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POI watchalong: 2x11-2x13
This post covers three episodes to finish off the ginormous mid-season plot.
Episode summaries under the cut. My comments and further discussion will be on DreamWidth, because I'm having trouble getting LJ to load.
As always, anyone is welcome to join the discussion, but please, no spoilers for anything after the episodes discussed here.
2x11, "2πr"
Reese is in Riker's Island jail, in isolation, awaiting the results of DNA and fingerprint tests to sort out which of the men in suits is the man in a suit. Finch contacts him by somehow getting a phone into his cell and assures him that there's a contingency plan for this situation and he'll be free within 72 hours.
Meanwhile, Finch has to work the latest case himself with Fusco's help. The number is that of a high school student, Caleb Phipps, whose older brother Ryan was killed in 2010 when he was hit by a subway train, possibly after being pushed onto the tracks. Finch poses as a substitute math teacher to learn more about Phipps, who is brilliant but carefully keeps his grades and test scores average.
It turns out the Phipps has secretly become the supplier for the school's drug dealers. He has also coded a groundbreaking new data compression algorithm; his computer science teacher, Chris Beckner, meets with a venture capitalist and seems prepared to sell the algorithm as his own work. Meanwhile, the school's previous drug supplier threatens Caleb unless Caleb pays back all the money he made.
When Finch confronts him, Beckner denies having stolen Caleb's algorithm--he's going to give Caleb full credit and all the money. But Caleb only asked for half the money, in a trust fund for his alcoholic mother. Finch realizes that Caleb plans to kill himself out of guilt for his brother's death--Ryan was never pushed, instead he was killed because the two brothers were racing across the tracks. Finch finds him at the subway station where his brother was killed and talks him out of suicide.
Meanwhile, Carter has deleted Reese's fingerprints from the system and swapped his DNA sample for someone else's. This should lead to Reese being released, but at the last moment, FBI Agent Donnelly orders all four men held as "unlawful combatants" until their identities are proven to his satisfaction.
2x12, "Prisoner's Dilemma"
Donnelly asks Carter, as a former army interrogator, to question the four "man in the suit" suspects. She spends much of the episode interrogating them, with Agent Donnelly communicating with her via an earpiece that Finch eventually hacks into. Finch, meanwhile, is preparing a plan to break Reese out of Riker's island if necessary, and has sent Fusco to assist the latest number, a supermodel (throughout the episode we see moments of their adventures). And the CIA, or whoever they are who've been trying to eliminate the "rogue agent," infiltrate an assassin into Riker's Island to kill all four possiblities.
One suspect, Kelly, is quickly broken and eliminated as possibly being the man in the suit. Meanwhile, Reese is sent out to the exercise yard, where he's confronted by the Aryan gang from several episodes ago and then by Elias, who offers to help, though Reese has to refuse any obvious protection.
As the interrogation continues, Reese offers Carter an only slightly falsified version of much of his own background as we know it, with Finch creating evidence for the details Reese invents. Another suspect breaks and offers to identify the man in a suit, but Finch contacts him and persuades him, by threatening his family's finances, to change his mind. So he fingers the last remaining suspect who isn't Reese. But meanwhile, the assassin has killed Kelly, leading Donnelly to believe the whole investigation is compromised and that "Warren"/Reese must be the right man. Further interrogation provides no evidence, so Donnelly sends Reese out into the yard unprotected, to see if, when attacked by the Aryans, he'll show his combat training. Instead Reese allows himself to be beaten up until Elias eventually stops the fighting. And Carter gets the last suspect, Holt, to reveal a military background that makes him seem like the man in a suit.
Reese is freed, just as Finch was preparing to start breaking him out. But Donnelly follows either Carter or Reese to their meeting and arrests them both, planning to take them to a safe house until he finds a contact he can trust.
Finch, trying to track down what has happened to Carter and Reese, gets a ringing payphone that signifies a new number. He tries not to answer, but every phone he passes starts to ring and eventually he gives in. The number is Agent Donnelly's. Finch calls him, but too late to prevent his car from being deliberately hit by a truck. While Donnelly, Finch, and Reese are dazed in the wreckage, Kara Stanton approaches, shoots Donnelly dead, and drugs Reese.
At intervals throughout the episode we see flashbacks of Reese's work with Stanton, focusing on how she trained him to suppress his emotions and conscience.
