Agent Elizabeth Keen often gets a lot of hate from “Blacklist” fans. But, why?Now, I’ve talked on the podcast about how continually annoyed I am with how The Blacklist’s showrunners have written Liz’s character, especially in more recent season. But, I tried to keep my frustration and annoyance directed more so at the writers/showrunners and less on the character herself or the actress Megan Boone.
However, after I saw episode 6.10 “The Cryptobanker,” I definitely hit the point where — even temporarily — I started to hate Liz in and of herself. So, I started writing this post, which I’ve added to and edited over the past few weeks; and while my feelings about the character have evolved again after subsequent episodes in Season 6, I still stand by my original point.
Now, I follow The Blacklist on Facebook, and almost every single time there’s a new post, the top-voted comments are always praising Spader/Red and hating on Liz. I’ve seen people say she’s annoying, that they didn’t like the early Season 6 side-plot where she teamed up with her half-sister Jennifer, that they hoped the show would kill her off for real soon, etc.
I always thought that most of the comments were a little overblown (especially the ones about wanting her off the show). But, it really made me wonder why so many people hate — and I mean HATE — Liz so much.
While I admit that her character is starting to really get on my nerves, I’m going to try to put my personal feelings aside and tackle this objectively. I want to really look at what reasons within the show, its writing, its format, etc., Liz receives so much more hate — vastly more than any other character on this show. As I said, Red/Spader is always highly praised along with Dembe, and I rarely if ever see comments complaining about Samar, Aram, Cooper and Ressler. I would estimate that 95 percent of complaints about any one character are directed at Liz.
A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY
Now, I will theorize — and keep in mind that this is only a theory — that part of the reason for this hatred toward Liz has to do with some male fans being misogynistic/sexist and some female fans’ annoyance at what a crappy avatar Liz makes for. (I’m talking about straight viewers, FYI.)
With regard to male fans, I think they look at Liz — who at times has been terse, mean-spirited and vindictive — and see her as a giant bitch. After all, that was the whole idea that Liz herself sets up in the pilot. She is not who her male colleagues expect her to be. She doesn’t play into the traditional feminine role of simpering, smiling and content to sit on the sidelines and let the men sort things out. (And, I’m really generalizing here.) So, I think it’s a fair assumption that some male fans have the same sentiments about Liz that her colleagues canonically have too.
As for the female fans, I think Liz might come off as a poor avatar. When you’re plunged into a fictional universe, usually there’s a character who’s plunged into the story along with you, and you learn as they do, to the point where you start to project yourself onto them. Think Neo in “The Matrix” or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. It’s every person’s fantasy to discover some great power within, harness it to defeat the bad guy and win the heart of the beautiful woman/handsome man in the process.
Liz was clearly meant to be our avatar into this universe. We were brought into the world along with her, saw her learn about Red, begin the Task Force, and plunge into this world of the FBI and the Blacklist.
Now, I imagine that for older women, especially, the fantasy is to be the kind of gal that a guy like James Spader would absolutely devote himself to. And that’s exactly how Red treats Liz — Like a woman he would do anything for. However, unlike many viewers, Liz has often been ungrateful for Red’s devotion and continual sacrifices for her benefit. Instead of seeing him as a savior and white knight, she frequently sees him as a nuisance and a terror in her life. I personally think she’s often justified in that, but I’d guess that 80 percent of the current audience is watching it simply for Spader’s performance alone. So, when the favorite actor’s character is not appreciated and is continually hated on by his co-lead character, it makes for uncompelling television from a “I want to project myself onto this character” kind of way.
But, with the theoretical discussion out of the way, let’s examine some more concrete reasons as to why people hate Liz.
LIZ OFTEN HAS LITTLE CONVICTION WHEN IT COMES TO HER FEELINGS AND DESIRES.
This is what I’ve often described as the “Liz loves Red, Liz hates Red, Liz forgives Red” song-and-dance routine. But, there’s much more to it than simply Liz’s relationship with Red.
Liz was first introduced to us as a woman who wanted to start a family, and yet she thought about giving up her baby for adoption and then later gave Agnes away to her mother-in-law so she could spend more time on her revenge plans. The entire pilot goes out of its way to show Liz struggling with the demands of being an FBI agent and a prospective parent, and drives home the whole “Mommy Liz” vibe with the admiral’s daughter.
