The Front

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Template:Episode S2

"The Front" is the fifth episode of Season 2 of The Blacklist and the twenty seventh episode overall. It aired on October 20, 2014 on NBC.

Synopsis

A woman, Carrie Anne Beck, is on the phone with another woman, telling her that she had to take 'it' because people are going to die. She's going to go to the police. The woman on the phone offers to go with her, if she'll say where she is. Carrie Anne agrees. When she moves the phone, there's blood smeared around her ear. Her friend promises to come alone.

When Carrie Anne meets a car, her friend and a man, Maddox Beck, come out of it. Maddox argues with Carrie Anne and tries to take her purse. She resists, and is hit by a taxi. He takes something from her purse and escapes with the other woman.

Elizabeth spies the sniper in an apartment across from hers and complains to Reddington, who refuses to call him off. He draws her attention to Carrie Anne's death. Carrie Anne and Maddox are leaders of The Front, who were believed to be killed setting off a bomb in BP offices protesting an oil spill. They went underground and became more radical instead. Reddington believes Maddox killed Carrie Anne because she was the more moderate of the pair, while Maddox viewed humanity as a disease that needed to be eradicated.

At HQ, the team reviews history on The Front, including bombings and ricin attacks. Carrie Anne is at the hospital instead of the morgue for labor and delivery, 30 weeks pregnant. Carrie Anne is brain dead and on life support until the baby can be safely delivered. The M.E. reports signs that Carrie Anne was in a fight: she has defensive injuries. Also, she had 700 year old clay under her fingernails.

Aram traces the clay back to a paint used in the 15th century. A painting using it was stolen recently, but was the least valuable of the collection.

Maddox takes detailed pictures of the stolen painting under a black light, and pins them up in a room filled with cages of lab mice.

Reddington is at the DMV and is forced to wait 45 minutes to meet his tracker, Glen, who he has looking for a girl. Reddington fires Glen because Glen hasn't found her yet. They argue. Reddington leaves.

Aram tells the team that there are codes hidden in the stolen in the painting that were discovered when the museum did thermal imaging to test for authenticity. Nobody knows what the codes are. Cooper orders them to bring in Lillian Sharp to figure it out.

Elizabeth walks into a psych office, watched by the sniper. She pays off a body double and goes out the back while the double tricks the sniper to keep watching the building.

Lillian identifies the painting code as a map leading to the Apophis Strain, a legendary disease weaponized in the 14th century by the Byzantines and the Ottomans and said to be the source of the Black Death. Pneumonic plague, which is airborne and killed 200 million people. The map purports to lead to the location where the plague was taken by four priests tasked to hide it. Lillian tells Cooper the map is worthless.

Lillian meets with Reddington, and tells him and Elizabeth that the map is priceless and has to be moved on immediately. She's being paid to embargo certain details from the FBI if they'll be of interest to Reddington.

Press Release

ECO-TERRORISTS PURSUE A DEADLY TREASURE– 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.

