The always-excellent Jennifer Ehle plays the title Number, a glamorous thief from Red's past who robs a Turkish bank to get his attention, so that he can help her steal an ancient Syrian artifact from the Syrian Embassy during a party. Since Liz is a master heister and wizard of close-up magic, this is an excuse for them to get all decked out and rain hell on the embassy in the middle of a party, eventually coming up with nothing because Pratt was using them as a stalking horse to get into the embassy's saferooms, where the artifact actually was.

Why this is a big deal is, the artifact itself contains a list of six Russian assets from the Cold War that are still in play. Turns out that Pratt's partner in crime, the Syrian Cultural attaché, is a Russian mobster on the side who has been tasked with retrieving the artifact, and Pratt decided to use Red and his crackerjack skills and team because he stood her up years ago in Florence. Watching the two of them talk about their rich lives back in the days when they were both Thomas Crown is amazing, like seeing two Reds going at each other with twice the random vague references to political figures and exotic locales.

As the Post Office team is discovering that the Russians aren't actually people, but nukes stored on American soil, Red and Pratt are kidnapped by the Mob and he finally comes clean about why he stood her up: It was just after his family was massacred, on Christmas Eve twenty years ago, and various other details that may dovetail with Liz's history or maybe is just weirdness he made up to make her cry.

(It is the second or third most Spader thing Red does this week, after a long-form improvised performance of a Duchess County queen (to confuse Syrian security) and an operatically bitchy ekphrasis on this ugly $4M Vermeer in the rich guy's house where he's been squatting.)

Come to find out he set up their entire kidnapping so that he could lure her into feeling bad for him, then get taken away for torture, so she'd offer up the information and he -- after letting the PO Team fight the Mobsters for the empty artifact -- could trade those nukes back to the PO, for the effigy itself. Which he then puts on his mantle, where the stolen Vermeer once was: The episode ends Pratt's appearance with a flirtatious note telling him to come find her and the Vermeer in Florence. Everything about the two of them was amazing. Their chemistry, her flinty beauty, his emotional breakdown, even the meow-meow back and forth -- the trickiest part, having two Reds in play at once -- was just perfect.

As was Liz. Tom throws a fuckin' fit about her doing her job, like he does every week -- but which he's doing especially hard now that she's decided not to have a baby with him, in case he is evil -- and runs off to yet another "conference," where of course that random lady that's seducing him randomly also is? So I guess it was a good idea for him to invite Liz along, since now his only option is adultery. But without Tom and his bag of bullshit, we got to see Liz do a whole robbery in a gorgeous ballgown, as well as an extensive amount of pickpocketing, both of which suited her quite well.

On the Diane Fowler front, we open the episode with everybody pretty suspicious of Red's sudden return to the Post Office, since we can all put two and two together and note that Diane Fowler disappeared moments before Reddington Zelda Rubensteined the PO, pronouncing it "clean" once again. Malik is tasked with solving Fowler's presumptive murder, with Red as the main suspect, but in the end the team gets shut down on that one too: A visiting Special Agent from DC tells Cooper , quite aggressively, to call off the whole thing. I guess that's more of Fowler's evil friends in Washington covering their tracks, but for now I prefer to imagine that he's actually Mr. Kaplan, in a very good disguise.

All in all it was a great episode, especially for one with so little serialized content. It had that Blacklist hallmark of making you feel like it must be the end of the episode and it turns out it's only been ten minutes, which I do love when that happens. So many things occurring all the time on this show, you can't catch your breath.

What did you think? Ehle was terrific, right? And Liz was about as cool as Liz gets, which I maintain is pretty cool. While I'm somewhat unnerved when Red plays gay, I also understand that he doesn't have our human constructs of "gay" or "straight" any more than he is limited by our mortal understanding of "right" and "wrong," plus it actually is funny to imagine him as Liz's codependent gay sidekick who just happens to be constantly snapping people's necks. It's not even that far off the mark if you think about it.

Next Week: Diane Wiest is some kind of mythical vigilante who runs a fight club tribunal for judges who've behaved inappropriately? I can buy that. Also, Red goes looking for Tom's illicit behavior, and actually finds some finally, over in Orlando. So that should be heartbreaking, I guess? One way to make a guy shut up about your work priorities is to shove a redhead in his mouth, as the saying goes. Mostly I'm just excited to see Red try to be sad and not just gloat about being right about one more thing, after all this time.