POI 2x16-17 watchalong
Apr. 8th, 2014 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitEpisode 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.
2x17, "Proteus"
Date: 2014-04-09 12:21 am (UTC)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 nowgo 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"
Date: 2014-04-09 12:56 pm (UTC)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
datevisit. 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"
Date: 2014-04-09 08:56 pm (UTC)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"
Date: 2014-04-10 12:04 pm (UTC)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"
Date: 2014-04-10 12:21 am (UTC)Re: 2x17, "Proteus"
Date: 2014-04-10 12:05 pm (UTC)Re: 2x17, "Proteus"
Date: 2014-04-10 02:51 pm (UTC)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"
Date: 2014-04-11 04:51 pm (UTC)-----> REESE AND FINCH SPEND THE DAY STRIPPED TO THE WAIST, WASHING AND TALKING ABOUT FEELZ IN AN AMAZING RESTRAINED POWERFUL MANNER *g*