Yet, when she finds out she’s pregnant, she hesitates and thinks about giving it up for adoption. Then, when she has Agnes, she agrees to Kaplan’s plan to fake her death so she and Tom and Agnes can be happy and safe away from his world. And, later when Agnes gets kidnapped, she frets and worries about her constantly.
But, the minute she wakes up after being in a coma, she’s totally cool with pawning Agnes off to someone she’s never really met. Cool.
I realize there are mitigating circumstances, but this is a woman who made all her loved ones — Red, Cooper, Ressler, Samar, Aram, any family members she had left (except Tom) — believe she was dead so she could live with her daughter in a safe location!!!
The idea that Liz wouldn’t just drop everything to spend time with her daughter after already losing 10 months with her is absurd, IMO.
But, no, revenge is far more important.
It’s also really annoying that after finding out Tom had betrayed her, she was able to give him a second chance and continued to love him despite all sorts of stuff in Seasons 2-5, but the minute Red does anything, she wants to drop him like heavy airline luggage.
So, in case you forgot: in Season 1, she found out that Tom had been lying to her, manipulating her, and abusing her. So, after shooting him in the Season 1 finale, she chains him up on a boat for several months in an effort to make him useful to the Task Force. However, the minute that she hits the “hates Red” part of her “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” cycle, she runs right back to Tom and very quickly forgives him. And, while her positive feelings for Tom continue from late Season 2 until his death in episode 5.08, her feelings about Red are all over the place, as mentioned.
Now, in her defense, her feelings about him seem to waver whenever a crucial piece of information about his involvement in her life is discovered. When Tom’s fake passports were traced back to Red in episode 1.06, she blamed him and said she didn’t want to work with him anymore. But, then the very next episode, when he offers to leave the Task Force completely, she doesn’t tell him to do so.
And, when Red admitted to killing Sam toward the end of Season 1, she was again ready to let him leave. But then at the end of the episode, she stops him.
In Season 2, when Liz believes that Red was only interested in her for the Fulcrum, and never really cared about her, she gives him the cold shoulder. And then when he admits that he did hire Tom to be in her life, her coldness toward him again grows.
While they’re on the run together in Season 3, their relationship is at its best, arguably. Until she finds out she’s pregnant and he tells her that the fight is not over, and she doesn’t want her child to be in Red’s world. (Which is understandable)
And on and on it goes through Season 4 and Season 5 and parts of Season 6. The minute Liz realized that he stole her father’s identity, she was ready to burn him to the ground. But then only a few episodes later, she’s teary-eyed and regretting that she turned him into the authorities.
AS OPPOSED TO RED’S CONVICTION …
But, what really makes this all so annoying is the fact that while Liz’s feelings toward Red are cyclical, his feelings for her are constant, enduring, and never wavering. I mean, he’s basically Garth Brooks’ “Shameless” in human form. He is completely devoted to her, would give his life for hers without hesitation, and has loved her (in some form or another) far longer and far deeper than she has seemingly ever loved him.
If both of them liked each other, or if both of them disliked each other initially but then grew closer over time, the show would be much better. For instance, ABC’s Castle — while it definitely has its flaws — started off with the two leads liking each other from the start. Yeah, maybe they’re trying to get used to each because he’s a goofball and she’s kind of a hard ass, but it seems like by the end of the pilot, they both generally like each other as acquaintances.
Or NBC’s The Enemy Within — which is eerily similar to The Blacklist and, if it gets a second season, I might have to do a post the similarities between these two shows — which starts off with the two leads being tenuous with each other. He hates her, and she is kind of neutral toward him, but the two of them need to cooperate to accomplish a shared goal.
This was never the case with Liz and Red. In the pilot, Liz is very wary of Red, as she should be. However, he — according to Zamani — is obsessed with her, and it’s clear that he cares about her far more than he should, considering that, to our knowledge, he’d never met adult Liz before. He’s seen her from afar and kept tabs on her, of course, but this was the first time he’d met her (presumably) since The Night of the Fire. And from that meeting, his love has only grown, while hers — as discussed — has been all over the place.
THE TWO ARE NOT EQUAL
While the show really wants you to think that Red and Liz are partners (in a work sense), they are really so unequal on multiple levels.
