The Blacklist – General Ludd

• Title: The Blacklist – General Ludd
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Reddington (James Spader), while not assisting a suburban housewife (Kelly Deadmon) print counterfeit money out of her garage, steps in to help the FBI investigate the bombing of a commercial plane by a terrorist group known as General Ludd whose founder (Justin Kirk) has been able to stay hidden for years under multiple identities with the help of a plastic surgeon (Andrew Dice Clay) friend of Red’s who gave the man a new face. While investigating the group, Agent Keen (Megan Boone) is distracted by news her father (William Sadler) is back in the hospital undergoing another series of tests for a condition whose severity he has managed to keep hidden from his daughter.

With the second bombing all planes are grounded and Lizzie has no way to reach her father until the case is closed. Discovering a third identity, the FBI also uncover the elaborate heist which is the true goal of the bombings. Reddington, with his own private plan, doesn’t have that problem and takes the opportunity to pay his old friend a visit which all but confirms the unspoken ongoing plot thread that Reddington is in fact Lizzie’s real father. The death of Lizzie’s adopted father is followed by a chance encounter of Reddington and Tom (Ryan Eggold) and a conversation dripping with subtext about Lizzie’s peace of mind and future.

Although he loses a friend (or more appropriately smothers him to death), Reddington gets everything he wants in this episode as he acquires the prize General Ludd was really after, bonds a little more with Lizzie over the loss of her father, and even finds a way to step in and warn Tom that he will continue to watch from the shadows to discover if Tom is indeed the man Reddington thinks he is. For helping to capture a big name not on The Blacklist, the master criminal also gets time on the Federal Criminal Database as the episode hints that its shown us not only Lizzie’s true father in this episode but perhaps her mother as well.