2x13, "Dead Reckoning"
Reese wakes up to find himself Kara Stanton's prisoner. She's put a bomb vest on him and makes him and Mark Snow perform various tasks. First they pick up the hard drive Snow previously stole, which has now been formatted to Stanton's specs by cyber-criminals. Then they attack two ATF agents, taking their car and their jackets, and immediately receive a call on one agent's phone telling them they need to report a building where there's been a bomb threat. Before discarding the phone, Reese uses it to text "UXO" to Finch, who's been desperately trying to track him down with Carter and Fusco's help. "UXO" means "unexploded ordinance," and that plus the info on the phone's owners directs Finch's attention to the building.
Carter and Fusco go to the building while Finch tries to work out what's happening. Meanwhile, Reese and Snow have infiltrated a secret Defense Department lab on the top floor that produces cyberweapons to attack enemy computer systems. Since the lab is shielded from all electronic contact, Stanton sets the bomb timers to 15 minutes. Believing Stanton intends to steal a supervirus, Reese gets a scientist to wipe the entire system. He also calls Finch and tells him to stay away from the building. Stanton arrives and it turns out that her aim wasn't to steal anything, but to use the hard drive to insert her own program into the system. Once that's accomplished she resets Reese's and Snow's timers to 5 minutes, locks them in, and exits.
They manage to override the door lock, and Reese tries to convince Snow to go with him to get away from civilians before their bombs explode, but Snow escapes, saying he'll try to get to a CIA safe house nearby. Carter and Fusco arrive, but Reese sends them away for their own safety. Reese then goes to the roof, where he finds Finch waiting for him. Finch refuses to be sent away and manages to defuse the bomb at the last moment.
Throughout the episode are flashbacks showing how Stanton, after surviving the Ordos attack, was approached by an Englishman working on behalf on an unnamed agency. He offers her the name of the person who sold the laptop in exchange for her help with the project she's just completed. But when Stanton returns to her car, Snow is there waiting for her. Snow's bomb vest explodes, killing them both.
Finch is unable to figure out what's on the hard drive beyond the fact that it's set to take effect in five months. Carter learns that the FBI have decided that Snow was the man in a suit and have officially closed the case.
In the final scene, we flash back to the explosion of Stanton's car, and see the name that the mystery agent gave her: Harold Finch.
Episode summaries under the cut. My comments and further discussion will be on DreamWidth, because I'm having trouble getting LJ to load.
As always, anyone is welcome to join the discussion, but please, no spoilers for anything after the episodes discussed here.
2x11, "2πr"
Reese is in Riker's Island jail, in isolation, awaiting the results of DNA and fingerprint tests to sort out which of the men in suits is the man in a suit. Finch contacts him by somehow getting a phone into his cell and assures him that there's a contingency plan for this situation and he'll be free within 72 hours.
Meanwhile, Finch has to work the latest case himself with Fusco's help. The number is that of a high school student, Caleb Phipps, whose older brother Ryan was killed in 2010 when he was hit by a subway train, possibly after being pushed onto the tracks. Finch poses as a substitute math teacher to learn more about Phipps, who is brilliant but carefully keeps his grades and test scores average.
It turns out the Phipps has secretly become the supplier for the school's drug dealers. He has also coded a groundbreaking new data compression algorithm; his computer science teacher, Chris Beckner, meets with a venture capitalist and seems prepared to sell the algorithm as his own work. Meanwhile, the school's previous drug supplier threatens Caleb unless Caleb pays back all the money he made.
When Finch confronts him, Beckner denies having stolen Caleb's algorithm--he's going to give Caleb full credit and all the money. But Caleb only asked for half the money, in a trust fund for his alcoholic mother. Finch realizes that Caleb plans to kill himself out of guilt for his brother's death--Ryan was never pushed, instead he was killed because the two brothers were racing across the tracks. Finch finds him at the subway station where his brother was killed and talks him out of suicide.
Meanwhile, Carter has deleted Reese's fingerprints from the system and swapped his DNA sample for someone else's. This should lead to Reese being released, but at the last moment, FBI Agent Donnelly orders all four men held as "unlawful combatants" until their identities are proven to his satisfaction.
2x12, "Prisoner's Dilemma"
Donnelly asks Carter, as a former army interrogator, to question the four "man in the suit" suspects. She spends much of the episode interrogating them, with Agent Donnelly communicating with her via an earpiece that Finch eventually hacks into. Finch, meanwhile, is preparing a plan to break Reese out of Riker's island if necessary, and has sent Fusco to assist the latest number, a supermodel (throughout the episode we see moments of their adventures). And the CIA, or whoever they are who've been trying to eliminate the "rogue agent," infiltrate an assassin into Riker's Island to kill all four possiblities.
