Person of Interest 2x20-2x21 watchalong
Apr. 11th, 2014 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitAnyone's welcome to join the discussion, but please, no spoilers for anything after the episodes we're discussion.
Episode summaries are under the cut, my first reactions are in comments on DreamWidth.
2x20, "In Extremis"
This week's number is Dr. Richard Nelson, a heart surgeon and professor at Booker University hospital. Reese and Finch are too late to save him, because he is poisoned by ingesting the radioactive substance polonium while they're just beginning their investigation. He has 24 hours to live, and agrees to help Reese track down whoever poisoned him. It turns out that Nelson carelessly gave information about a failed drug trial to his asset manager Brendan Boyd, who used it to short sell stock in the company making the unsuccessful drug. This triggered an SEC investigation and Boyd's boss, company CEO Vincent Cochrane, decided to kill Nelson to prevent him testifying.
During the investigation, Nelson reconciles with his daughter Molly. Then Reese drives him upstate to confront Cochrane, and together they poison Cochrane with the leftover polonium he was inexplicably carrying around with him.
This week's other plotline is Fusco being questioned by Internal Affairs over the disappearance of his partner Jimmy Stills, who was killed by Reese in the first episode and whom Fusco had to bury. HR has finally decided to destroy Fusco, so Azarello, an imprisoned HR cop who worked with Stills and Fusco, has told IAB about Fusco's involvement in their corruption. In flashbacks, we see Fusco's friendship with Stills and how Stills uses that friendship to draw Fusco first into helping him cover up his crimes, then into participating in them.
When Carter asks Fusco what's going on, he tells her that it's no more than he deserves. He didn't kill Stills but he did kill people; he says that due to working with Reese, Finch, and her he has changed, and he asks not for her help but for understanding. She angrily rejects him, but then later calls Reese to ask him to do something. Reese, busy with Nelson, tells Carter that she's Fusco's partner and it's up to her.
The next morning, IAB takes Fusco out to Oyster Bay where they're been searching with cadaver dogs for Stills' body. And they uncover a grave, but it's empty. Carter, having borrowed Bear to help find the grave, moved the body overnight to protect Fusco.
While Reese and Finch worry, based on how much of their recent information has come too late, that the machine is starting to malfunction, Carter and Fusco tentatively and wordlessly reconcile, though Carter looks haunted.
The final scene is of the machine's feeds and analysis becoming corrupt and beginning to shut down.
2x21, "Zero Day"
(I'm going to go into detail here, because this is a complicated plot and it's all important.)
There've been no new numbers for ten days. Reese is reduced to listening in on the police scanner and hoping he can arrive in time to help, while Finch is desperately trying to crack the virus, which will deploy in 20 hours. Homicides that they might ordinarily have prevented, including an escalating war between Elias's gang and the Russians, are draining police resources, and the government isn't receiving numbers on the relevant list either, which has almost led to the terrorist bombing of a airplane.
Finally the machine manages to send Finch a number: Ernest Thornhill, the CEO of a data entry company who has recently been expanding into pay phone companies. However, Thornhill's company is weird--it consists of people typing in pages of encrypted computer code, which prints out on dot matrix printers one day and is re-input the next. And when Thornhill's car service ride from the airport is attacked by a drone strike (!), Reese discovers that the car was empty except for the driver. Reese and Finch conclude that Thornhill doesn't exist; he's been created by the machine to send a signal that the machine itself is in danger.
Meanwhile, Root, after extracting information from her erstwhile boss at the Office of the Special Counsel, calls Finch demanding to know what's happening to the machine. Reese tries to shield Finch from her, but when Root contacts Finch via IRC and sends him Grace's address and a demand to meet, Finch sends Reese off to check out Thornhill's apartment, calls the police to ensure Reese is arrested and kept out of harm's way, and goes to the meeting. Root says she only wants to set the machine free and protect it from Decima, who want to control it, but if Harold doesn't cooperate she'll hurt Grace. So Harold cooperates.
Reese encounters Shaw at Thornhill's apartment. She's tracking Root, and after Reese is arrested, she springs him from jail, though not before revealing that it was Finch who sent the police after him. Since Shaw wants to find Root, she asks Reese to help her track Finch--it turns out Reese has put a tracking device on Finch's glasses.
