Blindspot recap: 'Mum's the Word' 

right now is two very dysfunctional families. There’s the FBI team, a ragtag group that, later in the episode, Jane reminds is really a family that never turns their back on each other. They’re in shambles right now though, torn apart by secrets that were kept and other secrets that probably should have stayed that way. The other family is the one that includes Roman, Jane, Avery, and Weller. The first three share a connection with Shepherd and Crawford, and the last is just lucky enough to fall in love with a woman who came into his life in a duffle bag in Times Square with no memory of her life before that moment. Fate’s a funny thing that way.

Everybody here is just trying to find a way to move forward with all this dysfunction. They’re trying to move past betrayals, lies, and the violence that seems to follow all of them. Even the villain of the season, Roman, is looking to find his place with people who care about him, something he’s never had before. By the end of “Mum’s the Word,” he’s maybe found that place, but at what cost?

Zapata has her own way of working through issues: a whole lot of kickboxing. While the episode opens with Roman buying a bunch of diamonds for Crawford to use in the impending land deal with Jean-Paul Bruyere, it quickly shifts to Zapata beating the hell out of a punching bag. She keeps replaying Patterson’s reaction to the secret about Borden. Coupled with the perhaps self-destructive move of telling an engaged Reade that she loves him, she’s dealing with a lot of regret at the moment.

Eventually, the team has to come together to make their plans for Blake’s gala. A visit from a prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office confirms that this could be their only chance to truly nail Crawford and, along with him, Bruyere, who the team has determined is actually a most-wanted terrorist that goes by the name the Serpent. The trick to unpacking

Patterson is doing her best to freeze Zapata out, but Reade won’t let it happen. Whatever personal issues there are, they have to work together as a team or, you know, somebody dies and the bad guys get away. Once the team figures out the secret location for Blake’s gala — it takes place in a mansion on a secluded island off the coast of Croatia — they have to figure out how to actually infiltrate the party without Crawford recognizing them. After stealing some information from a famous wedding planner’s computer (a scene where Reade and Zapata have to awkwardly pretend to be getting married), which gives them everything they need to know about the location of the party, the plan starts to fall into place. Not unlike

The key to the plan, and the biggest variable, is Avery. She knows a fair amount about Crawford because of her dad’s apparently shady work with him, and she’s the team’s way into the party. She knows Blake, and she’s sure she can secure an invite. She does and, as a result, gets everybody in. Avery, like her mother, proves to be quite adept at working in the field, unlocking a window for Jane and Weller, and then placing a tracker on Crawford during a conversation about her father. Though the FBI is initially hesitant to put Avery out there, she responds with a passionate, “I’ll be fine. I can handle myself,” a line that is