We’re now over halfway through the final season of Person of Interest, both in terms of days between the premiere and June 21st’s series finale and the 13 episode count, and it’s hard to believe that it’s almost over. Especially considering that prior to the sixth episode just under a week ago, we hadn’t achieved either. Scary to think how quickly the season is passing us by due to CBS’s bizarre scheduling: Three episodes aired this past week (one on Monday, two on Tuesday) with a further two airing this coming week (one per night on Monday and Tuesday) before the final three return to its weekly Tuesday 10pm timeslot.
“A More Perfect Union,” Monday’s lone episode, was arguably the weakest of the eight so far. Centred on the number of a marriage license (*), Reese, Finch and even Root went about trying to work out who was about to ruin the wedding. The biggest issue I had with the hour was that everything plot-related with the wedding was uninteresting in its entirety, even more so than the number from Truth Be Told. There, the procedural aspect of the hour was used to help establish the developments involving Reese; they weren’t especially new or gripping developments, but it was something. The events of “A More Perfect Union’s” number did very little in any department. Buzzfeed’s excellent article on the show’s odd descent towards its end this week briefly touches upon how Jonathan Nolan, despite making the 13 as the final bow, was involved in a conversation with CBS “about the amount of standalone versus serialised storytelling,” with the creative minds ultimately coming up with the compromise we see before us. That compromise has perhaps slightly hindered this final run and this episode, and I do wish that the amount of time devoted standalone plots could have been substantially reduced.
(*) This was a strange thing in and of itself; with the Machine now an open system, it seems capable of providing the team with more than just a social security number, though as other episodes this season have shown, it will still give out those nine digits. With this, Person of Interest managed to do something slightly different than the norm yet keep the idea of a ‘number of the week’ intact.
With that in mind, it’s difficult to overlook the positive that did come out of the ‘number of the week,’ which was the amount of humour provided from the various interactions at the wedding. Undoubtedly, Michael Emerson’s Irish accent was the highlight, a selection of scenes that indicate how many pages of the rulebook were thrown out of the window when the season was written. While there was nothing hugely enthralling about the story itself, the show had a lot of fun telling it, which I greatly appreciated.
Tuesday’s double of “QSO” and “Reassortment” handled their numbers in more relevant fashion, with both episodes’ procedural narrative relating to the overall battle with Samaritan. In the former, Root was tasked with keeping a conspiracy radio show host safe after he stumbled upon a transmission originating from Samaritan. She failed due to his decision to ignore her plea that he needed to forget everything that happened over the course of the episode, opting to exercise his free will to discuss the transmission on air before being poisoned by his secretary, whom Samaritan reached out to. It did, however, give Root the opportunity to send Shaw a message and a chance to make some progress in finding her missing friend, something that she had been longing for ever since the end of “If-Then-Else.” “Reassortment” brought Jeff Blackwell back into the fold as he was given a test of sorts, told to use flu-infected blood to execute a doctor and a nurse who had been asking questions about problems with the computer system that Samaritan was controlling. By the end of the hour, it was revealed that the ‘super-flu’ the team had dealt with was a plan orchestrated by Samaritan (duh) to be able to collect everyone’s DNA in order to gain knowledge of those who possessed genetic markers that make them an ‘Elite Controller’ that enables those individuals to avoid contracting certain diseases. Supposedly, this is to give everyone the same opportunity to survive disease, but based on our knowledge of Samaritan and Mona’s ominous description of the plan, it seems as though Samaritan is preparing to enact another cull, keeping those who, because of their biology can be more useful to the human race in the long run, alive. Chilling stuff.
Aside from that, there was lots going on with both Shaw and Fusco, both of whom had plots that bled into both Tuesday episodes. Lionel had pretty much had enough of not knowing the extent of present circumstances and set out on his own mission to discover the truth about the missing persons, fuelled by the mystery surrounding Krupa’s disappearance in “ShotSeeker.” It didn’t go especially well for the detective as he managed to find the dead bodies of all those involved - including Bruce Moran, who was involved with another number that Root provided - before the underground tunnel system in which they were haphazardly laid to rest was demolished, trapping Fusco beneath it.
