The Mombasa Cartel

"The Mombasa Cartel" is the sixth episode of the second season of the USAer crime drama The Blacklist. The episode premiered in the United States on NBC on October 27, 2014.

Plot

In the mid-1980s, a young African boy witnesses his family get massacred by a group of human traffickers before getting kidnapped by the same group in Sierra Leone. In the present day, one of the human traffickers gets kidnapped and sedated. His skinned body is stranded at a remote location in Kamchatka, Russia. Reddington identifies the group of human traffickers as the Mombasa Cartel, responsible for a large number of poachings of endangered wildlife. After getting a lead from a technology-based businessman, the Task Force arrests one of the Mombasa Cartel's business partners for further information to no avail. When attempted surveillance on the business partner has failed, a drug-addicted Ressler heads to a remote cabin in Anchorage, Alaska after getting a lead from the Task Force, only for him to be held prisoner by a small family responsible for kidnapping and preserving the bodies of the Mombasa Cartel members. While Liz and Samar lead a Hostage Rescue Team to rescue Ressler and apprehend the suspects, Reddington confronts the mastermind, Geoff Perl (Peter Fonda), in a remote hotel. Reddington reveals that the young boy was Dembe and recovers the full list of the Mombasa Cartel members before killing the mastermind. During the aftermath, Reddington makes an interaction with Jennifer, and it is revealed that Liz has held Tom prisoner in a remote cell for an undisclosed amount of time.

Reception

Ratings

"The Mombasa Cartel" premiered on NBC on October 27, 2014 in the 10–11 p.m. time slot.^[1] The episode garnered a 2.5/7 Nielsen rating with 9.57 million viewers, making it the highest-rated show in its timeslot^[2] and the sixteenth highest-rated television show of the week.^[3]

Reviews

Jason Evans of The Wall Street Journal gave a mixed review of the episode, stating: "The big reveal behind the door wasn’t a surprise to most of us, but it was still fun to finally see Lizzie’s secret. I am sorta disappointed that the show didn’t do more with Peter Fonda as Jeff Pearl. It feels like they could have gotten just about anyone to play that role."^[4]

Jodi Walker of Entertainment Weekly gave a positive review of the episode, noting that "the creep factor was high".^[5]She went on to say: "As a Very Special Halloween Episode of The Blacklist, “The Mombasa Cartel” worked quite well."^[5]

References