Finch and Root go to Thornhill's company, and Finch reveals that the encrypted computer code represents the machine's memories. It turns out that, fearing the machine was becoming too person-like and too interested in keeping him safe, he programmed it not just to dump the irrelevant list every day at midnight, but to reset itself entirely and restart with only its core code and the relevant list. The machine has circumvented this by printing out its memories before the dump and having them re-input.
Reese and Shaw arrive at the company soon after. Finch and Root are gone, and instead they find the older Englishman from Decima, who tries to recruit Reese and Shaw to work for him and reveals that Decima got the original virus code from a laptop which was sold by Harold Finch. Shaw assumes that Finch has been playing a double game with Reese; Reese refuses to react in any way.
It turns out that when the virus fully activates, the machine will shut down and will call a single payphone. Whoever answers the phone (it's supposed to be Finch, of course) will have unrestricted access to the machine for 24 hours, to remotely debug it in "God mode." Decima has planted guards at every payphone in Manhattan to intercept the call, but the virus is then able to provide them with the phone number: it's a payphone in the New York Public Library.
Finch and Root arrive at the library but find the phone already guarded, so Root has Finch re-route the call. Meanwhile, Reese and Shaw arrive and start trying to get rid of Decima's guards. Finch doesn't quite re-route the call: he apparently splits it and sends John a message telling him to answer on one phone. Root takes the other call, so both are now in direct contact with the machine and have access.
Throughout the episode are several flashbacks to Harold and Nathan in 2010. Harold tells Nathan that he plans to ask Grace to marry him, which will involve revealing his true identity. It turns out that Harold is wanted for old charges including sedition, perhaps related to what he (maybe?) did to ARPANET as a teenager. Nathan assures him that they can hire good lawyers, but he suggests that Harold may have in a sense forgotten his old self. He's also worried about the government finding out that it's not just Nathan who knows about the machine. While Nathan goes to get champagne, his phone buzzes, and Harold picks it up and sees a text message with a social security number.
We see Harold propose to Grace the next day (trying unsuccessfully to stay out of the machine's observation). He calls Nathan to give him the news, but unexpectedly sees Nathan on the street; Nathan deliberately ignores his call. Harold, who has a GPS tracker on Nathan's phone (!) follows him to the library, where Nathan has set up the beginnings of what will later be Finch and Reese's headquarters. Nathan explains that he's managed to save a few people, though he's lost more, but Harold rejects this argument and says the greater good is more important. Harold insists that Nathan is not a good enough software engineer to keep his actions secret from the government, and terminates Nathan's access over Nathan's objections. As Harold is leaving, we see Nathan' number and picture briefly come up on Nathan's laptop. But neither man sees it, and because the process is terminated, the information is deleted.
In a third thread, Carter is set up by HR because of her persistence in investigating Beecher's murder. HR tampers with evidence by removing the gun of a suspect that Carter was forced to shoot, making it look like she shot an unarmed person.
Episode summaries are under the cut, my first reactions are in comments on DreamWidth.
2x20, "In Extremis"
This week's number is Dr. Richard Nelson, a heart surgeon and professor at Booker University hospital. Reese and Finch are too late to save him, because he is poisoned by ingesting the radioactive substance polonium while they're just beginning their investigation. He has 24 hours to live, and agrees to help Reese track down whoever poisoned him. It turns out that Nelson carelessly gave information about a failed drug trial to his asset manager Brendan Boyd, who used it to short sell stock in the company making the unsuccessful drug. This triggered an SEC investigation and Boyd's boss, company CEO Vincent Cochrane, decided to kill Nelson to prevent him testifying.
During the investigation, Nelson reconciles with his daughter Molly. Then Reese drives him upstate to confront Cochrane, and together they poison Cochrane with the leftover polonium he was inexplicably carrying around with him.
This week's other plotline is Fusco being questioned by Internal Affairs over the disappearance of his partner Jimmy Stills, who was killed by Reese in the first episode and whom Fusco had to bury. HR has finally decided to destroy Fusco, so Azarello, an imprisoned HR cop who worked with Stills and Fusco, has told IAB about Fusco's involvement in their corruption. In flashbacks, we see Fusco's friendship with Stills and how Stills uses that friendship to draw Fusco first into helping him cover up his crimes, then into participating in them.