Number on The Blacklist

74

Unanswered Questions

Raymond Reddington
1. What is the significance of the key?
  1. A: The key activates the interface that decodes the Fulcrum.
2. Why did Beck have the key?
3. Why has Red not had Milos Kirchoff assassinated?
  1. A: Because he is not ready to take over his syndicate.
  2. Q: Red surrendered to the FBI and Niko Demakis chose to ally with Milos Kirchoff. If the situation was/is that bad then assassination removes the primary threat. Red can/could exploit the ensuring power struggle after the leadership is paralyzed. The Irish Republican Army fractured into multiple factions over political reasons.
  3. A: The FBI is not hindering Red's syndicate much, and a power struggle within Milos Kirchoff's syndicate could lead to problems within Red's syndicate.
  4. A: Red wanted to know who started the conflict between himself and Kirchoff, once he found out the information he killed Kirchoff in "The Decembrist".
Elizabeth Keen
1. How can Liz despise Red and be jealous of his possible daughter at the same time?
  1. A: Human nature.
2. Why has Liz's double been able to deceive Ezra?
  1. A: The double has been careful never to show her face to Ezra.
3. What did the double write on the window?
  1. A: Bite me.
4. Who played the role of Keen's double?
  1. A: Marianna McClellan
5. Who does Liz meet in that boiler room, and where is she asking to "go in" to?
  1. A: The Samoan.
  2. A: Maybe she is hiding the alive "Tom Keen" in there.
  3. A: It was confirmed in "The Mombasa Cartel" that Tom is Liz's prisoner.
The Apophis Strain pneumonic plague
1. Why was the painting map created? The priests were sent to destroy the virus.
  1. A: The medieval church recorded everything, which is why most historians now dispute the occurrence of mass torture and witch burnings by Spanish Inquisition.
2. Why send the priests? The virus could have been destroyed by burning it after the Byzantines and Ottomans made the truce.
  1. A: In the Middle Ages mind, the virus could have been created by God, and therefore should be preserved like all God's creations.
  2. Q: The Middle Ages had witch-hunts and religious purges.
  3. A: They were driving out the devil.
  4. Q: A virus would be seen as an act of the devil. Destroying the virus would destroy the evil.
  5. A: Plagues come from God, as told in the story of Moses.
3. Why was the body moved from Burial Ridge to the Holy Trinity Church?
  1. A: To bring the virus under the control of the church.
  2. Q: Then why not bury at the Holy Trinity Church to begin with? Was a "secret society" created to guard the corpse?
  3. A: Holy Trinity church was not built at the time of the original burial.
  4. Q: That means the church knew about the virus and maintained a "secret society".
  5. A: The whole premise of "The Da Vinci Code" is a secret church "society" hiding something, there have been numerous rumours about the secret Vatican archive for centuries.
4. Why was the stone marker created?
  1. A: To inform those who were looking for the virus where it was currently located.
  2. Q: Why risk an outsider learning the truth? The priests were sent to destroy the virus. That means removing the knowledge from history.
  3. A: The marker could only be decoded with knowledge of the virus and the original priests mission.
5. Why did the virus still work after hundreds of years?
  1. A: It was probably not still active, but could be re-created as indicated here.
6. Why were there no samples at the first lab the FBI found?
  1. A: The terrorists had decontaminated the site.
7. Why did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) need the original strain of the virus for creating an antidote?
  1. A: Because the virus was mutating in the infected people.
  2. Q: If the disease mutates, then the antidote might not work on the new strain.
  3. A: Virus mutations are subsets of the original. In the 2 "Star Trek" episodes that used the polywater storyline, the cure for the mutation of the polywater intoxication was developed from the original cure.
Maddox Beck
1. Why did Beck believe the story of the virus in the first place? Even fanatics must be skeptical of legends and myths.
  1. A: The hidden map gave credence to the legends.
2. Why did Beck not have the visor shut on his hazmat suit when he retrieved the virus?
  1. A: When confronted by Liz the virus was already safely stored.
3. Beck's use of the virus could easily have evolved into a strain that killed animal life.
  1. Q: Why did Red not kill Maddox Beck himself?
  2. Q: Beck refused to infect himself. That is not the sign of a fanatic.
  3. A: Trying to indiscriminately kill over 90% of humanity is the act of a fanatic.
  4. A: To a fanatic, like Beck, living with failure is intolerable, hence the murder/suicide.
  5. A: Fanatics are not known for their ability to think beyond the initial results of their actions.
  6. A: He had the antidote.
Why was Samar Navabi so harsh on Keen? Keen was ambushed from behind, she kept the gun pointed at Beck the whole time.
1. A: She has read the report on the Frederick Barnes case.
What will Harold Cooper do now that he knows that Lillian Sharpe is working for Red?
1. A: Throw his arms up in despair and resolve not to ask her advice again.
Why did Carrie Ann Beck choose to abandon the scheme?
1. A: Because she was pregnant and like most pregnant women wanted her child to live.
2. Q: She did not care about the millions of other children who would have died from the virus release.
3. A: I believe she was on her way to report them, when she was ambushed by her husband.
Is Zoe D'Antonio Red's real daughter? Age enhancement computer programs are not 100% reliable.
1. A: I expect her to be Milos Kirchoff's actual daughter.
2. A: Zoe/Jennifer is confirmed to be Milos Kirchoff's daughter in "The Scimitar".
3. A: Red has found Milos Kirchoff's daughter, Jennifer, living under an assumed name as Zoe D'Antonio and brought her to him.

Slanders on the FBI

Why did the FBI agents use hazmat suits instead of NBC suits or MOPP?
1. A: The other types have all been requisitioned to deal with the Ebola problem.
Why was the FBI and FAA unable to impose a no-fly lockdown?
Why was Dulles airport not evacuated, a simple fire alarm would have sufficed.
1. A: The carrier could have escaped in the chaos.