POI 2x16-17 watchalong

[kindkit]

Episode summaries are under the cut, discussion in comments. As always, anyone's welcome to join in, but please no spoilers for anything after the episodes discussed here.



2x16, "Relevance"

This episode breaks sharply from the "number of the week" formula. It follows Sam Shaw and Michael Cole, two agents for Intelligence Support Activity (the agency created to act on the numbers considered relevant to national security). We first see them take down a terrorist cell in Germany that's making a dirty bomb. Their next assignment brings them to New York, but it turns out to be a set-up orchestrated by their handler, Wilson, on orders from above. Cole has been making inquiries into a 2011 operation in which he and Shaw killed Daniel Aquino, a nuclear scientist who had been going to sell information to Hezbollah; it turns out that the evidence against Aquino was faked by the US government. Later we learn that Aquino was one of the scientists involved in housing the machine after it was delivered to the US government and was killed to cover up the machine's existence and whereabouts.

In the ambush, Cole is killed but Shaw gets away. Reese, who has been shadowing her because her and Cole's numbers came up on the irrelevant list, tries to help her but she shoots at him. Shaw holes up in an apartment she liberates from drug dealers, then sets up a meeting with Veronica Sinclair, who helped Cole trace the Aquino evidence. But the person she actually meets is Root, impersonating Sinclair. Root is about to torture Shaw for information leading to the machine, but first another of Wilson's hit teams arrives, then Reese arrives in time to rescue her from them. He brings her to a meeting with Finch, but she again refuses all help.

Having demanded to meet with her ISA Control, Shaw is instead met by the head of the Office of Special Counsel, aka the guy who's been trying to find and kill Reese for ages. She turns over Cole's evidence to him because she believes in the mission, but she also kills Wilson as revenge for Cole's murder. OSC guy lets her go, but then ambushes her on the street and injects her with a lethal drug. However, she's saved by Leon Tao, who on Finch and Reese's instructions is posing as an EMT; he gives her the antidote and delivers her to a meeting with them at a cemetery. She again refuses help, but does accept Finch's phone number before leaving them stranded.


2x17, "Proteus"

The machine, after three days of silence, suddenly provides six numbers spread out across the country, all of whom turn out to be missing persons. Only one number, Jack Rollins, a Brooklyn antiques dealer, is local. Evidence at Rollins's apartment leads Reese to Rollins's rented beach house on Owen Island, on the tip of Long Island, where he goes despite a severe storm that's building up. While there he encounters FBI Agent Alan Fahey, who has been investigating possible links between the cases.

Meanwhile Finch goes back to Rollins's Brooklyn apartment and finds burned human teeth in the furnace. It seems a serial killer has been taking on the identities of his successive victims.

Reese and Fahey are stranded on Owen Island after the bridge goes out, along with a few people, and any one of the men may be the killer. Finch, who doesn't know that Reese is aware he may be tracking a serial killer, flies to Owen Island in a private plane to warn him. On the island, posing as a stormchaser called Harold Gull, he puts together a makeshift lie detector so Fahey and Reese can interrogate the suspects. They uncover various secrets, including an AWOL Marine and a marijuana smuggler, but nothing about the killer.

Meanwhile, Carter's research has uncovered what seems to be the killer's original identity. She radios the island's police station but can't get through, and after she calls, the deputy is murdered and the radio destroyed. Carter decides to drive to the island, and accepts Beecher's offer to accompany her, although she doesn't entirely trust him.

On the island, Reese is attacked by the marijuana smuggler and then, meaning to put the smuggler in the trunk of Fahey's car for safekeeping, he discovers the body of the real Agent Fahey. Finch, inside the police station, has also worked out the Fahey must be the killer due to anomalies in the polygraph results. Not!Fahey takes him outside, intending to kill him and steal his identity. Carter arrives in the nick of time, shooting Fahey, but Fahey is wearing body armor. Carter and Finch's lives are saved by Beecher, who shoots the killer more definitively.

Reese wants to take the six numbers as evidence that the machine is fine and not affected by Kara Stanton's virus, but Finch is not convinced.