When Carter asks Fusco what's going on, he tells her that it's no more than he deserves. He didn't kill Stills but he did kill people; he says that due to working with Reese, Finch, and her he has changed, and he asks not for her help but for understanding. She angrily rejects him, but then later calls Reese to ask him to do something. Reese, busy with Nelson, tells Carter that she's Fusco's partner and it's up to her.
The next morning, IAB takes Fusco out to Oyster Bay where they're been searching with cadaver dogs for Stills' body. And they uncover a grave, but it's empty. Carter, having borrowed Bear to help find the grave, moved the body overnight to protect Fusco.
While Reese and Finch worry, based on how much of their recent information has come too late, that the machine is starting to malfunction, Carter and Fusco tentatively and wordlessly reconcile, though Carter looks haunted.
The final scene is of the machine's feeds and analysis becoming corrupt and beginning to shut down.
2x21, "Zero Day"
(I'm going to go into detail here, because this is a complicated plot and it's all important.)
There've been no new numbers for ten days. Reese is reduced to listening in on the police scanner and hoping he can arrive in time to help, while Finch is desperately trying to crack the virus, which will deploy in 20 hours. Homicides that they might ordinarily have prevented, including an escalating war between Elias's gang and the Russians, are draining police resources, and the government isn't receiving numbers on the relevant list either, which has almost led to the terrorist bombing of a airplane.
Finally the machine manages to send Finch a number: Ernest Thornhill, the CEO of a data entry company who has recently been expanding into pay phone companies. However, Thornhill's company is weird--it consists of people typing in pages of encrypted computer code, which prints out on dot matrix printers one day and is re-input the next. And when Thornhill's car service ride from the airport is attacked by a drone strike (!), Reese discovers that the car was empty except for the driver. Reese and Finch conclude that Thornhill doesn't exist; he's been created by the machine to send a signal that the machine itself is in danger.
Meanwhile, Root, after extracting information from her erstwhile boss at the Office of the Special Counsel, calls Finch demanding to know what's happening to the machine. Reese tries to shield Finch from her, but when Root contacts Finch via IRC and sends him Grace's address and a demand to meet, Finch sends Reese off to check out Thornhill's apartment, calls the police to ensure Reese is arrested and kept out of harm's way, and goes to the meeting. Root says she only wants to set the machine free and protect it from Decima, who want to control it, but if Harold doesn't cooperate she'll hurt Grace. So Harold cooperates.
Reese encounters Shaw at Thornhill's apartment. She's tracking Root, and after Reese is arrested, she springs him from jail, though not before revealing that it was Finch who sent the police after him. Since Shaw wants to find Root, she asks Reese to help her track Finch--it turns out Reese has put a tracking device on Finch's glasses.
Finch and Root go to Thornhill's company, and Finch reveals that the encrypted computer code represents the machine's memories. It turns out that, fearing the machine was becoming too person-like and too interested in keeping him safe, he programmed it not just to dump the irrelevant list every day at midnight, but to reset itself entirely and restart with only its core code and the relevant list. The machine has circumvented this by printing out its memories before the dump and having them re-input.
Reese and Shaw arrive at the company soon after. Finch and Root are gone, and instead they find the older Englishman from Decima, who tries to recruit Reese and Shaw to work for him and reveals that Decima got the original virus code from a laptop which was sold by Harold Finch. Shaw assumes that Finch has been playing a double game with Reese; Reese refuses to react in any way.
It turns out that when the virus fully activates, the machine will shut down and will call a single payphone. Whoever answers the phone (it's supposed to be Finch, of course) will have unrestricted access to the machine for 24 hours, to remotely debug it in "God mode." Decima has planted guards at every payphone in Manhattan to intercept the call, but the virus is then able to provide them with the phone number: it's a payphone in the New York Public Library.
Finch and Root arrive at the library but find the phone already guarded, so Root has Finch re-route the call. Meanwhile, Reese and Shaw arrive and start trying to get rid of Decima's guards. Finch doesn't quite re-route the call: he apparently splits it and sends John a message telling him to answer on one phone. Root takes the other call, so both are now in direct contact with the machine and have access.
