean that the body was moved 31 miles east of the burial ridge. Which places the bones under Holy Trinity Church in Manhattan.
Red comes to the Post Office to ask Aram to find the "girl." Aram is worried Red is going to hurt him if he doesn't. Red shows him picture and says it's critical.
Liz and Ressler head to the church and again Beck has beat them to it. They find him in a haz mat suit with the bones in bags. Liz trains a gun on him but he says if he drops the bag they will both be contaminated and die. She hesitates and he calls her a coward and takes off after she is knocked out by Beck's accomplice. Back at the Post Office they start the manhunt. Navabi gives Liz a hard time for letting Beck go. Cooper says all they have to do is break out the antidote. Navabi says they don't have one for the strain that is 700 years old.
Aram tells Liz about Red asking for his help and Liz goes to Red and tells him that Aram will not be helping him find his daughter. Red wonders why she thinks it's his daughter and accuses her of being jealous and says nothing about their relationship will change when he finds her. She again says to get rid of the bodyguard or she will.
Beck has a crazy cult meeting and tells his followers that they have to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to teach humanity a lesson and save the earth. His speech is cross cut with him grinding the bones in his lab and creating the new plague. He tells a girl named Sharon it's time to make he sacrifice and has her inhale the plague.
Liz goes home, opens wine, kicks off her shoes and then opens the curtains. She sees her minder across the way and begins to undress herself so he can see. As she does this Red calls and tells him that Liz is agitated and may try to manipulate the situation just as she drops her bra. She writes on the window in lipstick "Bite Me." He chuckles. She pulls back to the side and we see it's not Liz but her doppelganger. Liz is actually elsewhere, in the basement of some industrial building. She talks to a very large man who looks like a bald Aaron Neville. She says she wants to go "inside." He seems to think this is dangerous but she opens a door and heads in.
Sharon gets infected with the plague and hits the streets to help share the gift. We cut to news reports of,hundreds being infected, the Capital and Supreme Court are evacuated, and a 15 block area has been quarantined. This plague has been genetically modified and will kill healthy people in 9 hours. They need a sample of original strain from Beck who modified it. On Sharon's body they find a rat hair and track down Beck's lab. There they find a map that shows that 24 of his supporters are on their way to all seven continents to spread the plague.
Glen at the DMV calls Red, he has a hit on "the girl." She is now going by the name Zoe D'Antonio.
Meanwhile, back at cult central Beck gives the rest of the cult the disease and says their sacrifice we'll create the dawning of a new earth. They all breathe deep.
They track down all of the flights that the cult members were on and work on diverting, quarantining, and stopping them. Only one hasn't departed yet and they track down the infected man at Dulles. He and Navabi tussle and he infects her with the plague. Liz shoots him but not before he shoots Navabi. She shuts the door to the room they're in telling Liz not to come in or risk getting infected. Liz pushes the door open and helps Navabi try to stop her bleeding.
Aram calls Red -- who calls him off the search for "the girl"-- and tells Red that Navabi and Liz are infected but he can't find Beck since he lives off the grid. Red says "that's it." The infected Liz and Navabi sit and wait to die. She recalls times with Tom and how a year ago she was waiting to adopt and that she thought she would be happy with her husband and baby and then Red showed up and upended her world. Navabi says everyone talks about it and they all speculate as to who Red is in her life. Liz says Red is the bane of her existence and is now trying to reconnect with his daughter and she admits she is jealous and is even angrier that he busted her on it. Liz realizes that Beck's wife will be delivering her baby soon and says that must be why she turned on her husband and their plan and says when they find a cure and walk out of there it will be because of that baby.
Aram figures out that Red's "that's it" meant that someone like Beck would be using solar power and there is only one place in the radius that is using enough solar power to support a compound. He tells Cooper but tells him that Red has a head start.
Indeed, Red finds Beck and his galpal, both curiously without symptons, and monologues how he was a big fan of Beck's back in the day before he realized he wasn't a saint for a cause but a crazed megalomaniac and he knew he would find that Beck had created an antidote. Dembe uncovers the viles of the antidote and Red asks the woman for the other thing he's looking for. She tries to demur but points to some nearby bottles hanging from trees. Red grabs one and shakes out a key. Red and Dembe leave as the sirens wail in the distance.
Liz and Navabi receive the antidote. Red sits by Liz's side and puts in earbuds and plays some music for her. Aram sits by Navabi's side and she awakens and takes his hand.
Later Red watches old home movies of a woman and a young girl and smiles.
All the infected people on the flights and in the quarantines are saved. Carrie Anne Beck delivers her baby and is taken off life support. Liz comes by to look at the baby.
Red takes a walk and sees "the girl" taking out the trash from the food truck she apparently works on.
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