That left him stuck in hospital for the duration of “QSO,” and at breaking point. The team’s mentality of trying to protect Fusco by keeping him in the dark is a far better idea in theory than it is in practice, and there comes a point where not telling him the whole truth is more dangerous than it is to tell him. Would he need to be kept in the shadows until Samaritan is defeated, even assuming that is told away from any and all pieces of technology and he never so much as mentions it in the outside world? It’s difficult to say, though it would certainly make him safer, but more importantly, it would provide the team with another body to help fight the physical war. Like John, Fusco’s technological skills are extremely limited, and so anything related to the intricacies of the war of the machines isn’t within his range. But with so many Samaritan operatives out there, they need all the gun-wielding help they can get. As Elias tells Finch in “Reassortment,” "A leader enlists all his resources in war, not just his favourites." For Fusco, his near-death experience provided a reason to change - not his quest to uncover the truth about what is going on, but to end his allegiance with the team and to request a transfer at the NYPD. In all likelihood, he’ll return if/when he’s told the truth or figures it out on his own (assuming he isn’t killed before then) but his self-exile is sad to see for the time being. Fascinating, too, that Finch elected to let the Detective try to cut ties rather than clue him in to utilise his help. Like with his refusal to accept that Congressman McCourt had to die in season three’s “Death Benefit,” while this appears the better choice right now, in the long run, it could make the situation far, far worse.
For Shaw, it was yet more simulations: The opening scene of “A More Perfect Union” showed her to be in simulation 7,053, in which she killed herself at the park again, before she went on a field trip as Samaritan, through Greer and later avatar Gabriel, attempted to explain to Sameen why it is the right choice if she wants to do some good. Shaw’s no stranger to killing people at the whim of an AI, even if she didn’t know it when we met her, and this one has the foresight to make conclusions over death rates in years to come. Yet she’s set firmly against helping the rival AI, even when shown a simulation of the world succumbing to nuclear annihilation.
But it’s far deeper and more complicated than that, which is what makes this story so compelling. Shaw has the ability to remember every single simulation she’s been in, and after over seven thousand of them, it’s nearly impossible for her to distinguish between what really happened and what was a simulation. Worse still, she has no way of knowing whether whatever she’s currently doing is a simulation or not. With Root’s “four alarm fire” message (a callback to the final moments of “If-Then-Else,” where Shaw described their pairing as “like a four alarm fire at an oil refinery”) and the radio broadcast at the end of “Reassortment” describing the events that Team Machine contended with, it seems safe to say that Shaw’s escape by the end of the hour was in fact real (as was Lambert’s death; he wasn’t quite Hersh, but I liked him). That doesn’t mean the show can’t toy with us - and her - as Lambert attempts to convince her that the entire set-up of the South African prison from which she escapes was devised from her memories, memories that she is getting confused over due to the simulations (she quickly catches on, however, that what he is describing took place in Germany, as shown back in “Relevance” and featured in a brief flash here). Whether this is or isn’t a simulation is slightly beside the point. What really matters is that confusion: Samaritan has done such a number on her that she has little grasp over what is real and what isn’t, so when she returns to New York and to her friends, will she attempt to avoid any information that Samaritan doesn’t know as a precaution? And, worse still, is the ending to all of those simulations going to come to fruition? All I know is that of everything left to be resolved, this is the story I’m most heavily intrigued by.
A bit of a mixed bag this week, with the Tuesday episodes (“QSO,” in particular) emerging far superior to “A More Perfect Union,” but Person of Interest continues the charge of its final chapter and despite the odd weak element, season five is coming together nicely. Only a few more weeks to find out how it all ends.
Notes:
• Based on Root’s visit to the precinct in “A More Perfect Union,” I have a new spinoff idea: Root and Fusco, along with Bear, take on saving the world. The best part? Every episode takes place at a wedding, given his difficulty in imagining her at a wedding and her constant attempts to tell people that she isn’t out of place at one. The series finale sees Fusco get a new chair, too.
• As I noted on Twitter after watching Monday’s hour, things reached a point where I began to question, somewhat sarcastically, whether the entire season - or even the entire series - is simply just a simulation. That managed to add to the impact of Shaw’s storyline in a small but impressive way.
• Root stabbing that assassin’s hand was incredibly graphic for a CBS show.
• Prior to getting assigned the identity of a radio show producer, Root took on the identities of a traffic cop, colonial reenactor and a ballerina. For the latter, she saved and got close to a man whose father is the administrator of Žemaitija National Park, near to the location of an old Cold War missile silo. That’s sure to play a role in the closing weeks.
• Before being admitted to hospital, James Ko, the first victim of the ‘super-flu,’ was speaking on the phone to a man who sounded an awful lot like Lambert. Based on their conversation, it seems that Ko willingly sacrificed himself for the cause.
• We’re up to over 932 billion simulations between the mini-Machine and mini-Samaritan, and the Machine has lost every single one. That’s… terrifying.
• "I think you need to get your eyes checked, Glasses."
• The truck company owner asking for a “Detective Foo-sco” will never not be funny.
• Root's t-shirt that says "THEY EXIST" as shown above is absolutely perfect.
• "Underneath all of that intellect, you are the darkest of all of us. It's always the quiet ones who we need to be afraid of. I just hope I'm not around the day that pot finally boils over."
What did you all think of these three episodes? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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