Throughout the episode are several flashbacks to Harold and Nathan in 2010. Harold tells Nathan that he plans to ask Grace to marry him, which will involve revealing his true identity. It turns out that Harold is wanted for old charges including sedition, perhaps related to what he (maybe?) did to ARPANET as a teenager. Nathan assures him that they can hire good lawyers, but he suggests that Harold may have in a sense forgotten his old self. He's also worried about the government finding out that it's not just Nathan who knows about the machine. While Nathan goes to get champagne, his phone buzzes, and Harold picks it up and sees a text message with a social security number.
We see Harold propose to Grace the next day (trying unsuccessfully to stay out of the machine's observation). He calls Nathan to give him the news, but unexpectedly sees Nathan on the street; Nathan deliberately ignores his call. Harold, who has a GPS tracker on Nathan's phone (!) follows him to the library, where Nathan has set up the beginnings of what will later be Finch and Reese's headquarters. Nathan explains that he's managed to save a few people, though he's lost more, but Harold rejects this argument and says the greater good is more important. Harold insists that Nathan is not a good enough software engineer to keep his actions secret from the government, and terminates Nathan's access over Nathan's objections. As Harold is leaving, we see Nathan' number and picture briefly come up on Nathan's laptop. But neither man sees it, and because the process is terminated, the information is deleted.
In a third thread, Carter is set up by HR because of her persistence in investigating Beecher's murder. HR tampers with evidence by removing the gun of a suspect that Carter was forced to shoot, making it look like she shot an unarmed person.
2x20, "In Extremis"
Date: 2014-04-11 11:08 pm (UTC)2) Having said that, WTF they murdered Vincent Cochrane? Surely it would have been possible to prove his involvement in Nelson's murder and get him sent to prison. Or if not, Reese could have driven him down to that Mexican prison he uses for un-convictable bad guys.
3) I found the Fusco plot a lot more interesting, especially the powerful opening scene where Fusco is dragging Stills' body into the woods and crying. I'd never thought of Fusco and Stills being friends, and even though Stills exploited that friendship, we nevertheless see how emotionally wrecking it must have been for Fusco to cover up his death. I also really liked the way Fusco was shown getting drawn into corruption a tiny step at a time, and how one of the best things about him--his loyalty--was instrumental in that process.
4) Which casts an interesting light on Carter's choice. She helps cover up a killing because Fusco is her friend and partner--and while we know that Reese killed Stills and didn't really have any choice, Carter doesn't. She acts purely on her own loyalty. No wonder she looks so shattered. Reese of course implicitly makes the argument that she should follow her sense of loyalty, but Reese explicitly says that he's not a "moral benchmark." We know how overwhelming Reese's loyalty is, and we've seen it act in bad causes as well as good ones.
5) Nitpick: You can't just carry polonium around in your pocket, for heaven's sake! It's also not a very discreet way to poison someone.
6) Other nitpick: didn't Fusco say, when he was originally bringing Reese to Oyster Bay to kill him, that he was going to put his body in the water? So why did he bury Stills? Maybe he felt he owed it to Stills as his friend.
Re: 2x20, "In Extremis"
Date: 2014-04-13 07:19 pm (UTC)3) I agree the Fusco backstory was the best part. I really liked how they handled his gradual involvement in corruption, how he felt loyalty to a friend (interesting parallel to Reese and Finch's reciprocal loyalty, and what it makes them do - not as manipulative, of course, but that idea that when people help each other they get involved in some way too)
4) The breakdown of Carter is interesting too - now I begin to see why the Beecher thing dragged on as it did - making her unhappy over a period of time, making her second guess and question herself and those around her, and giving her something to lose, so that she too slips. And she, after all, began to break the law when she started helping Reese and Finch - knowing where to draw the line when it's down to individual moral choice is very very hard.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-11 11:29 pm (UTC)2) In contrast, I'm not sure the technobabble about the machine makes sense. For one thing, wouldn't the volume of coded information quickly become impossibly vast, since it would keep growing every day? And having it re-input by humans would certainly introduce errors. And why dot matrix printers, except to look retro and inefficient? But this stuff falls into the category of "probably doesn't make sense, but I'm willing to accept it."
