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POI 2x16-17 watchalong
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.
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.
2x16, "Relevance"
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"
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"
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"