The same could be said of the two leads on The Enemy Within, but their inadequacies tend balance each other out. The female informant has all the know-how, but the male agent has the freedom and jurisdiction to do things, and he is the one who ultimately makes the decision on what his team should tackle and how. She has some of the power in their dynamic, and he has some as well. Thus, their advantages tend to cancel each other out.
This is not the case with Red and Liz. All this time, Red has withheld crucial pieces of information from her, which he gives to her in piecemeal and only when she demands them. I won’t judge whether that’s the right or wrong thing to do, but it puts her at a disadvantage as far as their dynamic goes. And while Liz should be given some advantage of her own, she really doesn’t have one. Red has an immunity agreement and gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, unlike on The Enemy Within where the male agent has some say over what privileges the female informant has because she’s still in custody.
I guess the one advantage that Liz has over Red is that he’s told her he will never lie to her. And she has confronted him and asked him direct questions before because she knows he has to tell her to truth if she does. But, that doesn’t stop him from stalling, changing the subject, or trying to do a verbal workaround.
And then, when the show was promoting Season 6, they made it seem like the power was finally in Liz’s hands — she knows he’s an impostor and he doesn’t know that she knows.
But, while the show tried to give Liz a bit of an edge over Red, it ultimately fizzled out. She knows he’s an impostor, but she no longer has an interest in pursuing it. Which goes back to my previous point about her not having conviction. She wanted to destroy Red, and betrayed him to ensure that he wouldn’t get in the way of her and Jennifer’s quest to find out his true identity. But then, she drops it.
Again, I realize there was a lot going on — Jennifer was kidnapped and Red was almost executed. And while I think the fact that she’s fine with not having all the answers is a sign a maturity, it’s also incredibly frustrating to see how she went from 0 to 100 in such a short span of time.
LIZ DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A REAL PERSON
Relative to the screentime she’s received, Liz does not feel like a real person, but merely a plot device or a vehicle for Red’s schemes and/or the Task Force’s missions.
Very rarely do we get to see her on her own, doing her own things, outside of Red/the Task Force — going to the store, doing chores at home, hanging out with her kid, etc. The only times we do are when it’s relevant to the overall plot. Like when she gets beat up in the parking lot in episode 3.11; or when she brings that Lady Ambrosia kid over to her house, tries to cook him something and then the fire alarm goes off.
She seems solely to exist within Red’s/the Task Force’s orbit.
I feel like the fact that Liz doesn’t have any friends or family outside of the Task Force, Red and Tom (when he was alive), really speaks to how she seems to exist more as a character, not as a person within a fictional universe.
She doesn’t seem to have any hobbies, and outside of her mentioning The Wizard of Oz and a few other things, she doesn’t really seem to have any major interests in anything.
By comparison, we have lots of scenes with Red and Dembe doing puzzles, playing cards and board games. We know Red enjoys art and food/alcohol and traveling, and he has a penchant for some types of drugs — his favorite being sex.
And even Aram enjoys Doctor Who, biking and cooking.
I’m not saying that Liz needs to start chatting with Ressler about Monday Night Football or joining a pool league at a local dive bar, but something! Just a line about how she talked with Agnes last night, or asking Aram about whether she should try dating again, or a scene of her running around a park but she’s disturbed by memories from her past. Just something. Something to make her feel like a real person, who does things outside of the Task Force.
Again, I always hate the fact that Liz was supposed to have all these friends in Season 1 (the house party at the end of episode 1.03 and the vow renewal later in Season 1), and yet, they seemed to have vanished. I hate the fact that Liz doesn’t have any support system outside of Red and the Task Force. The girl needs friends! Hobbies! Interests! Something!!!
LIZ TRIES TOO HARD TO PROVE HERSELF, GETS IN TROUBLE, AND OFTEN HAS TO BE RESCUED BY RED AND/OR THE TASK FORCE AS A RESULT
This gets into a personal pet peeve of mine where Liz reassures people that she can do things, but later it seems that she can’t.
In the most recent case, she told her sister that she was definitely capable of deceiving Red and keeping him from finding out that she knows. But then within an episode or two, Red definitely knows that Liz is up to something because she has been acting weird around him. And, before she begs Dembe not to tell Red that she was the one who betrayed him, Red was pretty certain that she was the one who did.