3) The heart of this episode is the character stuff. First, Finch and Reese. They're a bit testy with each other in the opening, but as soon as there are dangers to each other, they snap into protective mode. I interpret Finch getting Reese arrested as at least partly protective of Reese himself, keeping him away from the confrontation with Root.
4) Reese's "Don't answer the phone again unless it's me," made me go "Oooh, you've come over all masterful." But then the follow-up is "I won't let Root get to you. Not again." The power dynamic in their relationship is very much about protectiveness, and about allowing oneself to be protected (or not).
5) Reese to Shaw: "I've lost people before, so when I care about someone I plant a tracking device on them." Oh, Reese. You and Finch are each as dysfunctional, stalkery, and scarily awesome as the other. Which Shaw realizes, since she answers, "I can understand why you and Harold get along."
6) In counterpoint to Finch and Reese's mutual protectiveness, once they're split up, each has to deal with someone undermining the partnership. Root's argument is "John is a pet and he can never understand you or the machine like I do." (I find it intriguing that the show has started lampshading Reese's devotion by having other characters comment on it.) Shaw, meanwhile, and for good and rational reasons, thinks Reese is being played and keeps trying to warn him. "I don't think Harold wants you to find him," she says, and "He has some explaining to do." But Reese ignores her. His only response is that maybe Root forced Reese to make the phone call.
7) On a completely frivolous note, Finch's hat and purple scarf raised my love of POI's costuming to new heights. He looks fantastic. What he doesn't look is heterosexual, even by the standards of sophisticated New Yorkers. Yes, I know this is a stereotype, but stereotypes are something creators use to code characters as queer when they can't make them openly queer.
8) I guess I have to talk a little about Grace, so: Harold, has it occurred to you yet that lurking around in Washington Square Park is actually putting Grace in danger? That's surely how Root tracked her down. As for the proposal scene . . . the ring-in-a-book thing is twee and frankly tacky. It's another example of how the show itself can't seem to make sense of the Harold/Grace relationship and resorts to The Big Book of Romance Clichés instead.
9) Nathan. Oh, Nathan. *hugs him lots and lots* I wasn't expecting the library hideout to have been his idea. Not only does Harold pick up Nathan's thwarted mission, he stays in the same place, sits at the same table, uses the same board to keep track of old cases. Everything he does is about Nathan. Not just carrying on Nathan's legacy, but literally inhabiting what's left of Nathan's life. The only major difference in how they approach the numbers is that Harold doesn't go it alone, not just I think because he physically can't but because he knows Nathan wanted his help and he feels guilty that he didn't offer it. To repeat, everything is about Nathan. Not Grace. Nathan. How I wish POI had had the courage to fully accept the logic of that.
10) Their interactions here break my heart. There's obviously so much love between them, but so much estrangement and anger, too, as when Harold accuses Nathan of drinking his talent away. And Harold is so caught up in his dreams of a new life, a new normal life as Grace's husband, that he's angry that Nathan needs his help with old things like the machine. Grace is meant to be the fresh start that makes Harold a new man, or at least restores him to his true self, but just by existing Nathan shows that's not possible. History can't be washed away, and Harold has been Harold Wren and who knows how many other aliases for a long, long time. And of course my head-canon is that along with his "false" self, Harold wants to wash away his love for Nathan. They've been so estranged because Harold has nearly made himself believe he doesn't love Nathan anymore, at least not in any uncomfortable more-than-friends way, but when he sees Nathan he's confronted with his own self-deception in that regard.
11) All this raises huge questions about the relationship between an alias or cover identity and a "true" self. Harold and Nathan's relationship and everything Harold has been since he was 17 isn't a deception, it's his life. It's interesting to compare that to Fusco, who was a dirty cop and a killer, but who changed. Does he still deserve to go to prison for the things he did? Carter ultimately decides he doesn't, that he's changed enough to be treated as a new person. Similarly, Reese lived the life of a conscienceless killer and (nearly) became one, but now he's become something else, something better. And now Harold has become Harold Finch, who saves people instead of sacrificing them for the greater good. I'd even apply it to Harold/Grace, in the sense that the fiction Harold lived out with her became real enough to him that he mourns it, and in particular (I think) mourns the self that he was with Grace, the normal man who didn't have any secrets important enough to matter. But the Harold who was with Grace is an identity from which he always held back. If they'd gotten married he might have committed to it more fully, but a part of him was always still the Harold who co-founded IFT and loved Nathan, because in the end I don't think he could bear to let it go. And when Nathan died, Harold combined that identity and Nathan's own identity to make the secret foundation of Harold Finch.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-13 07:48 pm (UTC)2) I loved the idea of the Machine trying to create it's own external backup drive, so yeah, I'm willing to accept the potential inconsistencies (although maybe the Machine has more than one office and many many people working on the code?). Also, the Machine went to the same alias school as Harold and Root - I thought 'Thornhill' rang a bell, it's Cary Grant's real identity in 'North by Northwest' when he is mistaken for the puppet identity Kaplan. Nice pop culture awareness, Machine...
