How The Blacklist Brought Me Back to the Dark Side

Did you ever get so hooked on a TV show that you almost needed a fix like a heroin addict? I’m right there in the crack house with The Blacklist.

I’ve always loved a good mystery, but I honestly thought my murder-for-hire days were behind me.

My love affair with a good crime story started with my slightly OCD-collection of Nancy Drew mysteries as a young girl, where I kept them lined up on my bookshelf in numerical order. (I know, my childhood just screams “cool kid,” doesn’t it?)

My passion for crime progressed to watching Starsky & Hutch—when I couldn’t get enough of both the blond and the brown-haired super-sleuths and their bitchin’ red Ford Gran Torino with the cool white stripe. Don’t even get me started on that jive-talkin’ Huggy Bear.

Along the way, I watched both the comical cop/detective shows (Get Smart, Barney Miller, Moonlighting) and the serious, kick-ass dramas (Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, NYPD Blue). I loved how they tested my deductive reasoning and observations skills, sometimes allowing me to solve the crime before the TV characters did.

Throw in every blockbuster crime-fighting, buddy-cop movie (from 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon to The Other Guys, 21 Jump Street and The Heat), and you had me at, “Book ‘em, Danno.” Plus, Channing Tatum.

But lately, this genre bordered on a little too dark for me. From Breaking Bad to Narcos, I’d just about had my fill of drug-dealing, murdering, back-stabbing, acid-bathing, dismembering, mob-affiliated, kill-your-own-mother-to-save-your-ass “entertainment.”

After decades of watching every type of cop/detective TV show, movie, documentary and exposé, I was getting burnt-out on murder, mystery and mayhem.

And, with two impressionable kids in the house, I wondered what kind of example we were setting for our kids over the years. (I say “we” because my husband Kevin often convinced me to watch movies like Blow instead of The Notebook.) Although both my boys are now teens, when they were growing up, they couldn’t help but overhear our surround sound blaring “I’m gonna kill your traitor ass, motha-f*cker!”

So, I started leaning more toward feel-good/laugh-out-loud movies and TV shows to keep the positivity flowing in our family. We basked in films like Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Goonies and bonded over TV shows like Modern Family, Freaks and Geeks and Friends.

I felt like a renewed woman, almost a saint, for bringing the good back into our home, filled (mostly) with family values, relatable plot lines and problems that could be solved in 30 minutes or less.

I thought I’d said good-bye forever to detective shows and police dramas.

But hello, Blacklist.

For the past few years, I’ve heard friends raving about this NBC cop drama, with each episode climactically building on the next in a web of lies and spies. Every week, my friend Gina would post something on Facebook, like, “OH MY GOD! Can you BELIEVE what just happened on Blacklist last night?” But, I brushed it off, not wanting to jump on the pop culture bandwagon too soon for fear that I’d love the show and it would get cancelled (like 2014’s ill-fated Red Band Society).

And then one fateful Friday night, Kevin and I checked out the first episode on Netflix and my full-blown addiction kicked in with a euphoric rush. We were hooked in the first five minutes as we watched all hell break loose for FBI profiler Elizabeth Keen on her first day on the job. Ex-government-agent-turned-scoundrel-fugitive Raymond Reddington turns himself in to the FBI, promising to deliver all his underground secrets—but only if he deals directly with Keen.

Damn James Spader for reeling me in with his quirky mannerisms, oddball personality and, dare I say it, charmingly killer personality. It almost makes me overlook the fact that he’s a freakin’ cold-blooded, global assassin on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List.

The Blacklist almost requires a built-in 12-step program, it’s that addicting. Rather than a TV show, it feels like a high-quality, multi-million-dollar-budget movie, with intricate plot lines that I absolutely cannot follow after two glasses of wine; realistic-looking, exotic locales (even if, in reality, they’re filmed in Detroit or maybe the Jersey shoreline) and a superb cast of characters.

And I’m pissed off at myself for getting sucked back in. But, damn, I just can’t resist this.

{SPOILER ALERT}

After binge-watching two seasons of The Blacklist on Netflix, I’m left hanging. In the Season 2 cliffhanger, Agent Elizabeth Keen just went rogue by gunning down bad-to-the-bone Attorney General Tom Connolly, who (among other misdeeds) faked medical test results to make FBI Director Harold Cooper think he was dying from cancer. Plus, when Lizzie killed Connolly, it unlocked her long-repressed childhood memory that she shot and killed her own father. HOLY HELL!

I feel like a junkie on a street corner looking for a fix. I swear to God, if I saw a man in a trench coat flash me a screenshot of Raymond Reddington in the Season 3 premiere, I’d be cashing in my boys’ college funds to see just a little bit more. “C’mon man, give me one more hit,” I’d whisper to my dealer.

Now, like a druggie on an out-of-control binge, I’m frantically searching for a new supplier so I can get up to speed on Season 3. I’m scouring the Internet checking out NBC.com, Netflix, Amazon Prime and now, the underbelly of TV addictions, Hulu. I swear, I promise to stop. Just. One. More. Episode.

Damn you, James Spader.