Comments

2x16, "Relevance"

[kindkit]

1) Alternate title: "Our Actors Needed a Break." It's very light on all our regulars, and while the premise (what happens with the relevant list?) is interesting, I found it hard to care that much about people I didn't know. Nor was I especially sympathetic to Shaw, with her coldness and her personality disorder--though she's not entirely a remorseless killer, since she lets Lewis go.

2) The parallels between Shaw-Cole and Reese-Finch are made very very obvious, though there's no reason to believe Reese was ever as brutal as Shaw. But I could see a case for Shaw being what Reese might have become if he hadn't left the CIA/ISA, or what he might still become in the future if anything were to happen to Finch.

3) Finch comes awfully close to telling Shaw about the machine. At least, he tells her that the Research section from whom she gets her information doesn't exist. I don't find it plausible that he'd tell her that much; he has no reason to trust her and she could do absolutely anything with what he's told her.

4) And what does it say about the machine's functioning that the intelligence it provides can be interfered with, as the Aquino case proves? Was the machine fooled by the spoofed bank transfers? Or did it simply produce Aquino's number because he was targeted by the OSC? Or did Aquino's number in fact never come up at all, and the ISA was given it purely on the OSC's own initiative as part of their cover-up?

5) I'm uncomfortable with how unquestioningly this episode accepts the idea that the only protection against terrorism is extrajudicial killings. Finch seems not just to have sympathy for Shaw but to support her mission. I know Finch can be ruthless, but shouldn't he possibly be thinking that maybe potential terrorists could be arrested and put on trial instead of summarily shot? I feel like the show used to be less sanguine about this in S1, where it was pretty clear that what Reese and Stanton were doing was not really good regardless of the ultimate cause they served.

6) Plot nitpick: how can ISA agents act against terrorists on foreign soil when the machine delivers its intelligence in the form of Social Security numbers (which only US citizens have)? Are we supposed to assume there's an American connection to all these cases, and it's that person's number that was originally given?

Re: 2x16, "Relevance"

[halotolerant]

1&2) The premise is an interesting one and expands the wider universe of canon, but I agree, quite hard to work up real interest and investment in these people. I did grow to like Shaw, not least because she was so relentlessly, continually cold - no sudden backstory of damage and sorrow that 'explained' how she was, not breaking down and crying to show us her 'human side', just endlessly hard and cold, which is unusual and VERY unusual for a female character in particular. She is what Reese needed to be, in essence, and kind of highlights how wrong he really was for that work. I see your point that he might have become more like that over time, but I get the impression he'd always have felt a guilt and need to repress that she apparently doesn't.

4) I found myself asking a LOT of questions about the way the Machine works and is used. Yes, why the Aquino number? Was it a hoax number rather than from the Machine? How does the Machine identify 'terrorists' anyway? OK, so there's your common or garden bomb threat, but what about if someone is planning something more subtle? If it protects national security, how does it define that? Does it specifically prioritise the USA, or does it understand, say, the ramifications of destabilising an ally or somewhere in NATO? If the government was replaced in a coup (that it didn't predict) and a rebellion attempted to restore the previous government, would it help or hinder? At what point does it see how some things that are against national security in the short term might help it in the longer term? Given that it seems to know who Reese and Finch are, does it get who the government operatives are and could it try to manipulate them if they started misusing its info? And your points in (5) and (6) as well. I'm hoping there's coherent answers to this in the show's creators' minds, but I'm not entirely hopeful...

Going on from that, I was interested in Harold's line: 'Set out to right the world's wrongs and you'll almost certainly end up adding to them', which seemed to acknowledge these various issues.

And I also liked him telling Shaw that he wasn't Reese's boss or superior because 'No one's in charge. My friend and I help people'. You can see that Shaw can't really compute that, and this shows again how radical it must be for Reese in particular to operate like this.

Re: 2x16, "Relevance"

[kindkit]

how radical it must be for Reese in particular to operate like this

Excellent point. Reese, back in the day, was ready to kill Kara Stanton merely because he'd been ordered to--and she was his long term partner whom he'd been sleeping with! His arrangement with Finch, on the other hand, is not only more egalitarian, it also gives--or they've made it give--much more room for personal loyalties.

