The Blacklist: The Forecaster (No. 163) Review

Our favorite FBI agent and our favorite criminal mastermind are back in action! In “The Forecaster” we saw Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader) use his connections to settle an old score, all the while attempting to gain a profit. Meanwhile, Elizabeth “Liz” Keen (Megan Boone) is moving on with her new life with her husband, Thomas “Tom” Keen (Ryan Eggold) and her baby girl, Agnes. On top of this, the FBI is searching for its latest Blacklister, The Forecaster, number 163 on Mr. Reddington’s blacklist.

In case you missed the previous episode or want a refresher on what happened, check out the article on “Lipet’s Seafood Company” (No. 111)

The episode also stars Amir Arison as tech analyst Aram Mojtabai, Harry Lennix as FBI director Harold Cooper, Mozhan Marno as FBI agent Samar Navabi, Diego Klattenhoff as FBI agent Donald Ressler, Hisham Tawfiq as Dembe Zuma, Reddington’s right hand man.

A heads up before I go in depth on this episode: there will be SPOILERS. If you have not watched The Blacklist: season four, episode ten “The Forecaster” or do not want it to be spoiled stop reading! You have been warned!

So what exactly happened in The Blacklist: season four, episode ten: “The Forecaster”?

Liz and Tom

Tom and Liz finally got their own apartment! Meaning that they have left Reddington’s safehouse and are starting their life together with Agnes. The passports return.
In the first season of The Blacklist, as long time fans should know and have known for a while, Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone) and Thomas Keen (Ryan Eggold) were part of a much larger problem between Raymond Reddington (James Spader) and Milos Kirkov, better known as Berlin. Berlin and Red had hired Tom to watch Elizabeth at different points, Tom flipped on Red and went to Berlin when he fell in love with Liz and the two talked about having a child. Part of the suspicious actions of Tom were passports found under the floorboards of the apartment they lived in. These passports have finally shown up again. At the beginning of the episode, Tom threw them away saying he didn’t need then anymore and he later takes them back out at the end of the episode. On her way to work, Liz stumbles upon a diorama. What of? Just a woman drowning in a pool. Thanks to this, she heads to work with the diorama and she tells the team about it. The model is of a judge who drowned earlier that day, according to Liz, she had the diorama before the judge had actually died… Liz found the diorama at seven am, except the judge drowned at eight. Whoever left it knew about it beforehand.

Reddington

Under a fake name, Reddington buys an apartment or is about to at least. He is there with Dembe Zuma, his right hand man and Pamela, the realtor. The entire apartment is white. The furniture, the carpet, everything. Red makes a comment about how one spill of anything red and it would look like a crime scene… hmm…

Liz shows up, thanking Red for him getting the president to pardon her. Red makes the comment “As my grandmother said. ‘it’s good to have friends in low places’”. Red has looked at the diorama and the FBI team’s other leads, he has no idea what is going on. Nothing he can connect between the judge and Liz at least. He warm Liz to be careful, saying she is “being baited by a killer who knows where she lives”.

Diorama #2

Tom is seen singing “What I Like About You” by The Romantics to Agnes as he decorates the apartment. All is well… until someone approaches the door and leaves a second diorama. Tom chases the person after finding the diorama but he is too late.

The team figures out that the second diorama depicts a shooting. The shooting is near a clock tower, Aram figures out what clock tower it is, giving us some insight on his past, not much though, before Cooper shuts him down.

Reddington is now meeting with Geoffrey, an adversary of Inico, who seems to be a business rival of Red’s. Geoffrey and Red start talking about the cobalt mines and Geoffrey talks about how they are needed for computers and cell phones. Red says he wants in on the mines, Geoffrey says he will have to talk to Inico about the mines if he wants in. Red talks about the apartment, making a comment about a former worker of Inico’s, a friend of Red, being murdered right where Geoffrey was standing. Red says he is interested in the mines, not in doing business with Inico. Red convinces the man to plot to kill his boss, or rather at least help Red do it. Red says that Inicio only keeps Geoffrey around because his uncle has an ear for the president and when people around Geoffrey go, Inico will kill him too, like Red’s friend.

Liz is seen waiting in the park, she’s walking around. Ressler is walking around too and Navabi is sitting on a bench. All three of them are looking for their suspect. Aram is sitting at a bench on his computer, away from Navabi. Liz reveals that they matched a print on the diorama to the partial from the first. Their suspect is Fiona Driscoll. Aram realizes that the shooter, being on a bike might actually be on a motorcycle, not a bike. The man survives the attempt on his life.

Red meets with Inico, saying he wants in on the mines after bashing him for the things he has gotten away with, such as slave labor, child bribes, and child soldiers. Red then decides to sell it to Inico, saying someone betrayed him before saying it was Geoffrey, in exchange for this information, Red gets twenty percent of the mines.

The shooter calls someone, he seems edgy now that the feds know what is going on.

Keen and Ressler both interrogate Fiona Driscoll at the FBI station. Driscoll reveals that she sent the dioramas because she can relate to Keen.

Driscoll reveals that there are forty two different dioramas. Some are natural disasters, others are random events. The visions Driscoll was talking about in these dioramas, the ones she has shown Keen and Ressler and the ones she was talking about in the station and the same ones she left on Keen’s doorstep, she claims that her nine year old daughter, Maggie, has been having them. Maggie had a premonition of a bus crash, two years ago in February, which is when Fiona claims that the visions started.

Aram runs the dioramas and matches several of them. A boat in Naples with the owner and his wife lost at sea is one of them. A Jaipur factory fire kills eighteen people just two months before the boating incident. A bus accident in Miami. A mass shooting in Madrid. Copper firmly states that he doesn’t believe in premonitions, like Driscoll claims, so Cooper believes that the knowledge of these events must have come from somewhere.

Aram narrows it down, he figures out that the killer or killers might be overheard by Maggie by her hearing aid. The team tests this by heading to Maggie’s home and turning things off, this works when she makes a diorama shortly afterwards. Before this, Tom called Liz, agents are outside of the apartment. Aram and the others close in on a suspect in the building nearby. The man escapes and later takes down Aram and takes Maggie. The team gets her back but the man escapes.

Red plays the field and gets Inico to kill Geoffrey before Red himself kills Inico himself. Inicio called his cleaners before he was killed to clean up Geoffrey. Red reveals that he has no interest in the mines and is a bad man, but not bad enough to profit off the backs of children.

Liz and Ressler are on their way to stop the men from hitting their own company and disappearing. They successfully accomplish this but one of the killers got away. Red reveals that this man who got away is The Forecaster.

Liz and Tom talk about the passports again. Tom shares his doubt with Liz about things working out and the two are interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s Dembe. Dembe is there to tell Liz that he is worried about Red and he tells her that Red killed Mr. Kaplan and that the other two she saw at the house were cleaners.