Blindspot recap: Season 2, Episode 16

Blindspot really left us hanging a few weeks back when the show went off the air just as Nas was being attacked by a Sandstorm operative and choked by an assailant in the backseat of her car. Things weren’t looking good for the former NSA employee. “Evil Did I Dwell, Lewd Did I Live” makes the smart choice and immediately jumps right back into that car, showing Nas fighting off her attacker, smashing his head through a window, and ultimately shooting him in order to get away.

While Nas is fighting for her life, the rest of the team is having quite the drunken night. Shot after shot flows, all while Patterson insists it’s bad luck to not cheers before every single one. Jane is finally asked if that’s true, and when she says it isn’t, Patterson has the perfect response for writing her off: “Whatever, she has amnesia.” It’s good that everyone’s at a point where they can joke about traumatic, drug-induced memory loss.

After learning that Nas has been attacked, everyone meets back at the FBI headquarters. I’m not exactly sure how the team manages to go from drunk to super FBI agents in a matter of moments, but surely the government is hiding some sort of super recovery pill from the rest of us. Anyways, Nas not only comes away with her life — “you should have seen the other guy,” she wryly says — but also a USB drive that contains some sort of encryption. It’ll take Patterson a bit to crack it, so everyone goes their separate ways for a while.

For Zapata and Reade, that means hitting the gym — again, weren’t they just hammered? I am envious of their magical recovery. That’s all well and good, until they’re both chosen for a random drug test. That’s bad news for Reade, who’s still recovering from his coke and booze bender.

So, while Reade sweats his drug test and Zapata tells him to get some damn help for once, Patterson cracks the code contained on the USB. It gives her a login for an FTP site, and once she’s in, that triggers a call from Nas’ source. He says he knows where Shepherd will be that day. He wants $500,000 in exchange for that information, and Nas is meant to deliver the money to Trinity Plaza.

The team argues about whether or not the whole thing is a trap, but they don’t really have any other options, so off they go to Trinity Plaza. Once there, Nas gets a call and is told to go to the fifth floor of a hospital and put the money in a laundry bin. Jane and Weller keep an eye on the money and watch as a hospital employee sends the bag down the laundry chute. Knowing that the Sandstorm contact is in the basement waiting for that money and that the stairs are an inefficient way to catch a bad guy, Jane jumps down the chute and tracks down the source, who turns out to be quite familiar: Cade.

Cade has been Nas’ source all along, despite the whole “he tried to kill Jane” thing. Back at the headquarters and under arrest, he details his recruitment and how wanting to get back at the government that covered up his father’s death led him to Shepherd and Sandstorm. But once he saw that they were more terrorist cell than resistance group, he began leaking information to Nas. Now, he wants $500,000 and a get out of jail free card in exchange for Shepherd’s location.

NEXT: Smuggle bug

After Weller reluctantly agrees to the deal with Cade — “it’s our only option” is a common refrain on Blindspot — the former Sandstorm operative gives up the information. Shepherd will be meeting with a fixer who smuggles people into and out of the country. Odds are she’s looking to smuggle herself out before Phase 2 gets underway. They’re meeting at a copy store at 3 p.m., so the team gets going.

Somehow, some way, though, Shepherd gets their first. Despite the team showing up 30 minutes early, they find the fixer dead and Shepherd nowhere to be found. Weller nearly blows a gasket accusing Cade of tipping off Sandstorm, but as he points out, he’s been in custody all day long. So how could Shepherd have possibly known about the FBI being on to them?

That’s where things get real interesting. Remember when Patterson was kidnapped and tortured by Shepherd and Borden? Well, as it turns out, while Patterson was knocked unconscious, Shepherd used the opportunity to plant a bug in her tooth. Sandstorm’s been listening in this entire time, which explains how they’re always one step ahead of the FBI.

With Sandstorm unaware that Patterson has discovered the bug, she decides to use it to the FBI’s advantage. After writing a script that suggests the FBI is using Cade to trigger Roman’s memories and then setting up a safe house location for a transfer, the team heads to said safe house in the hopes that Sandstorm will follow in an attempt to kill Cade.

Sure enough, Borden overhears the call and doesn’t think twice about going after Cade. Shepherd is apparently on a barge in the middle of the ocean, so it’s just him and a number of heavily armed Sandstorm soldiers against the FBI. The plan works, at least in the beginning, as the Sandstorm soldiers are drawn out into the open while Patterson shoots Borden before chasing him into a barn.

Then everything goes off the rails. One Sandstorm soldier kills the rest and then kills himself; clearly they’re trained to die for the cause. Then, as if that weren’t enough, Borden blows himself up after offering up a ridiculous apology to Patterson. That brings the FBI back to square one, even if Weller seems to think that this is a sign that Sandstorm is vulnerable.

Based on the closing montage though, the only people who seem vulnerable are part of the FBI. Patterson is actively seeking out pain as a way to avoid her trauma, Zapata is seemingly about to tell Weller about Reade’s potential addiction problems after he barely passes the drug test, and just as Oliver and Jane make up, two masked men break into the apartment and shoot them with tranquilizers. So much for the FBI being closer than ever to catching Sandstorm.

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