One suspect, Kelly, is quickly broken and eliminated as possibly being the man in the suit. Meanwhile, Reese is sent out to the exercise yard, where he's confronted by the Aryan gang from several episodes ago and then by Elias, who offers to help, though Reese has to refuse any obvious protection.
As the interrogation continues, Reese offers Carter an only slightly falsified version of much of his own background as we know it, with Finch creating evidence for the details Reese invents. Another suspect breaks and offers to identify the man in a suit, but Finch contacts him and persuades him, by threatening his family's finances, to change his mind. So he fingers the last remaining suspect who isn't Reese. But meanwhile, the assassin has killed Kelly, leading Donnelly to believe the whole investigation is compromised and that "Warren"/Reese must be the right man. Further interrogation provides no evidence, so Donnelly sends Reese out into the yard unprotected, to see if, when attacked by the Aryans, he'll show his combat training. Instead Reese allows himself to be beaten up until Elias eventually stops the fighting. And Carter gets the last suspect, Holt, to reveal a military background that makes him seem like the man in a suit.
Reese is freed, just as Finch was preparing to start breaking him out. But Donnelly follows either Carter or Reese to their meeting and arrests them both, planning to take them to a safe house until he finds a contact he can trust.
Finch, trying to track down what has happened to Carter and Reese, gets a ringing payphone that signifies a new number. He tries not to answer, but every phone he passes starts to ring and eventually he gives in. The number is Agent Donnelly's. Finch calls him, but too late to prevent his car from being deliberately hit by a truck. While Donnelly, Finch, and Reese are dazed in the wreckage, Kara Stanton approaches, shoots Donnelly dead, and drugs Reese.
At intervals throughout the episode we see flashbacks of Reese's work with Stanton, focusing on how she trained him to suppress his emotions and conscience.
2x13, "Dead Reckoning"
Reese wakes up to find himself Kara Stanton's prisoner. She's put a bomb vest on him and makes him and Mark Snow perform various tasks. First they pick up the hard drive Snow previously stole, which has now been formatted to Stanton's specs by cyber-criminals. Then they attack two ATF agents, taking their car and their jackets, and immediately receive a call on one agent's phone telling them they need to report a building where there's been a bomb threat. Before discarding the phone, Reese uses it to text "UXO" to Finch, who's been desperately trying to track him down with Carter and Fusco's help. "UXO" means "unexploded ordinance," and that plus the info on the phone's owners directs Finch's attention to the building.
Carter and Fusco go to the building while Finch tries to work out what's happening. Meanwhile, Reese and Snow have infiltrated a secret Defense Department lab on the top floor that produces cyberweapons to attack enemy computer systems. Since the lab is shielded from all electronic contact, Stanton sets the bomb timers to 15 minutes. Believing Stanton intends to steal a supervirus, Reese gets a scientist to wipe the entire system. He also calls Finch and tells him to stay away from the building. Stanton arrives and it turns out that her aim wasn't to steal anything, but to use the hard drive to insert her own program into the system. Once that's accomplished she resets Reese's and Snow's timers to 5 minutes, locks them in, and exits.
They manage to override the door lock, and Reese tries to convince Snow to go with him to get away from civilians before their bombs explode, but Snow escapes, saying he'll try to get to a CIA safe house nearby. Carter and Fusco arrive, but Reese sends them away for their own safety. Reese then goes to the roof, where he finds Finch waiting for him. Finch refuses to be sent away and manages to defuse the bomb at the last moment.
Throughout the episode are flashbacks showing how Stanton, after surviving the Ordos attack, was approached by an Englishman working on behalf on an unnamed agency. He offers her the name of the person who sold the laptop in exchange for her help with the project she's just completed. But when Stanton returns to her car, Snow is there waiting for her. Snow's bomb vest explodes, killing them both.
Finch is unable to figure out what's on the hard drive beyond the fact that it's set to take effect in five months. Carter learns that the FBI have decided that Snow was the man in a suit and have officially closed the case.
In the final scene, we flash back to the explosion of Stanton's car, and see the name that the mystery agent gave her: Harold Finch.
