Blindspot: The Complete Second Season - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Blindspot: The Complete Second Season

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
Last year Blindspot was one of those shows that I went into completely….dare I say it?...blind. It seemed like an interesting enough show from the initial trailers and I was curious to see how it was. Not surprisingly I ended up enjoy the tar out of season one and have been eagerly been waiting for season 2 to drop so that I could see what happened after the stunning events that market the end of the first season. Season 2 picks up roughly 3 months after season 1 finished and brings us right back into the world of Jane Doe, and her mysterious tattoos. The show has to use a variety of techniques to bring back the believability of Jane being back on the team and in the field again, some of which REALLY do have you raising an eyebrow, but show is overall a solid performer and continues to be so despite the few quibbles I have with its execution.

Last time we left the world of Blindspot Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander) had been outed by the FBI as a double agent, and Oscar had murdered Assistant Director Mayfield in cold blood. Not only that, Jane had been taken by the CIA and left to rot in a hole while Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) has taken over as Assistant Director of the FBI. Well, fast forward 3 months and we find out that Jane has been tortured and finally escaped from her CIA captors, only to be picked up by Weller and his team in an effort to bring her in. What saves her is once again the tattoos and knowledge that Jane brings ABOUT the people she was working for. Last season we got clues and glimpses of a shadowy past for the tattooed girl, but now it’s finally confirmed. NSA “section zero” agent Nas Kamal (Archie Panjabi) has given them a lead. This group that Jane has apparently had ties to is code named “Sandstorm” and is not only a terrorist group, but an enormous menace to the entire nation as they are a group of radicalized “patriots” who believe that the only way to cure the nation is to bring it back to square one. Meaning burn it down to rebuild.

That means Jane is forced back onto the team (something which both the FBI AND Jane are a little leery of) in an effort track down and wipe out Sandstorm. That means using Jane as a reverse double agent to re-infiltrate her old group and convince them that she’s remembering her “old” self before the memory wipe and all on board. The monkey wrench in the plan comes from Roman (Luke Mitchell), one of Sandstorm’s agents who ends up being Jane’s biological brother. Jane has every intention of bringing the terrorist organization down, but she also has to find a way to get her brother out of the very organization that she once brought him in on. Especially when he happens to be the right hand man for the orchestrator of this entire operation.

Season 2 of Blindspot is NEARLY as good as the first season, but it does have a few caveats. The last time we left the show it really shook things up and changed character relationships, but the show doesn’t seem to have wanted to “evolve” with those changes. Instead it does the typical TV show method of using a few episodes at the beginning to smooth over all the problems that happened in the last season, effectively bringing everything back to the typical norm with Jane and Weller working together on the tattoo mysteries. This time it’s just a bit more clear (almost suspiciously so with Nas pretty much explaining WHO their adversary is in the first episode) who the nemesis is. The show manages to mix it up with some character involvement, bringing Agent Zapata (Audrey Esparza) and Edgar Reade (Rob Brown), as well as turning one of the fan favorites into a villain (which was a nice change up I might add). However, so many things stay the same that I had to downgrade this season JUST a little bit. Turning Roman with the Zip medication felt a little cliched, and the eventual ending with his character was a bit too obvious.

Still, the show lives and dies on the characters. The suspension of disbelief with the complexity of the tattoos and the near omniscient foresight from Sandstorm is a little eye rolling, but the characters really make a police procedural. Jane and Well mesh well together and create a strong base for the show, but the side characters actually had a lot more to do with this season. Patterson (Ashley Johnson) is adorkably cute as always, and even Zapata and Reade get to have fleshed out arcs instead of being the constantly suspicious wallflowers before. While I sometimes wondered if he was over used, Ennis Esmer as “Rich Dotcom” is one of the best parts of the show. The lunatic super villain hacker (and flamingly funny) extraordinaire manages to bring a smile to my face whenever he’s on screen. He just rolls around in the big mud puddle that is his character and just has so much fun. It adds some levity and charm to the show that sometimes gets lost in the mire of super serious FBI work.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The nice thing about modern televsion shows (or TV shows in general) is the fact that if you’ve seen one season of the show, you know exactly what you’re going to experience in the next season. Much like season one of Blindspot season 2 was shot on Arri Alexa cameras and maintains a very healthy and very strong looking encode that really is almost exemplary. The FBI field office is graded in your typical teal overtones, with white highlights and steel gray interiors that mimic the sterility of a federal building perfectly. The outside is where the show lights up, with richly saturated colors and some of the locals that Jane and Weller visit are lusciously green and fertile (especially when Shepherd takes Jane back to some southern state for their secret base). Blacks are deep and inky, but there are elements of crush and some mild dithering in those dark shots. Fine details es exceptional, from Jane’s tatoo’s, to the crooked teeth of Weller’s when he smiles. Basically, Blindspot is the epitome of modern television. Crisp, clean and well detailed.







Audio:

As it did with season one, season 2 of Blindspot keeps up the good work with a rip roaring 5.1 DTS-HD MA track that really hits all the aggressive marks. The opening theme song is heavy with LFE and the show really does like to utilize a lot of bassy moments throughout the shot, never really dialing it down until after the credits roll. Audio cues and directional shifts are varied and widely dispersed, ranging from mild voices and ambient rumblings of the FBI field office, down to the whiz and plinking of bullets bouncing around during a fire fight. The heavy LFE keeps things excited and full, but the surrounds really do liven up the place in ways many TV shows only dream of. Vocals are crisp and clean, locked up front like they should be, and the mains are full of just as many tones as the surrounds. Simply put, Blindspot features a hard hitting audio track that really is a delight for TV audiences.
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Extras:

• 7 all new Featurettes
- Breaking the Season
- Premiere Revaltions
- Family Secrets
- Zero Division
- Sandstorm
- My Crazy Comic-Con Experience
- Blindspot: 2016 Comic-con Panel
• Bound an Gag Reel
• Unaired Scenes

Final Score: ​

Blindspot continues on quite impressively from the big stunning finale of Season 1, and while it does require more suspension of disbelief than the prior season, is still quite a bit of fun. The sci-fi elements that require said suspension constantly battle the more grounded police serial nature of the show, and a few twists with Roman had me rolling my eyes, but other than those small problems I really have had a lot of fun with the show. it’s not overly intelligent, but like The Blacklist it lives and dies on how you relate to the characters. There’s no James Spader here, but the show makes up for it by having a diverse cast of characters that you truly enjoy being around. Definitely recommended.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Sullivan Stapleton, Jaimie Alexander, Rob Brown
Created by: Martin Gero
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Studio: Warner
Rated: NR
Runtime: 945 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: Own it on Digital Now, Blu-ray & DVD 8/8/17

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Recomended

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will catch this as a rental.