FBI Season 7, Episode 18, “Blkpill” is a pretty standard episode for the CBS series, including all the elements that viewers have come to expect. Its biggest problem is a massive one — that this episode is one of several in Season 7 to revolve around extreme acts of violence against women. For whatever reason, the show has gone to that well more than once, and it’s an unnecessary and disturbing recurrence.
“Blkpill” is named after the online message board where men who are “incels” (involuntary celibates) vent their anger at being rejected by women. However, the invention of an Uber-style dating app called Scorch, which allows women to rate their matches, pushes a few of them over the edge. They take violent revenge on the women who have downvoted them, and while the episode has all the tension and action of a regular FBI outing, it’s hard to ignore how creepy it is.
FBI Season 7, Episode 18 Features Another Case Targeting Women
This Unintentional Trend Makes the Episode Worse
The major issue with FBI Season 7, Episode 18 is that it’s at least the third episode this season to center around terrible acts of violence that are specifically targeting women. The show isn’t doing this every week, but multiple episodes in the same season is surprising, and they stand out because the crimes committed in these episodes have been particularly gruesome. Season 7, Episode 4, “Doubted” featured the serial abductor and rapist who went after women, including Special Agent Sydney Ortiz’s sister. Season 7, Episode 6, “Perfect” was a disturbing hour about women who were taken and operated on against their will. And now in “Blkpill,” men are dousing women in homemade napalm, lighting them on fire, and watching them burn to death.
It’s worth noting that the show has had its characters express how horrible these events are, and in each of these episodes, the good guys are able to stop the perpetrator(s). And because this is network TV, there’s a limit to how much FBI can show. But that doesn’t mean the writers have to keep telling stories that go well beyond what the series usually does, or that these stories have to revolve around female victims. There have been other Season 7 episodes that were more impactful even though their cases of the week were less intense. And this mini-pattern is even more odd on a show that has such strong and well-rounded female main characters.
In general, FBI has some wonderful female agents, starting with but not limited to Special Agent Maggie Bell, who is front and center in this episode. The characters are depicted as smart, capable heroes who can handle anything thrown at them (and in Maggie’s case, she definitely has) and who have the respect of their peers. That makes it a little more disappointing to see an episode like “Blkpill,” where the female guest characters are mostly victimized horribly — except for one who’s completely underused.
FBI Deals With Some Tired Themes Other Shows Have Done
Season 7, Episode 18 Isn’t Presenting Anything New
Once one sets aside the troubling premise, “Blkpill” isn’t offering anything that makes sitting through that violence worthwhile. The subject of “incels” and their beliefs prompting them to hurt women has been fodder for TV crime dramas for a while — most notably coming up in multiple episodes of another Dick Wolf series, Law & Order: SVU. The SVU Season 16 episode “Holden’s Manifesto” was based on the case of Elliot Rodger, who was known as the “Incel Killer.” And at its most base level, a jilted lover or would-be lover killing someone they feel rejected by is a fairly common storyline. There’s nothing new here except for how twisted the method of murder is.
The episode does check all the boxes as far as the bones of the story are concerned. There’s some technical wizardry, an interrogation scene, and multiple action sequences, including the climax that takes place on a stage at the fictional Hudson University. Fans get the drama that they are used to from this show, and all of the main actors are as reliable as they’ve ever been. John Boyd is a bit of a scene-stealer, as his character Stuart Scola offers up more blunt commentary, plus he gets involved in a shootout and then also gets to shoot at a speeding van. The core cast is doing their best.
Stuart Scola: Every time I think people can’t get any crueler, some psycho tells me to hold their beer.
But the guest characters are paper-thin. The most shading they get is the opening sequence seen through one of their eyes as they prepare the napalm — a gimmicky idea that FBI also used this season in “Doubted.” But one is shot by Scola while attempting to carry out another attack so he doesn’t even get a line of dialogue, the second just utters the typical angry speech in the interrogation room, and the show wants the third to feel like some sort of evil mastermind when he locks himself in the university auditorium (complete with a pre-act break shot of him smirking as he closes the door), yet that never happens.
And the main female characters are either victims or almost victims. Jericho and 24 alum Sprague Grayden is wasted as Aimee Fenway, the CEO of Scorch. She has one scene explaining why she created the app and identifying one of the suspects, but then doesn’t turn up again until she’s taken hostage. With as talented as Grayden is, it’s a missed opportunity not to give her character more to do than provide exposition and someone for Maggie to rescue. The best TV crime dama episodes of any kind are the ones where the supporting characters come alive to make the proceedings feel real, and “Blkpill” misses that mark.
FBI Season 7, Episode 18 Lacks Any Meaningful Character Development
Maggie’s Personal Life Isn’t Enough
FBI Season 7, Episode 18 is also light on any kind of character development. The episode is bookended by scenes involving Maggie and the 911 dispatcher she’s been seeing since they met in Season 7, Episode 12, “Manhunt.” The first is him expressing that he wasn’t okay with her being undercover and out of contact for three weeks (a reference to the events of Episode 16, “Covered”). The second — after Maggie and OA have a too-brief chat about the events of the day — sees Maggie tell him that his feelings are valid and she wants to figure things out together. That’s a nice step forward for their relationship, but nothing that memorable after the credits roll. It also feels just the slightest bit repetitive, since Isobel and her new husband were also talking about the demands of the job in Episode 17, “Lineage,” albeit in a different way.
“Blkpill” delivers an action-packed tale in which the good guys stop the bad guys, and the day is saved. In that most basic sense, it works. But it doesn’t succeed when one steps back to look at the bigger picture of underdeveloped characters and a troubling premise. This show has done better both plot and character-wise. It can get audiences to sit on the edge of their seats, and even move them emotionally, with a whole lot less than this.