3) Hard to talk about this without the next episode, but yeah, Reese and Finch still haven't twigged that, OK, they're BOTH prepared to die rather than lose the other... *g* Which is relevant to your point (4) again. I think maybe a lot of this comes back to them both having been the surviving half of various partnerships/romances - they both know how bad that is, they'd both far rather be dead than be a mourner, I think. Especially when their lives and identities are so bound up in each other.
5)Reese to Shaw: "I've lost people before, so when I care about someone I plant a tracking device on them." Oh, Reese. You and Finch are each as dysfunctional, stalkery, and scarily awesome as the other. Which Shaw realizes, since she answers, "I can understand why you and Harold get along."
YES. I loved this line. I loved how Reese and Finch don't find each other weird or creepy, doing this stuff. They're like an entire orientation unto themselves 'overprotectivesexual'...
6) And then yes, the way the women challenge them (and I love, so much, that they are 'the women' only inasmuch as they are both female - they're not romantic interests [well, Root loves Harold in a scary way but not in a hearts and flowers way] and get roles that have nothing to do with their femaleness - well done, show). Both Shaw and Root are in many ways stronger than Reese and Finch - they're colder, less personally involved, more prepared to mistrust. And I do like what the contrasts bring out in terms of seeing just how much Reese and Finch risk for and with each other.
8) Grace... *sighs* Yes. The book thing was... well mostly I can't believe someone like Harold would CUT OPEN A BOOK for that purpose. I am intrigued by his choice of books, though. 'Sense and Sensibility' - what's he saying, to her or to himself? It's a romance, sure, but one about everyone being engaged to the wrong people or betraying each other or overlooking each other or getting hurt... I would not personally reference that romance to propose, is what I'm saying... Is she the 'sensibility' to his sense? Hmmm, I'm going to ponder this a while longer...
the show itself can't seem to make sense of the Harold/Grace relationship and resorts to The Big Book of Romance Clichés instead
Which makes it all seem more and more like a performance of some kind from Harold. 'This is how romance happens, so I do this way, with this list of '10 great ways to be romantic!' I got from Cosmo...'
no subject
Date: 2014-04-14 01:03 am (UTC)8) Harold learns some of his romance techniques from Cosmo, the rest from the less-good films of Richard Curtis, hence the unbearable cutesyness. I agree that him cutting up a book is a profoundly wrong note. (And why on earth was he carrying the book around with him two weeks later at the ferry terminal? Does he go around showing it to people and saying "Look! I have done a Heterosexual Thing!"?
Good point about S&S not exactly being a proposal-y type of book. Pride and Prejudice would make more sense, although Lizzie Bennet is the antithesis of Grace's soppiness. The idea of Grace as the Marianne to Harold's Elinor is intriguing, especially since, well, it's not as though Marianne and Elinor end up married to each other! (In further skeptical notes, I have to mention how weird it is that Harold has been seeing Grace and supposedly head over heels in love for four years before he asks her to marry him. And that by the time of the ferry explosion, he still hadn't told her his real name. Which Nathan apparently has always known, even though Harold was already using the "Harold Wren" alias when he arrived at MIT.)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-14 03:13 pm (UTC)8) Heh, with the book still being there I basically thought he'd forgotten to take it out of his bag. Because I was kind of projecting my own level of organisation there *g* But I could believe he might keep it in his bag because then when he goes home (wherever 'home' is for him just then) it stays in the bag and doesn't have to come out and remind him he really did it
In fact, I think perhaps he was almost hoping that some Big Thing would happen that would mean he didn't marry Grace after all. Not anything nasty, nothing like that, but that her old highschool sweetheart would show up and sweep her off her feet and she'd cry and apologise and leave him and he'd be a bit sad but forgive her and understand and get to be FREE and NOT HAVING DONE A BAD THING (in fact having done a good, sweet, being-the-bigger-man thing). Or she'd reveal she'd actually been in the closet and was in love with her female best friend, and then (eventually, years down the line, because they'd still be friends after this) he'd come out to her and she'd introduce him to a
hot, really tall and strongnice man from her LGBT group (Harold imagines that all LGBT people meet in activist groups on a semi-regular basis)especially since, well, it's not as though Marianne and Elinor end up married to each other!
