#gnomegate

Do you mean 3.07? Because if so, yeah, Ress does a number on that poor little guy.

Sure, anon. It started in ep 3.07 when Ressler kicked Cooper’s garden gnome in a rage against Tom Keen - a moment that many fans, including myself, enjoyed tremendously.

The following season, Jon Bokenkamp’s friend, Kurt Kuenne, directed Ep 4.05 (the “Lindquist Concern”) and suddenly we had another funny gnome moment.

Kurt subsequently confirmed in an interview that the placement of that gnome was entirely purposeful:

What is the significance of Ressler running into gnomes? The fans are wondering if you might have some insight into that?

Ha! Well, Ressler famously attacked the gnome at Cooper’s house some time ago – and when we were in the midst of shooting that sequence where Ressler and Navabi are descending upon Riley’s house, someone from the art department pulled the gnome out of one of the trucks as a joke…and I saw it, talked to Diego about his memories of the last gnome scene and decided to throw it in the frame as a little in-joke when he comes out from behind the fence. I mainly did it to make Jon Bokenkamp laugh during dailies, I wasn’t sure if it would make the final cut through all of the network/studio notes…but it did! That’s one of those little moments that puts my experience watching the show so closely for all these years to good use. :) I honestly just thought it was a funny call-back. There’s nothing like a good running gag.

And when Kurt also directed Ep 6.07 (”General Shiro”), the gnome(s) multiplied and made another cameo (which we learned of first in behind the scenes pics from the filming of that episode):

In the meanwhile, Diego shared this fun photo on Twitter in the summer of 2017:

And when he filmed his movie, Radius (2017), he apparently had a choice of several objects to use to break a window in the movie and he chose a gnome as an homage to The Blacklist.

The directors of that movie had no idea until the post-premiere interviews that he picked the gnome because of TBL - they thought it related to a prior movie of theirs that had also featured a gnome.

I enjoyed the gnome saga so much I bought a similar gnome on Amazon and when @aussieokie and I got to see Diego on location in the fall of 2019, I brought it with me. Diego enjoyed the joke, as I hoped he would, and he signed the gnome for me and it now sits on my shelf among my other Blacklist memorabilia!

You’re welcome.  The gnome kick is from Zal Bin Hasaan (ep 3.07)