'The Blacklist' Recap: 'The Judge'

On this week’s episode of The Blacklist, The FBI searched for The Judge, Tom was tempted by Jolene and Cooper got kidnapped.

So, is it ok to skip over the entire recap and just talk about the last 10 minutes? You know that “mother of a secret” that the commercials talked about? No? Well, let’s get on with the case of the week.

The episode began with a man walking down the side of the road. After a man tries to pick him up and he acts strangely, it is revealed that it is actually an Assistant U.S Attorney who had been missing for 12 years. When his wife came to the rescue, he was so traumatized that he couldn’t talk.

While the FBI believed that a drug cartel was behind the kidnapping, Red tells Liz that they are wrong. He says that The Judge did it. The Judge is a jailhouse personality. Prisoners write to him through the literacy program in the jailhouse. The Judge reads their letters and then decides if they are actually guilty or not. If The Judge believes that they are not guilty. Someone who wronged them gets the same punishment that the prisoner got.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. 12 years in prison for 12 years in prison.

Because of the overwhelming evidence, the FBI listens to Red and begins looking at missing person records. They find that other people have gone missing and the same related cases have happened. They hope to keep this from happening to anyone else.

Red meets with a cowboy in a Cadillac. He asks the cowboy to track down Jolene/Lucy Brooks. Jolene/Lucy had faked her death to evade him and he can never find her. When Red tries to give the cowboy advice he says that, if he can find a sheep, he can find the girl. Red says that he knows where she is, he wants to know where she has been. He compliments the cowboy on his hat and asks him what size he is.

Tom and Jolene are in Orlando. They’re talking to other teachers about reading Lolita and affairs. Jolene says that people have affairs because they are miserable in their marriages and we shouldn’t judge him. It also turns out a parent is having an affair with a teacher. The vibes between Jolene and Tom were seriously hot in the scene. It was very clear that Tom wasn’t thinking about his wife much.

In DC, the feds have tracked down a man that works for the Prison Book Depository named Frank. He was wrongly convicted of a crime and now works in the library. Even though he gets away, they find out what The Judge’s next case is. The prisoner, Alan Rifkin, is on death row because he committed treason and fought with the Taliban. He is with Ruth Kipling, his spiritual advisor, who says that they have exhausted all appeals.

The prisoner said that he is being set up and that it was friendly fire. He said that people came out of helicopters and were fighting too. He said that the only reason that he confessed is because Agent Cooper beat a confession out of him. That means that Cooper is next on the Judge’s list of revenge.

Back in Florida, Tom is sitting at a bar watching basketball. (Isn’t this a conference? Shouldn’t they be in meetings?) Jolene walks up and talks to Tom about men and basketball. She says that she could stand in front of a Washington Wizards game naked and her fiancé would simply tell her to movie.

Somehow, that leads the two to go make out in the bathroom. As they are making out, a child walks him. Tom apologizes and tells Jolene that he can’t do that. She begins to apologize and takes it back. She gives him the key to her room and says that he can come over.

Frank, the wrongly convicted, jailhouse library worker, is at a farmhouse with Ruth Kipling. She’s The Judge. She defends what she doing, saying that she is simply getting payback for her father. It also shows that she keeps all of the people she kidnapped in a barn and feeds them through a slot like they are horses.

Liz meets with a witness in and finds out that the entrance logs in Rifkin’s cell were tampered with. The witness tells Liz that Cooper beat a confession out of Rifkin because he was told to. Liz goes to Cooper and confronts him with the allegations. Tom Conway, Cooper’s boss, basically tells Liz to mind her own business.

Luckily, she doesn’t. She tries to stop the execution but is too late. Rifkin gets the lethal injection. His last words are “Goodnight Mother.” Because he was executed, Cooper and Conway get taken. They arrive at the farm and Ruth decides to charge them as guilty and put them in a homemade electric chair.

The FBI gets there right in time. Red swoops in and tells Ruth that Rifkin was guilty and the cover up was that they were trying to get an undercover agent. Red convinces Ruth to let Cooper go.

Back at the post office, Cooper thanks Red for saving him. Red tells him that a war is coming and that it will be getting worse before it gets batter. He also says that Cooper needs to reach out and help Admiral Richard Abraham, his friend from the Navy that helped get the classified documents.

Now, the part that everyone was waiting for.

Tom is at the bar and Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ is playing in the background. As he drinks and walks slowly down the hallway. He tells Jolene that he can’t cheat on his wife because he loves her. Jolene then replies: “Wrong answer. Elizabeth Keen isn’t your wife. She’s your target.”

How could something be so shocking and not shocking at the same time? While everyone knew whiny Tom was a spy, I was still surprised to hear him say it. He asked if “they” sent her here to test him.

Somehow betraying Liz is even worse when he says exactly what his role is. He says, “I told you that I was in love with her because that is exactly what I’m supposed to be. That is my job.”

The Blacklist won’t be back for two weeks. What do you think of Tom’s big reveal?