- The task force tracks a scientist who abducts disabled patients to conduct experiments on immortality. Now back in Washington, DC, Tom scrambles to save himself from new enemies.
- "The Blacklist" - "The Longevity Initiative" - March 26, 2015
We open on a man tapping on a aquarium full of jellyfish. Another man is complaining to him that the work they are doing-- "the third one this month"-- will soon be drawing unwanted attention. The complaining man is mad about extra work he is asking to be done for some "experiments." The first man says he is being paid well but if he can't do it they can find someone else. Complaining man stops complaining.
Turns out he had a right to complain, however. Because we cut to complaining man being pulled over in his refrigerated produce truck by the police. The cop uncovers something very upsetting under a sheet and complaining man shoots the cop dead and takes off in the cop car just as other police arrive.
The title card tells us we are after "The Longevity Initiative - No. 97."
The next morning Charlene Cooper wakes up to find her husband downstairs without his cane. It turns out he didn't need it. The experimental drug trial is working, his tumor is shrinking and he is feeling better. They hug.
Tom calls Liz and tells her he's on the run from the gangsters in Dresden. Just then his old buddy, the one who Red visited, pulls up. He wishes Liz a happy birthday and gets in the car.
Red arrives in Liz's office with a bottle of wine made from grapes picked by her and her adoptive dad Sam harvested from a vine over their garden fence. He also brought her a really good bottle since he knows that wine will be undrinkable. He wishes her a happy birthday and says she would've made Sam proud. She laments turning 31.
Red moves on to explaining The Longevity Initiiative. It's an experimental company looking into extending human life indefintely and it is bankrolled by a tech billionaire named Roger Hobbs. Red draws a line between the killed cop and the Longevity Initiative. What the cop saw was mutilated bodies that were discards from the Longevity Initiative human trial phase.
Liz and Ressler turn up at Hobbs' home. He claims no knowledge of the bodies and he can't believe one of his scientists was responsible and he has nothing to hide.
Liz and Ressler go to the ME's office and he explains that all the bodies were experimented on. The bodies all had massive frontal lobe damage but that wasn't the cause of death. They all had traumatic brain injuries to begin with when they went missing from long term care facilities. The ME has figured out that the experiments involved introducing jellyfish DNA into the brains to help regenerate function. Apparently, there is a specific type that never dies and, theoretically, if the Longevity Initiative were to figure out the right combination of matter to inject into people they would also be immortal. Freaky!
The Complaining Man who got away from the cops, calls his boss and says he's making a run for it since he killed a cop and the boss should too. The boss, who is the doctor doing the experiments, says he can't and is with a patient. He goes to a woman in a bed, the top of her head has been removed. She is catatonic. He repeatedly asks her to tell him her name. She seems to want to say something and then she starts to seize and flatlines.
Smiling Tom Connolly pays Cooper a visit. Cooper updates him on his medical progress and thanks him for his help getting into the trial. Connolly tells Cooper to treat Hobbs with kid gloves. Cooper bristles but Connolly says he should do what he thinks he's right but is insistent that he be careful since his big bankroller of defense contracts.
Liz and Ressler go to the long term care facility where one of the victims was kidnapped. Liz tries to talk to a patient. He is uncommunicative other than giving her a king face card from the hand of solitaire he's playing. She notices a visitor from Gold Crown Pharmaceuticals and ties it to the card the patient gave her.
Turns out Complaining Man worked for Gold Crown Pharma and his name was Lloyd Monroe. They discover he bought a bus ticket to Buffalo and they tell him to stop the bus. In the car ride, Ressler asks about Tom. She says she doesn't know where he is.
Right now he's about to get killed by the man who made him, the man who raised him, in the back of his limousine. The handler says Liz, and his love for her, has cost him his life. But before he can pull the trigger there car is fired upon by the German gangsters who abduct them both.
Liz and Ressler interrogate Lloyd Monroe says he doesn't know anything and then in short order-- after being told he is eligible for the death penalty-- he gives up his boss. His name is Dr. Julian Powell. He is the man doing the experiments. As a drug rep Lloyd abducted patients who fit the brain profiles. They roust the lab and this is when the M.E. explains the whole thing about the jellyfish.