Then, Liz and Jennifer kept going back and forth on trying to convince the other that they could pull off this “Find Red’s true identity” side-plot, but ultimately, Jennifer got kidnapped, Liz killed a dude, and ended up having to recruit Ressler and Red to help her find Jennifer and confront the people who took her.
This type of situation happens A LOT on the show. Liz will try to do her own thing (finding Red’s true identity, etc.) and it ultimately gets her into trouble. It seemed to happen more often in Seasons 1-3. One example I can think of was when she didn’t kill Tom, but instead captured and imprisoned him, and then he killed the Harbormaster and forced Liz to face charges for murder. Red and the Task Force and even Tom had to come to her rescue to make sure she didn’t face the consequences of her actions. Yes, Tom did kill the Harbormaster, but Liz was the one who had decided to chain him up on the boat in the first place. The murder is on him, but the imprisoning is on her.
Liz also killed the Attorney General, and Red and the Task Force (and Tom, once again) were ultimately responsible for saving her from the Director’s plot while she was trapped in The Box, bringing the Cabal’s actions to light, using the Director as the scapegoat for Hitchen and then getting Liz out of the murder charges by bringing in Karakurt. And then, later, Red was responsible for leveraging the President into pardoning her so that she could become an agent again.
Now, there have been a few occasions where Liz was kidnapped simply because she was an FBI agent, not because of her connection to Red or anything else. For instance, in episode 1.04 “The Stewmaker,” she’s kidnapped and almost killed because she had her own personal history with that Lorca guy.
But, again, too many times Liz is put in the “damsel in distress” position where either she’s in trouble or her life is threatened and others have to be the ones to save her, either by saving her life or by saving her from legal repercussions, etc.
In a way, the whole first part of Season 6 was the result of Liz’s actions, which she regretted and then was looking for any and all help to make sure Red wasn’t executed after she’d turned him in. Yes, Red was the one who insisted on the death penalty, but he never would’ve been in that situation if she hadn’t betrayed him. And ultimately, it was Cooper who came through and pressured the President into staying Red’s execution.
Going back to the “Red and Liz aren’t equals” thing, very rarely is Red the one who needs saving. And, even when he is, it isn’t always Liz who’s rescuing him. Again, Cooper was the one who saved Red from execution. Liz has saved him a few times that I can recall — she stopped that guy from shooting him in episode 2.14 and she leveraged the Director into calling off the hit in episode 2.19.
But, again, Liz seems to be in trouble far more often than Red is, and she very rarely is able to save herself (with the solo-Liz episode being one of the few times she does). Meanwhile, Red is able to get out of jams on his own much more often, such as when he escapes Anslo in episode 1.10. And, he and the Task Force save her far more often than Liz and the Task Force save him. And, even then, sometimes Red saves her single-handedly (like in the Season 2 Super Bowl episode) while she usually has to work with others to save him.
Once again, I realize there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. Red has a vast criminal empire and more knowledge and resources than Liz does, most of the time. But, I do wish:
- Liz wouldn’t be kidnapped or have her life/livelihood threatened so often, AND
- That Red’s would be a tiny bit more frequently, so that she can save him.
It also doesn’t help that she was sidelined in the second half of Season 3 partly because she was a felon who was no longer able to be an agent on the Task Force but also because both Liz the character and Megan Boone the actress were pregnant. And then she was sidelined again in early Season 4 because of the whole felon thing / trying to get Agnes back.
TL;DR
- Liz doesn’t get the character development she should relative to her screentime; and any development she does get seems to be cyclical and inconsistent. (ie, she acts however the writers need her to for the given arc/episode)
- Liz often tries to do her own thing, despite warnings not to; and while she’s by no means useless to Red or the Task Force, she often has to be rescued (either directly or indirectly) far more than she does the rescuing.
- Liz often acts demanding, ungrateful, and selfish — or at least relative to how the audience might want her to act, especially with regard to Red. And, jumping off the second point, also has a bit of an ego and can be proud and willful, which as I theorized, might be a turn-off for some male viewers.
Overall, I think some of the reasons for hating Liz are valid, but as I said, I try not to direct my annoyance toward the character of Liz herself or Megan Boone, the actress, but rather to the writers, who I feel need to take responsibility for what they’ve done and continue to do with this character.
Don’t take this to say that I hate the writers, but rather that I want them to do better. I want to see this show succeed and I want to see Megan have some amazing material to work with the same way that James seems to with Red.