POI thought

[kindkit]

I'm rewatching season 1 because I feel like I missed a lot of details, and already at 1x02, "Ghosts," I can see that no, I wasn't imagining it. That episode absolutely implies that the great painful loss Finch has suffered is the loss of Nathan Ingram. "I know what it's like to lose someone" he tells Theresa, and the scene cuts to a flashback of him talking with Nathan. "Trust doesn't come easily," he tells Reese, and the camera pans over to Nathan's memorial plaque (which is the first we know that Nathan is dead).

Harold loved Nathan best, damn it. *clings to headcanon*


Also, from the dates on the plaque I can see that the dates I used in my story are slightly too late. I thought they might be, but if I'd set it any earlier the conversation about fractals couldn't have happened, and I liked that bit.



ETA: Comments on DW contain spoilers for late S1. Also, I've only seen through 2x05, so please, no spoilers beyond that point? I know my POI posts contain a lot of floundering around and speculation and "but that doesn't make sense!" but I am trying to avoid spoilers entirely. Thanks!

Comments

[king_touchy]

Yup. The show put a lot of weight on Finch's feelings about Nathan's death. They had been friends since college, built a company together, built the Machine together. That was a huge relationship for Finch.

Of course, now he has Reese. And Bear. Heh.

[kindkit]

Yeah, but I feel like there was a weird cowardly switcheroo that happened at the end of S1, when all of a sudden the show's all "no, it's GRACE that Finch lost, because a lead hero in a popular TV show could never be so unmanly as to grieve like that over another man!!!"

Plus, I suspect, a bit of behind-the-scenes "Oh, crap, Michael Emerson wants us to cast his wife."

(By the way, I've only seen through 2x05 and I'm very very spoiler averse. I'm sure Harold and Nathan's friendship, Harold's relationship with Grace, etc. get much more development later, but I really don't want to know yet.)

[king_touchy]

My memory of what happened by which episode is poor, so I'll skip specifics you haven't mentioned. I don't disagree about the switch, how Grace becomes the tragic loss instead of Nathan, which is so cowardly of the show - of all such shows. How awesome it would be if the bromance (of any show) was allowed to become romance. What you've pointed out about Nathan and Grace in Harold's life shows how Person of Interest … is not that show.

[kindkit]

What frustrates me is that for most of a season, the possibility was open that POI could be that show. I never realistically expected it, but I wanted the show to be that brave (especially since it's quite politically outspoken by US standards), and the deliberate positioning of Nathan as the most important person in the world to Harold gave me a little, reluctant sliver of hope. Which was then taken away! *sigh*