#the blacklist (red/liz - ressler/samar - levi/samar) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

takadasaiko · 8 years ago

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smthn that i really love about redemption over the b/lacklist, is the positive representation of their characters, and was wondering what your two cents were. not to start any trouble - just curious. in the more recent b/lacklist episodes, i felt like they've treated their few POC with less and less respect, (Red treating Dembe less like a friend, more as a driver, and plot twist! he's a new big bad, Samar betraying the team for an old fling, etc) and their female representation has suffered 1/2

2/2 from the start. Samar hardly has a part in the show anymore, and she's the only other female besides Liz. But I like how in Redemption, even if Halycon's missions are not the main focus of the show, the team, albeit Tom and Scottie, are all POC, with well rounded characterization and plots, even in these few episodes. And the lack of female characters vs male counterparts is more than made up for. Nez is consistently better than Solomon and Tom put together, and I love it. What do you think?

I love how Redemption has portrayed the characters so far, but I don’t feel like the main show has fallen off of their portrayal either. I feel like some shows feel like they have to meet some sort of quota and it comes across as stiff and purposeful, but the Blacklist has always felt very natural to me. Men, women, people of all backgrounds and nationalities and races... it’s a good mix, and, to me, it doesn’t feel like they’re doing it just to make sure they’re being PC about things. The writers and the actors have worked together to build incredibly layered characters. They’re people with complexities and stories to tell.

Just to go through the specific instances that you mentioned:

I feel like Red has always done that with Dembe. He (Red) clamps down and shuts people out when he feels out of control, and he knows that Dembe disprove of Kate’s ‘death’, but even so I don’t feel like Red has acted out of character with him at all. And when they’re out, it’s always very professional between them. And I would put money down that Dembe is not the new big bad. In the interview that @alyblacklist posted the other day [you can read that here], they never said that Dembe is the big bad, just that he takes someone from the task force. As we’ve seen in the Blacklist, there can be any number of reasons for that. Kidnapping is not always a sign that the person is in any actual danger from their kidnapper. I have faith that Dembe was set up and that he’s about to clear his name and be the big hero for the end of S4.

For Samar... I never saw that as ‘betraying her team for an old fling.’ She’s on loan from Mossad. Technically, her loyalties are to both, and while I get Cooper telling her to pick a side, I also get why she would remain loyal to her old Mossad team and to Levi. It’s not just about an old fling. We still don’t know everything that went into her deciding to work for Mossad. I imagine those loyalties run pretty deep. Even so, she showed up for work at the Post Office the next day. That seems to say that she picked her ‘side’, and it was her team with the FBI. All of that drama, while it’s ripe for deeper background on her, was also used to help tee up the Saram arc that they’re currently working on. There have to be stressers in there to build the tension for them. And she’s had a fairly big presence this season. There are certain episodes that she’s taken a back seat in, but that happens with all the characters, even Liz and Red sometimes.

I’m not sure why you say that the female representation has suffered from the start. The Blacklist (and now Redemption as well) has continuously provided layered and badass ladies week after week. Some are good, some are bad, and sometimes we’re not quite sure where they land on the spectrum *coughScottiecough* I know that there has been plenty of debate in the fandom over Liz and if she’s strong or not, but I think she’s amazing. Think about everything she’s been through and how few answers she has. Her entire life has been turned upside down, and just when she thinks she had a handle on it, it’s spun out of control again with half a dozen other truths that she thought she knew being tossed out the window. They also continue to give us badass lady villains as well. As a woman, I’ve certainly never felt slighted by the show.

Comparing the two, I think we need to look at a couple of things:

The first is the difference in the teams. They’re actually pretty similar. For the Post Office you have 3 men (Cooper, Ressler, and Aram) and 2 women (Liz and Samar) on the team, for a total of 5 people on the main Task Force team. In Redemption you have 2 women (Scottie and Nez) and 3 men (Tom, Dumont, and Matias). The leadership genders are swapped, but same number of males and females on the teams. You have 3 POC on either team (Cooper, Aram, and Samar for the FBI. Nez, Dumont, and Matias for Halcyon). So, really, if we’re looking at those two statistics, the teams are pretty even.

The second thing that I feel like we need to take into consideration is the amount of time we’ve spent. The Blacklist is 2/3 the way through its fourth season. That’s 82 episodes in. We’ve had 3 episodes of Redemption so far. If you want to compare what the characters have been through, we don’t really have enough data to do that between the shows.

This was a really interesting ask to tackle, because I really hadn’t stopped to look at numbers on this. The Blacklist and Redemption as well handle diversity very well. They’ve built characters, not quotas to meet, and that’s the way it should be in my opinion.

Just a few of my thoughts on the subject. Thanks for the ask :)

#the blacklist #the blacklist redemption #my two cents #opinions #Anonymous

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