Season 2 Episode 4 Recap 

Mind Control is Real – The Blacklist – Season 2 Episode 4 – “Dr. Linus Creel”

Last week on The Blacklist we saw the FBI team take down another blacklist name, and were introduced to some of Red’s new team members.

The spoilers for this week’s episode showed that we would learn more about Keen’s relationship to Red.

The episode opens with a woman, distressed that she can’t meet her mortgage payments, who fires a gun in the bank. A man is watching her and takes note of his successful experiment.

We catch up with Red and Naomi. They argue about Naomi starting over her life again. It is clear that there is some sort of pre-established relationship between Lizzie and Red – Naomi is shocked that he was able to pull off working with Lizzie. Red insists that he can protect Jennifer and that he needs to know where she is, but Naomi will never reveal where she is. Red tells Naomi that he has arranged for her and her husband to start over together.

Lizzie calls Red, she wants to know where Naomi is so that the FBI can debrief her, but Red has other plans. He brings up the shooting shown in the opening of the episode and how it may be linked to other random acts of violence in the area. Red believes it is part of an underground social psychology experiment conducted by the government.

Lizzie brings the government mind control case to her team. Cooper sends the team to interview the shooters and their families even though it may just be a distraction that Red is setting up.

Keen and Ressler are unable to meet with Madeline, the most recent shooter, so they go to her most recent employer. Her bad reviews as a real estate agent cost her the position. She thinks that someone was out to get her because she was also targeted by social services for not taking care of her boyfriend’s kids. Keen and Ressler also learn that her mortgage payments were past due and her home was foreclosed. We also see that her psychologist is the same man who was watching her perform the shooting.

Keen meets up with her team and they discover that all the shooters were motivated by a series of events that made their lives fall apart. They believe that these people were selected based on their genes and their ability to become violent.

The scene cuts to the psychologist, he is alone and working on another file. He takes note that his subject has been successful. We learn that his name is Dr. Linus Creel.

Keen and Cooper are discussing this most recent shooter – he also shares this “warrior gene” and it appears that he has also been targeted. Cooper reveals that he has some intel on these projects – different attempts at mind control run by the government and Cooper sets up a meeting between Keen and a senator to see if they can get more information on this secret project.

The senator tells Keen that she is wasting her time – there is no use digging around in a presumed black-budget project, but he will have all pertinent files sent to her. As they leave the senators office we see Dr. Linus Creel meeting with the senator.

Naomi and her husband are meeting together and discussing starting their lives over. Her husband puts his foot down because he doesn’t want his life in the hands of Red. They decide they are just going to return home to their lives despite Red’s pleading.

Keen and her team are looking over the files from the senator. All the information is redacted and therefore, useless. Samar, now working with the FBI team, thinks she has a way to find the redacted information. Red brings Keen to meet with Samar’s informant. He spent his time reading between the lines of the redacted informaiton. They learn that the mind control project was born out of the human genome project: a way to identify people predisposed to becoming an assassin. One of the photographs the informant has shows Dr. Linus Creel working on the project.

Keen brings Creel to the attention of her team. His status as a psychologist has put him in contact, at some point or another, with all of the shooters. Creel has been screening his patients with a test to find the warrior gene.

A girlfriend of Naomi’s husband, Monica, arrives home to find Paul Rubens in her home. He has been tasked with kidnapping this woman’s dog to coerce Naomi’s husband into being faithful to Naomi if he won’t take the new life deal.

Dr. Linus Creel is meeting with one of his patients. The patient is very distressed and Creel is convincing him that he needs to take responsibility for his actions. His nurse informs him of a possible new patient. Creel goes to meet with this prospective patient – Keen is pretending to have the warrior gene. She puts on a performance for Creel that convinces him she is the next warrior. He gives her the personality test and informs her that nature can outweigh nurture.

He leaves the room momentarily. Keen opens his briefcase, takes out his laptop, and runs a script to find his passwords. When he comes back into the room he knows she has been lying to him and suspects that she was trying to forge prescriptions. Luckily this only makes him more interested.

Naomi and her husband are talking again, and he says that he thinks it best they go away.

We see Duncan, one of Creel’s patients, at home. He is very distressed again and pulls out a gun.

The FBI team digs through Creel’s files, now that they have his password, and find Duncan. They go to his address, but he has already left.

Creel has been catfishing his patients – Duncan’s online girlfriend just broke up with him, which sent him on a rampage. Creel has used the account to also show Duncan where he wants the shooting to take place, with the hope that Duncan will kill the senator.

Creel confronts Duncan who is shooting off guns. Creel wants Duncan to shoot him. The FBI team arrives and tries to talk Duncan down, but he ends up shooting Creel who then puts a gun on Keen. Creel is shot by a sniper, operated by the man Keen thought was following her.

As the episode wraps up, Keen finds where Naomi has been hiding. They sit down to talk about the past and Naomi assures Keen that Red is simply looking for something from Keen – he doesn’t actually care about her.

Naomi and her husband prepare to leave. They take Monica’s dog with them. Naomi steps aside with Red and tells him that she doesn’t know where their daughter is. Naomi asks Red “when are you going to tell her?” and walks to the car.

Keen and Red talk, she knows the sniper works for Red. He has been following her since the day Agent Malik died. Red tells Keen that she must be hiding something if she doesn’t want his protection. The episode ends with Keen locking herself in an empty warehouse.

What did you think of the episode? What do you think Red wants from Keen? Do you think we will see more of Naomi? Comment with your thoughts below.

Mind Control is Real – The Blacklist – Season 2 Episode 4 – “Dr. Linus Creel” was last modified: October 14th, 2014 by

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