They look into the doctor and figure out, pretty quickly, that he was probably on Hobbs' payroll doing these so Cooper says to bring him in. On their way Ressler asks what Liz is doing for her birthday. She says she's just getting some Chinese with friends.
We cut to Hobbs reading Powell the riot act. Powell says he's close to a breakthrough. Hobbs says he has jeopardized the entire mission and says he needs to come in. Julian says this is bigger than any of them. When he hangs up we see Red and Dembe are at Hobbs' place. After a long parry back and forth about playing god and immortality, Hobbs essentially asks Red to kill Powell and hands him a file. Red says he'll see what he can do. This happens just as Liz and Ressler arrive so Red and Dembe hotfoot it out of there.
Meanwhile, the German gangsters are torturing information out Tom and his handler. They both hold fast, even when they carve a very deep gash in Tom's leg with a big knife. Tom finally gives up a name--Sarah Hastings-- in exchange for them leaving Liz out of it. He notes she's an FBI agent and they all agree they don't want to tangle with that can of worms. The handler begs him not to tell and says if he sells him out he will hunt "Jacob" down and kill him. But he does, and, once again, he's a free, albeit bloody, banged up, and newly aerated man.
Cooper gets an upsetting call from the doctor running the clinical trial telling him that they are lowering the age of the test group and Harold might be cut from it. It's not for sure yet and he feels terrible and he will let him know. Ouch, just as he was making progress!
Liz and Ressler interrogate Hobbs but get nothing. Cooper, hearing Connolly in his head, says they don't have enough to hold him and to cut him loose until they do.
So it turns out that Julian Powell has another plan. He goes to see a woman in a long term care facility. Everyone thinks it's his next test subject but, as it turns out, it's his fiancee. They were in a terrible car accident, he fell asleep when they were driving six weeks before their wedding. She has a traumatic brain injury. He was using Hobbs' vast fortune in hopes of curing her. He didn't give a damn about immortality and, as it turns out, he failed on both accounts and falsified his research to keep the money coming in until he could save his fiancee. We learn all of this as Powell is trying to kidnap his fiancee from the long term care facility and runs into Red and Dembe. They speed off with the doctor just as Liz and Ressler bust through the door, not before they see who has him. Powell takes Red to his home, where he lived with his fiancee and did most of his research and tells him his whole sad tale. Red asks him if whatever he is working on could restore a memory to a woman who had a memory deliberately taken from her as a child. Liz, of course. Powell says no. After he finishes telling his tale, Powell takes a gun from the drawer and shoots himself in the head right in front of Red and Dembe.
So Red is able to go back to Hobbs and say the job is done. Liz, however, is pissed and knows Red used the FBI to flush Powell out and that even if Red didn't kill Powell himself, his death did benefit Red: Red agrees with all of this and Hobbs now owes Red a favor. Red says it will be good for all of them for Hobbs to owe them a favor.
Connolly comes to see Cooper again and is glad things "worked out" with Roger Hobbs and wants to clear the air about their earlier conversation and doesn't want anything to come between them. Cooper tells him about the clinical trial and if he knows anything. Connolly wonders how he would know anything about that but says that he will make a call and take care of it.
Red looks through old photos of Liz's past birthdays.
Tom's handler apparently also escaped the German gangsters because he's on the phone saying he doesn't care what expense the person has to go to, he wants Jacob Phelps found.
We cut to Tom burning all his old passports.
Liz is doing paperwork late in her office when Ressler arrives. She says she didn't feel like going out and complains that she has nothing to show for it. She thought she would be a prestigious profiler with a loving partner and maybe a family. She says she doesn't even know who she is, if this is her birthday, if this is even her name. She calls herself a puppet and doesn't know what she has to celebrate. He, however, has a plan. He called the restaurant she was supposed to be at in order to send her a drink and heard she had no reservation so, he got take out from the restaurant to help her celebrate her birthday. She pulls out her birthday wine from Red. They eat and laugh.
The laughs end, however, when Liz returns home and Tom is in her house. He says he had nowhere else to go.
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