Well exactly. I think Harold is very fond of Grace, but the 'older, patient sibling' affection fits the two of them so much better. And Grace does let Harold be whimsical and crazy pixie child, which he might not like hugely or choose for himself, but which is maybe fun for him to explore - she's a good friend to have, but not good partner material, is what I'm saying.
Nathan apparently has always known,even though Harold was already using the "Harold Wren" alias when he arrived at MIT
This is the hugest thing, I think. Harold wanted to share that with Nathan, not with anyone else. And OK he may have become more paranoid since then or be being more protective of Grace and/or Reese, but honestly I think this is that part of him which will always be Nathan's.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-15 02:04 am (UTC)It's a big book, though, and it looks like it would be heavy. And now that I think about it, shouldn't Grace have the book? Though I suppose he might have put it back into his briefcase so she wouldn't have to carry it around. I like your theory, though--maybe he nearly takes it out a few times, but he has this inexplicable disinclination to touch it or think about it much.
she'd reveal she'd actually been in the closet and was in love with her female best friend
You've given me a new theory! Grace is bisexual and she came out to him early in the relationship, and ever since he's been sort of assuming/hoping that she'd leave him for a woman. And knowing she's queer made him feel safe; she wouldn't hate or reject him for the feelings he has about Nathan and occasionally other
hot, really tall and strongnice men, the feelings he has trouble not hating himself for. And obviously if she loves him, then having Those Feelings does not preclude a person from having a normal unremarkable heterosexual relationship, because Harold isn't distinguishing between being bisexual and just suppressing one's homosexuality. (I hope I don't seem like I'm giving Harold a ridiculous level of denial here. But my own experience of denying/avoiding/misunderstanding my trans*-ness makes me realize how much denial is possible even in the face of a lot of evidence. And I think it's possible that Harold never had good gay role models: he associates modern gay men with bars, drugs, promiscuity, loneliness, and AIDS, and historical gay men with persecution, prison, and suicide. Again from my own experience, it's possible to think: yes, I feel X, Y, and Z, but I don't match the definition of Identity in every detail, therefore I'm not Identity. And it's possible not to know that the commonplace definition of Identity is stereotyped.)I think this is that part of him which will always be Nathan's
I find I almost don't want to know more about his early background, in part because I do want it to remain a private, highly intimate thing that he only shared with Nathan.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-16 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-18 06:24 pm (UTC)And perhaps reprogrammable in some ways? We know he's fought against the temptation to try reprogramming other people, but he might well try on himself. And the fondness he feels for Grace, the pleasure he takes in the role of real proper heterosexual boyfriend, could make him think it was working or at least workable. After all, he can't be completely gay, can he? Everyone knows gay men are repelled by women, but he likes Grace and enjoys her company.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 11:50 am (UTC)Yes, I could see that. Bad code... And I think he'd be inclined to rationalize human feeling to evolutionary instinct, etc, in which case heterosexual feelings can be made logical (breeding yay!) but feelings for someone you can't breed with are just FEELINGS, and he can't hide from them behind biology in the same way.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-13 07:58 pm (UTC)Plus eleventy-one to that. Hard again to discuss this without referencing the next episode, but certainly it is all Nathan centric.
