Monarch Douglas Bank

"Monarch Douglas Bank" is the second episode of the second season of the American crime drama The Blacklist. The episode premiered in the United States on NBC on September 29, 2014.

Plot

The FBI is alerted to a robbery at the Monarch Douglas Bank in Warsaw, Poland, since its U.S. headquarters are under FBI jurisdiction. Although nothing seems to have been stolen, the FBI believes the records of criminal transactions must have been the robbers' target, though upon arrival they soon discover it was the kidnapping of employee Kaja Tomczak. Liz and Ressler locate Kaja, who reveals that all of the bank's transaction records are stored in her head via her photographic memory. A tactical team is sent out after them by the bank, whose leader works with Berlin, and after escaping, hear something about a bank account number from Kaja. Red arrives and dispatches Kaja to his plane, now in possession of Berlin's money. Meeting Berlin for the first time at a pier, Red blackmails him with his money in exchange for the safe return of Naomi. Liz later learns that Kaja has frozen the escrow accounts in which Berlin's money is parked, whose codes Red trades with Berlin for Naomi during a meeting he refuses to call off. The next day, Cooper meets Samar in a park to review her file on Reddington, facilitating her recruitment into the task force.

Reception

Ratings

"Monarch Douglas Bank" premiered on NBC on September 29, 2014 in the 10–11 p.m. time slot.^[1] The episode garnered a 2.8/8 Nielsen rating with 10.51 million viewers, making it the second most-watched show in its time slot behind the season premiere of ABC's Castle, which collected 10.75 million viewers.^[2] It was also the thirteenth highest-rated show of the week.^[3]

Reviews

Jodi Walker of Entertainment Weekly gave a positive review of the episode, stating: "So it’s pretty impressive that the followup to last week’s Blacklister-of-the-week premiere manages to pile on the narrative question marks, give some definitive movement to the Berlin storyline, catch a whole heap of criminals, and put Peter Stormare, and his hook, and James Spader, and his hat on one park bench."^[4]

Rebecca Jane Stokes of Den of Geek gave the episode four out of five stars, stating: "The Blacklist has The Spader Factor working in its favor, something it uses with great alacrity when casting not just the man himself, but with its featured guest stars. Casting Peter Stormare as Berlin, Red’s big bad wife abducting enemy in extremes is just the perfect amount of strange."^[5]

References