After our downtime, we’re catching up with our reviews. Here we look at this week’s TWO episodes of Person of Interest…
Episode 2: ‘SNAFU’…
The second episode of Person of Interest‘s season swansong could arguably have been the first of the new run – completing a restoration of the pillars on which the show has balanced. It was somewhat necessary to resolve the closing moments of last season and B.N.O.T did so well enough if you can suspend disbelief and imagine an almost omnipotent computer being downsized to the size of a suitcase and surviving a battery failure even beyond Duracell’s capabilities to keep going. (But you buy into the nature of the show or you don’t…)
But the second episode is much better and, in many ways, back to basics and playing to strengths – both driving the story forward in an organic way and also echoing some of the show’s original remit. As Finch and Root try to restore the Machine, they find themselves on the wrong end of the nascent technology. The Machine is stretching its silicon muscles trying to find its way back from near-oblivion to full intelligence but while its reach grows by the second it still can’t comprehend time and context. Examining what it knows of the people before it, it finds every reason to think that Finch and Root could actually be a danger to it. It cites times when they’ve been willing to kill and torture and finds that Finch’s original remit makes such actions something it should be preventing. So much so that while Finch tries to reason with his creation, Reese finds himself the target of an assassin sent by the Machine rather than Samaritan.
One might well have thought the original procedural ‘numbers’ aspect of the series might be downplayed as we head further into the endgame and the AI-conflict side of things, but it is used to good effect here – a way to actively help the Machine understand its programming and also to punctuate the mythology and time-line as examples of the mission (and the show’s past).
Along with its sense of earnest, the episode has elements of humour to match the drama – the opening gambit being a longer version of the reel seen at last year’s Comic-Con where the Machine’s software can’t utilise facial-recognition properly and thus imposes different faces on our heroes. All the cast get to do ‘impressions’ of each other that will likely raise a smile from any self-respecting long-term fan of the series.
There’s also some nice parallels in the final moments with Samaritan recruiting a new agent in a very similar way (including actual dialogue) from the way Finch originally enticed Reese all those years ago. It’s an element that the series does well, never missing an opportunity to seek parallels and ways to dovetail elements back into the mythology…
9/10
Episode 3: ‘Truth Be Told’…
The third episode is a more formulaic affair in format but one that still feels to honour the tone the show has established.
The new ‘number’ is a computer-security expert who seems to be acting suspiciously. He’s certainly ‘stealing’ secure information – but why? It turns out he’s looking into how and why his brother died in Iraq… and Reese realises that the truth is closer to home than he’d wish – especially in the form of Reese’s old CIA boss Beale (Keith David) who has no idea his agent is still alive… until their paths cross again and Reese’s cover may be blown.
Heading through its endgame, the series is both providing background context and tying off some loose-ends – in the ‘present’ we see Reese’s relationship with his psychiatrist girl-friend end in amicable if melancholy fashion. POI continues to flip back along its own timeline and mythology, exploring key moments of our characters. In Reese’s case, we see some of his previous, more dubious CIA work as he and old partner Kara Stanton (Annie Parisse) interrogate a soldier also suspected of selling military secrets in Iraq in 2010. It’s made more relevant with its ties to the present.
Amy Acker’s Root goes postal in a slightly less violent way than usual (though blows to the head are invoked) and Harold (Michael Emerson)ponders the implications of both the Machine and Samaritan’s plans.There’s also more use of outside locations – after seeing Caviezel’s Reese walking through Times Square previously, it’s now Michael Emerson who gets to sit down with a familiar neon background, grounding the story in a recognisable world which our heroes note has an unseen war going on that most are oblivious to as they go about their days.
One thing I hadn’t noticed previously was that the contemporary side to proceedings are all dated as ‘2015’. That could be when the series was originally planned to return last year, but it would likely have been an easy thing to tweak in the last six months – which may end up meaning a time-jump forward to 2016 by the time the series’ final credits roll?
8/10
