I enjoy watching James Spader’s pretentious and vicious mayhem on The Blacklist (on Netflix) as much as anyone, but something about the show seems old fashioned. It has a serialized story arc — which is modern — and plenty of episodic, monster-of-the-week plots — which isn’t — except that each monster contributes to the season arc. Maybe the dated sense I get from the show is one of balance. The overall story arc involving Spader’s protection of his daughter-not-daughter Elizabeth proceeds too slowly and the irony that he is the ultimate cause of her need for protection remains static: the same note over four seasons, even if details or shadowy nemeses change. The monster-of-the-week challenges are fun, but each victory doesn’t add up to an overall change in circumstances. Spader is shady, but we’re never really sure why he does what he does or what his end-game is. Elizabeth goes along with things, maintaining a tension between the desire for a normal life and the excitement of being an FBI agent, but she’s no longer the central character outside of the amount of screen presence she gets. She doesn’t drive the plot; she’s the Macguffin. At its heart, the show is episodic story-telling masquerading as serialized story-telling. I’ve gotten used to the over-the-top Spader performance, his constant name-dropping and so on. I kind of like it. An old fashioned show. Why not?