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?

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.