2x11, "2πr"
2) Carter is willing to cross a lot of lines to help Reese. Not just professional ones, either. It's a bit worrisome that she's willing to drug an innocent man so she can get a DNA sample from him--that's assault, and while she doesn't mean any harm, she still could have caused him harm. What if he reacted badly to the drugs? And does she get him to a safe place or just leave him passed out in his car?
3) Speaking of crossing lines, Donnelly definitely crosses into abuse of power at the end of the episode. Civil liberties issues are always a big theme on the show, and here it's highlighted when early in the episode the warden says "This is Rikers, not Guantanamo." But Donnelly has the power to turn Rikers into Guantanamo, and he does. It's a shame because I liked Donnelly up to that point.
4) Turning to the other plot, there's something delightful about Finch having to be a substitute teacher. But isn't the school supposed to be a specialized, selective math and humanities school? In that case, why are there so many tuned-out students and students who are basically just there to deal drugs? (Incidentally, if you pause and read the texts the students are sending when Finch force-pairs their phones, there's a hilarious one asking whether someone likes Ritalin or Adderall better.)
5) Somehow the surveillance comes across as unusually creepy in this episode. Part of it's the "teacher stalks an underage student" thing, and part of it is that we see Finch using the camera in the Phipps' apartment just to watch their ordinary, damaged lives--Mrs. P. drinking herself into a stupor and Caleb looking after her.
6) Finch clearly identifies with Caleb the troubled boy genius. He also seems strongly, personally affected by Caleb's situation with his mother, which makes me wonder if there was parental alcoholism or some other neglect in his childhood. Certainly Finch gives the impression of someone who never felt secure and loved in childhood.
7) The subway conversation is fairly well-handled, without too many platitudes, though I think the "you can't remove a digit from pi, therefore you shouldn't commit suicide" thing is specious and that Caleb would have seen it as specious. More affecting is Finch talking, in a way that is clearly painful to him, about his own mistakes and regrets. He describes himself and Caleb as "two reckless people," and says "the world is better off with both of us in it," which suggests to me that at some point he seriously thought through whether the world might be better off without him. (ETA: I also wanted to mention that extremely hesitant, brief shoulder-pat Finch gives Caleb. It suggests how difficult touch is for Finch, how much it doesn't come naturally.)
8) The implication that Finch was the mysterious teenage hacker who cracked the internet and made it public is intriguing, but I wonder if it's true. He never directly says that it was him, and one thing we know about Finch is that he easily and frequently deceives people with false personas. Is he just telling Caleb what he thinks Caleb needs to believe?
Re: 2x11, "2πr"
It's the same thing they did with the Root arc at the beginning of the season, establish a crisis and then pause in the middle of it for a number plot. I don't think it helps the pace, although it probably works well on viewing figures...
2) I worried about those things with the drugging too. Surely there were other ways? Perhaps not less illegal but less dangerous?
3) I feel that we're supposed to see Donnelly as having cracked under the strain of looking for his man in the suit, and forgetting that the ends don't justify the means. Which is quite a good message for the other characters in this ep, come to that.
4) In terms of the students, how long are classes in America meant to be anyway? Because Finch turns up to introduce himself and then the bell goes about 5 minutes later... I think I've seen that in High School based movies too (which are, of course, incredibly factually accurate). Or is that some kind of pre-lessons classroom session? Are there specific classes you're in with one class tutor in America, or do you just attend what's on your schedule? Or does it vary?
7) One of the benefits of this episode is that Finch has to interact directly with the number for once (handy, then, that it was someone he could easily identify with!) and I agree with your point about parallels seeming to be between their situations and also Finch's difficulties with touch. I definitely think Finch had some issues in his life significantly pre-dating the machine, Nathan and all the later baggage of his character.
Re: 2x11, "2πr"
Are there specific classes you're in with one class tutor in America, or do you just attend what's on your schedule?
I don't think I entirely understand what you mean, but the way high school typically works in the US is that the students choose their own classes (though there's a set of requirements they have to fulfill) and spend their days going from class to class. Typical class sessions are about 50 minutes (I don't think US public i.e. state schools have double classes as the UK does). So you would have your math class in room 123 with Ms. Y and then go to your English class in room 456 with Mr. Z.
7) If Finch really was using an alias as earlier as his freshman year at MIT, as is suggested in S1, then there's definitely something odd in his background, probably unpleasant.
Re: 2x11, "2πr"
Re: 2x11, "2πr"