The first season introduces Raymond Reddington, Elizabeth "Liz" Keen and the members of the Task Force, a multiagency law enforcement working group dedicated to hunting down Reddington. Reddington surrenders to the FBI and offers to identify and help capture the criminals he has worked with, whom he calls "The Blacklist," but only if he is allowed to work with Liz Keen, a rookie profiler at the FBI. He refuses to explain why Liz must be involved. The Reddington Task Force, led by Assistant DirectorHarold Cooper, becomes the lead law enforcement agency responsible for capturing or killing the members of the Blacklist at Reddington's behest, which causes conflicts particularly for Special Agent Donald Ressler, who was originally tasked with capturing Reddington. This is the only season for Meera Malik, a CIA officer and member of the Task Force, who is killed in the season finale. The season also introduces antagonist Milos Kirchoff, AKA Berlin, a former Russian KGB officer with a longstanding hatred of Reddington. A major subplot for the season is Elizabeth Keen's discovery that her husband Tom Keen, a schoolteacher to all appearances, is actually a covert operative with an unknown agenda and Liz's efforts to discover who he actually is and who sent him. A second subplot involves the Cabal, a shadowy multinational group that holds positions of influence in government and business, and their interest in Reddington's activities. The Cabal is usually represented by Alan Fitch, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, who tries to maintain a civil relationship with Reddington despite the Cabal's misgivings while trying to determine what Reddington actually knows.
Emily Tremaine as Audrey Bidwell, Ressler's former fiancée.
Peter Stormare as Milos Kirchoff, AKA "Berlin", a former member of the KGB and an escaped convict.
Episodes
Reception
The first season of The Blacklist received strong reviews from television critics. The Blacklist has a Metacritic score of 74 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 85% approval rating based on 52 reviews, with an average score of 7.18/10. The consensus reads, "James Spader is riveting as a criminal-turned-informant, and his presence goes a long way toward making this twisty but occasionally implausible crime procedural compelling". David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle said about the pilot, "You think you know this situation and how it will turn out, but there are surprising, yet entirely credible, twists throughout Monday's episode." Robert Bianco of USA Today said, "The Blacklist is a solid weekly crime show built around a genuine TV star. That's the kind of series the networks have to be able to pull off to survive. And with Spader in command, odds are NBC will." Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter praised both Spader's performance and the procedural elements of the show, writing, "There's an overarching element to the premise as well that makes it intriguing without making it overly complicated."