Re: 2x16, "Relevance"

[halotolerant]

I think it's also relevant that Finch is an independant operative - the people he's worked with/for before always had bosses and chains of command above them that might demand something of them that could hurt or kill Reese. Whereas Harold makes his own decisions and if Reese can trust him, that's all he needs to know.

2x17, "Proteus"

[kindkit]

1) This is such an old-school plot: strangers trapped together, and one of them's a killer! I loved it. Even though it was obvious very early that the killer had to be Fahey.

2) The confrontation between Finch and not!Fahey, aka Alex Declan, is great. The parallels in terms of their taste for impersonation are well drawn, and I loved that Declan was able to spot Finch as "an impostor." And Declan wearing Finch's glasses is massively creepy and brilliant. But Finch's refusal of the parallel is also valid--Finch may love playing roles, but he doesn't hurt other people in order to find personas to inhabit. One especially telling moment is when he says to Declan, "You're an amateur at this." Finch, by contrast, is the expert at multiple identities, having gone undetected all his adult life and possibly more, and not needing to kill anyone to do it.

3) I'm still hoping Beecher will turn out to be a good guy, or at least not an evil guy, so this episode gave me hope in that regard. I like that Carter, who is after all a police officer, a believer in evidence, is neither ready to condemn him purely on the FBI's word nor to trust him purely on his own word, or even after he saves her life.

4) Finch has a pilot's license? This would be the same Finch who earlier this season was thrilled to have ridden on the back of a motorcycle, would it? I don't care for this kind of thing, when stuff is pulled out a hat for plot reasons regardless of how it suits the characters.

5) If three days of silence is so unusual for the machine that Finch is worried, their work pace must be pretty damn relentless.

6) On to things I loved. Finch to Bear on having to go into Rollins's storage area: "I'll take a look downstairs, Bear, nothing to worry about." It's adorable and a bit wrenching that he reassures himself by telling the dog that he's absolutely fine, really. Unrelated but also a cute character note, Finch apparently travels with his own tea bags, or at least he seemed to be making tea at the police station.

7) And then there was the opening scene, which I love beyond words. Harold and John are dating now go to the movies together! With Bear, because of course Finch couldn't leave him out (which reads to me in part as Finch still being anxious in the aftermath of the kidnapping and not wanting to be out without as much protection as possible). Google Maps tells me that the Village Cinema they were at really exists (you can see its address on the awning in the background), which is awesome and also makes me wonder where exactly the library is supposed to be located. Anyway, I loved Reese's gentle teasing about the subtitles, and above all, I loved the business with him holding the umbrella. I don't know quite why it go to me so much, except that it's such a multivalent gesture: it's a submissive gesture in a sense, the sort of thing a servant would do, but it's also a masculine protective gesture. And it means they went out in the rain with only one umbrella, so they're perfectly comfortable and happy walking closely enough together that one umbrella will do. (Also, once Reese has the umbrella ready, he casually puts his hand on Finch's back to start him moving. Their comfort level with each other, physical and emotional, is vastly greater than it used to be. Not only do they spend time together outside of work, but they touch. Amazing what a little bomb-vest-defusing will do, isn't it?) I could happily rewatch this opening scene on a loop for a long time.

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[halotolerant]

1) I did enjoy the classic 'strangers trapped in a place and one of them is the killer' set up and the stylistic nods to classic slasher (in the violence sense!) films such as the 'he's behind you' moment with Finch in the room with Fahey and the 'the lights go out and then someone appears dead' thing

4) Headcanon version - Finch *possesses* a pilot's license but has never actually qualified for it or flown until this time, when he does it through pure love of Reese? Maybe not... I agree, these random notes that don't fit suggest an inadequate writers' bible - I wonder if, because so many of the script writers are also producers, they presume they 'know' all the canon and don't get the editing a writer-of-the-week might?

Either way, it's still another pretty epic bit of devotion on Finch's part to fly out in a giant storm to help Reese, who isn't even in specific immediate danger when Finch takes the decision.

5) I thought this, remembering our previous discussion about how frequently they might have to work. If three days off seems like a lot, than that is certainly gruelling.

