On the surface—and at the beginning—Elizabeth Keen of “The Blacklist” appears to be a refreshing female character. Played by Megan Boone, Keen is a special agent with the FBI, happily married and new to her job as an FBI profiler. She is upfront and professional, emotional and contained, until her life turns upside down when a notorious criminal, Raymond Reddington, turns himself into the FBI with one request: he only speaks through Elizabeth Keen.
The connection between Keen and Reddington is explored as the Reddington works with the FBI to help them capture high-level targets. The dynamic between them is at the center of the show’s plot, the larger arc of an episodic Network show. I love shows about cops, government agencies, and conspiracies. I love black ops and guns from the safety of my bed. “The Blacklist” is the perfect show for me and I’ve watched two seasons in less time than I’d like to admit. But the more I watched, the more I had trouble stomaching the portrayal of Elizabeth Keen as she grows more erratic and one dimensional.
Keen’s distress is reasonable; with the entrance of Reddington into her life, almost everything she held to be true comes crashing down. Her parents died when she was very young and Reddington fulfills a complicated father figure role. The viewer’s feelings about Reddington are supposed to be vague and confused, but the control he exhibits over Keen’s life and emotional state is disconcerting. The audience is only briefly introduced to Keen before Reddington comes into her life, and she quickly devolves into his puppet by the end of the first episode. Again, her life totally falls apart and I don’t blame her for losing her marbles a little bit. It’s the troubling presentation of her vulnerability as a continuously bleeding wound that only this overlord, questionable protector of an older man can heal.
There are no wise women, only untrustworthy and duplicitous men who swear that they love her and hold all the answers to her questions. Elizabeth Keen turns into another tired female character who is trying to be independent, but cannot save herself no matter how hard she tries. She is frustrating and alarming to me because her potential as a capable FBI agent battling forces of conspiracy is completely undone and unexplored by her plot line. In order to keep the mystery alive, the writers seem to have used Keen’s unraveling mental state as a playground. The troubles and misfortunes that plague her co-workers in no way destabilize them the way Keen never regains her equilibrium.
“The Blacklist” is supremely entertaining. There are gunfights and devilish criminals, plus James Spader as Raymond Reddington is charismatic and fascinating. However, there are several facts that cannot be avoided. There are only two prominent female characters and, for the first season, only one. In most of the advertisements for the show, Keen is shown behind Reddington and looks more like a hired gun than anything else. In truth, that’s Reddington’s game; he uses the FBI to get other criminals that interfere with his business out of the game. Keen and her coworkers are hired guns. However, the ease with which he manipulates the FBI and dangles tantalizing bits of information and affection over Keen to keep her invested in him is more than just a questionable plot device: Elizabeth Keen slowly becomes more and more singularly focused and becomes a caricature of a woman going through a crisis. Is this show part of the bastion of media based patriarchy? Maybe? I guess so? For me, it’s just another example of women being written into emotional irrationality and simplicity.