'Blindspot' Season 5 Episode 6 Review: Madeline's end goal is busted, will the team be able to stop her?
Spoilers for 'Blindspot' Season 5 Episode 6 'Fire and Brimstone'
When the team of formerly FBI-turned rogue agents had discovered the kind of mass destruction weapon current FBI director Madeline Burke (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) was developing, they thought they had seen it all. It was a chemical weapon Madeline was planning to put into action with a group of mercenaries, potentially killing a bunch of people as part of some sick power move. That Madeline is a cold-blooded brutal tyrant is no secret, but on the latest episode, as more and more secrets about her Iceland drone attack unfurls, the team learns of her true intent behind the weapons. And with Madeline's cat out of the bag, what's really left to be seen is whether the agents will be able to stop her in time. Rather, could they ever be able to stop her in time?
Episode 6 of Season 5 kicks off with the team getting caught by none other than Ice Cream (David Clayton Rodgers) - an Icelandic fixer who had snitched on them to Madeline and also given them duds for burner phones resulting in the loss of Edgar Reade (Rob Brown) in the long run. Tension and farthest from the sexual kind are rife between Tasha Zapata (Audrey Esparza) and this fixer as she blames him for Reade's death in the drone attack his info helped Madeline orchestrate. But Ice Cream doesn't care about that; the team was supposed to get him a bunch of paintings for his help to keep them hidden in the Icelandic shack and even though he ditched them, he's back for their end of the bargain. The team never bothered paying him back for how he betrayed them, but he manages to tempt them with encrypted, detailed correspondence between Madeline and her mercenaries in exchange for the paintings this time.
So once again the team gets roped into Ice Cream's twisted web of demands, as Matthew Weitz (Aaron Abrams) on the other hand faces intense grilling, even though we are beyond thrilled to learn he's not dead or being tortured. Ice Cream's demands see the paintings have traveled more than our agents in the recent past, seeking refuge in several places, ending with a casino magnate, whose art restorer could have access to the paintings. So Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) and Jane Doe (Jaime Alexander) take it upon themselves to once again team up in hunting down this restorer called Irving Sutton and while the two of them have yet another heart-to-heart 'is this the right thing to do' conversation, the 'Blindspot' writers bring their signature intense twists into the game to save it from being a total bore.
Kurt and Jane find Sutton dead and that's isn't all. Looks like his death sent out a random message to the internet, provoking all art connoisseurs and thieves to get a hold of the paintings which they never could for as long as he was alive. With desperation to get to the paintings before anybody else building up, the team resorts to Patterson's (Ashley Johnson) brains for help and true enough, she figures it out from the video Sutton had left behind. Otherwise busy being overprotective of the fired up and pregnant Tasha, Patterson is the true MVP in this task once again and not just because she keeps solving Sutton's riddles like a pro. She is Billy Nye the Science Guy's daughter on the show - something that keeps coming up because she isn't quite devoid of feeling guilty about risking his life earlier this season.
But some respite comes in the form of Patterson dressing up as a nun and tricking the people who keep appearing out of nowhere every time any of the agents get near the paintings. Like a pro, the brains of the team hands over fake paintings to the thieves who ambush them and later, returns the originals to Ice Cream, who lives up to his end of the bargain and divulges all of Madeline's confidential communication about the weapon. The team learns Madeline is planning something much worse than just killing a bunch of people, she wants to wipe all of their memories - something that at least Jane can be expected to take quite personally.
With the secret out and teasers surround Madeline using Kurt's family for blackmailing purposes, what goes to be seen is if the team can get one step ahead of her or if they will succumb to her twisted mind games and hand themselves over. The fight just got more personal and not only for Tasha or Patterson. Jane's history and Kurt's daughter make for interesting fighting motives and even if they are clinging on to their own lives, something tells us they won't burn out with a fiery showdown. It is the final season after all!
'Blindspot' season 5 airs on Thursdays at 9 pm only on NBC.