7) OMG the cinema date visit. Seems to suggest that (a) despite spending a lot of time either working literally together or in radio contact, they still socialise together when there's no work, (b) this is usual, Harold says they have to include Bear in 'our rainy day activities' (rather than 'my') and (c) UMBRELLA YES. I really like your break down of Reese holding the umbrella being both submissive and servile and yet also very protective and guiding/leading. It matches the balance in their wider relationship nicely.

I may have watched this scene three times in quick succession to grin at it... *g*

Interesting note about Finch's level of disability. Reese chastises him (in a teasing way) for putting Bear in an assistance dog vest to get him into the cinema. Finch calls himself 'handicapable', which is a word I'd not heard before and seemingly is a more acceptable version of 'handicapped'? I think he says it somewhat ironically, but it does seem to suggest that Finch has a self-image wherein he has a disability, whereas perhaps Reese perceives him as more able? (Whilst also seeing him as vulnerable because Reese sees basically all humans who aren't him as vulnerable, especially if he likes them *g*)

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[kindkit]

4) Considering Finch's approach to bomb-defusing is "I understand the theory," I wouldn't entirely be surprised if his entire pilot training consisted of reading the manual. Maybe 20 minutes with a simulator if he was being extra careful.

7) I think "handicapable" is a US-only word. As far as I can tell, it was at some point promoted seriously as a non-offensive term, but most disabled people seem to have found it loathsome. Personally I've never heard it used unironically, although googling brings it up in the names of a lot of businesses offering care services, mobility aids, etc.

"Sometimes I need help," Finch says, which is interesting because the help Bear offers seems to be mostly psychological. He clearly gives Finch more of a sense of safety, and I think there a plenty of suggestions that Finch's trauma over the kidnapping is not entirely gone (and may never be). I wonder if, in a sense, the kidnapping made Finch feel more disabled than he had before, because it put him in a position where his mobility problems and lack of speed made him almost helpless, which he certainly is not in daily life. But now that he's got Bear, he still may not be able to fight or run away, but anyone who messes with him will be summarily eaten.

I think Reese may be so caught up in how much he admires and loves Finch that he doesn't quite realize the way Finch's disability makes him especially vulnerable. Despite evidence to the contrary, he thinks Finch can solve anything with his giant brain. He knows Finch needs protection, but as you said, he thinks of almost everyone that way. And, well, Reese comes from a background where physical skills and physical self-reliance are highly valued; he may not want to think of Finch as disabled.

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[halotolerant]

I definitely think Bear represents psychological security more than physical assistance, and whilst Reese got Bear for the purpose of protecting Finch, I'm not sure he could understand the impact in that way on Finch. I can certainly believe that the kidnapping, as you say, made Finch feel more disabled and that having a protector helps, but also having a companion whilst walking, if walking is hard, is very helpful for just keeping going.

Reese comes from a background where physical skills and physical self-reliance are highly valued; he may not want to think of Finch as disabled
Indeed. In Reese's former life, if you were disabled then frankly you weren't very useful and/or you were highly likely to be killed. And that is not how he wants to think of Harold's prospects. But because Harold is in the 'normal' world where those standards aren't the same, Reese may have forgotten that, relatively speaking, Harold is still at a disadvantage there too.

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[kindkit]

I keep thinking about how much I would have loved the episode "Proteus" could have been, the one where they never get a number and instead they just hang out the whole time. Hopefully this would involve them being trapped in the library all day by the massive storm. Boredom might actually drive them to talk to each other, and that would be amazing.

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[halotolerant]

Bottle show! Oh yes, that would amazing *g* Unfortunately, I think they have enough budget to avoid that...

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[kindkit]

Bottle show

Thanks, I couldn't remember the term for it.

Is it wrong for me to hope they run out of money? Just once?

Re: 2x17, "Proteus"

[halotolerant]

Hope they run out of money, and that a writer gets possessed by the muse of Arden Winch...

-----> REESE AND FINCH SPEND THE DAY STRIPPED TO THE WAIST, WASHING AND TALKING ABOUT FEELZ IN AN AMAZING RESTRAINED POWERFUL MANNER *g*