Blu-ray TV reviews: ‘The Blacklist’ and ‘12 Monkeys’

Here’s a look at a couple of episodic television series now on the Blu-ray format for fans of thrillers.

The Blacklist: The Complete Seventh Season (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 1.78:1 aspect ratio, 820 minutes, rated TV-14, $55.99) — Well, it took six full seasons, more than 40 hours of exposition, to reveal that master criminal Raymond Reddington was dead and instead was replaced by a mysterious imposter with a mission to protect FBI Agent Elizabeth Keene (Megan Boone) and her young daughter, a mission desired by her mother, the former KGB agent named Katarina Rostova (Laila Robin).

So now what? Binge-watchers can dive into the latest 19 episodes of the NBC hit crime drama on five Blu-ray discs to learn that Reddington has now made an enemy of the exposed Rostova, who is now on the run from former enemies while trying to reconnect with her daughter.

However, Keene has lost her angry daddy issues with Reddington and now actually admires her surrogate father and that may make a mother-and-daughter reunion much less of a love fest.

And, as always, the sometimes bumbling covert FBI task force led by Harold Cooper (Harry Lennox) still managed to stop a selection of entertaining blacklisters exposed by Reddington including the bioweapon-loving assassin Norman Devane, the secret group of thrill-kill seekers Les Fleurs Du Mal and master art forger Victoria Fenberg.

For yet another season, Mr. Spader’s keen disarming charm and witty dialogue plays well with his character’s streak of ultraviolent tendencies, making him one of television’s greatest good and bad guys.

Most notable this season is its brevity, cut by three episodes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It forced creators to deliver part of the final episode for the season, the second part of ” The Kazanjian Brothers,” as an animated motion-style comic that, of course, is completely unsatisfying.

I’ll quit whining. It could have been worse. The final shows would have looked pretty weird if everyone was wearing a hazmat suit.

Best extras: First start with the commentary track for the two-part episode “The Kazanjian Brothers” (with editors Chris Brookshire and Elyse Holloway and animation supervisors Matt Perrin and Adam Coglan) that dives into the emergency creation of a show mixing live action with animated segments.

Next, complementing the track is a 12-minute featurette on the hybrid episode that covers the animation strategy as well as some of the themes of the season.

Also worth a look is a 22-minute overview of the series hosted by executive producer John Eisendrath and series creator Jon Bokenkamp featuring separate roundtable discussion with the writers and most of the main actors including Miss Boone, Amir Arison (Agent Aram Mojtabai) and Hisham Tawfiq (Reddington’s bodyguard Dembe Zuma).

The overview also includes a fun competition between the writers and actors as they tackle trivia questions pertaining to storylines of “The Blacklist.”

Finally, select actors offer a short tribute to the deceased actor Brian Dennehy, who played Rostova’s dad and Keene’s grandfather Dominic Wilkinson.

12 Monkeys: The Complete Series (Mill Creek Entertainment, 1.78:1 aspect ratio, 820 minutes, not rated, $55.99) — From 2015 to 2018, the Sci-Fi Channel offered a post-apocalyptic televised adventure inspired by Terry Gilliam’s 1995 science fiction drama starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.

The entire four-season, 47-episode run is now available in the high definition format on an eight-disc set to offer a story that will immediately send chills down the spine of anyone watching in the current COVID-19 climate.

Specifically, in 2043, scavenger James Cole (Aaron Stanford), with help from a ragtag group of scientists, begins time traveling missions in an attempt to stop a plague believed to have been released by the mysterious organization the Army of the 12 Monkeys in the mid-2000s that will cause the death of 7 billion humans worldwide.

He gets help in the past, present and future from virologist Cassandra Reilly (Amada Schull), crazed math genius Jennifer Goines (Emily Hampshire) and best friend Kirk Acevedo (José Ramse) while battling villains such as the evil Pallid Man (Tom Noonan), savage scavenger leader Theodore Deacon (Todd Stashwick) and 12 Monkeys enforcer Mallick (Faran Tahir).

The best parts of the series are the exploration of the many scenarios possible by twisting the timeline as Cole tumbles down the rabbit hole over and over again, dangerously splintering the past and future to save humanity.

Suffice it to report, fans of the original film, franchises such as the “Terminator” and TV’s “Legend’s of Tomorrow will not be disappointed.

Best extras: Offering nearly the exact same bonus content from the previously released Universal Studios’ single season sets, the boxed collection has plenty of goodies to appreciate the series.

The extras are really stacked in the first two seasons and begin with 11 shorts (originally appearing on the web) that offer back story often focused on the Goines character and well worth watching.

Next, previously released podcasts, essentially commentary tracks, allow crew and cast such as showrunner Terry Matalas, Mr. Stanford, Miss Schull, Mr. Stashwick and Miss Hampshire to discuss the shows “Primary,” “Bodies of Water,” “Blood Washed Away” and “Memory of Tomorrow.”

Viewers also get lots of deleted scenes (almost three dozen), behind-the-scenes looks at each episode in the second season (under five minutes each) and even a few gag reels and some original cast auditions.