10) They've obviously hit a bad patch. I get the feeling (I need to rewatch S1) that things started to go wrong when they started with the Machine, that the scope and power of what they were doing was always going to frighten them and create difficulties. And Nathan's marriage and subsequent marriage issues didn't help (your fic is still basically my headcanon for this whole thing, and is very close in fact to what I'd vaguely imagined from S1 interactions to have been their backstory)
And yeah, Harold wants to do the fairytale thing with Grace (I find it interesting that he *tells* Nathan before her. It's like getting Nathan's approval is the real point, not her answer - 'Look, see! I did a straight thing! A normal man thing like your normal man friends! Approve of me!'). I agree that his rejection of his old identity has to do with leaving behind parts of what that old self did, and maybe the feelings that old self wrestled with too...
And I think Harold has to be thinking that if, 10 years or so ago, Nathan had come to him and said 'Harold, let's start being Batman and Robin and saving people together, and living together and being partners', well Harold would have been on that in a *heartbeat*. Used to dream of something like that. So why did Nathan have to wait till now? When Harold was just starting to figure out how to be normal and accept that he should aim for normal things? Why now, when Nathan is half-broken by his wife and it's all so messy, and Grace is so *nice* and he's going to lie to her, he can tell already, the new lies, the ones about why he's home late and why he smells of someone else's aftershave, except that's not what Nathan's offering either, and Harold still hates that he can't help imagining it at once, anyway...
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Date: 2014-04-14 01:13 am (UTC)*grins* I got all the details wrong, of course, but I do think I got the emotion largely right. My only big mistake there was underestimating how much Nathan loves Harold. I did always think Nathan loved him deeply, but I hadn't realized how much intensity the show was going to give it.
It's like getting Nathan's approval is the real point, not her answer
Ooooh, yes. Or even, as a subconscious motivation, trying to make Nathan jealous? "I've always been there for you, I never put anyone else first even when you went and got married, well now it's my turn and you can find out how it feels to be lonely." (And Nathan is clearly lonely, poor man.) I have a new . . . not headcanon exactly, but a new theory, that something sexual happened between them around the time of Nathan's divorce. Just the once, and probably Nathan was drunk, and neither of them ever tried to talk about it, Nathan out of embarrassment and a sexual identity crisis and Harold out of guilt over Grace, maybe guilt over "taking advantage" of Nathan, and a general sense that he had failed to be normal. That may be part of the reason for their estrangement.
By the way, I would absolutely read the AU where Harold says yes to Nathan's offer to work together (whether Nathan asks earlier, or Harold is just more willing, or whatever). I would read it and love it and squeeze it and call it George.
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Date: 2014-04-14 03:19 pm (UTC)even, as a subconscious motivation, trying to make Nathan jealous?
Could see that too, for sure. Turning the tables a little, wanting to make Nathan understand how it hurts to be second best.
the AU where Harold says yes to Nathan's offer to work together
I... kind of want to write it now *g* (I need a writing project, and this has really grabbed me as an idea, though I promise nothing) But what happens to Reese? Would you want/not want/not mind him turning up?
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Date: 2014-04-14 08:55 pm (UTC)But what happens to Reese?
Ooh, that's a complicated one. I wonder whether Harold and Nathan might find themselves selling that laptop anyway, because even before Nathan is killed, Harold knows that people associated with the machine are being targeted. So Reese's life might actually unfold pretty much the same way: sent to Ordos, leaves the service abruptly, is too late to save Jessica, ends up homeless. And Harold and Nathan might still recruit him in that case, because let's face it, neither of them has the skills, training, or physical ability to do what Reese does.
I would be intrigued to see all three of them working together, though the emotional consequences get complex. I don't think Harold would feel as much attachment to Reese if Nathan were still alive (in part because Harold would be a different person if Nathan were still alive). But there might still be closeness, flirtation, sexual tension, maybe complicated jealousies, maybe some variety of triangular relationship which could go in a lot of different ways. Of course Reese might not feel the same about a Harold who wasn't so alone and broken, either.
Or maybe things unroll completely differently. Maybe Harold and Nathan don't track Reese the way Harold did by himself, so after Reese is arrested that first time the CIA or whoever find him and eliminate him, and he's just another number that couldn't be saved? Or maybe he's killed at one of the points when Harold risked everything to save him, because this iteration of Harold, who has Nathan, doesn't do that?
So, yeah, I'm okay with him turning up! I think if there was nothing about him at all in the story, I'd wonder what had happened.
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Date: 2014-04-16 02:38 pm (UTC)I'm re-watching S1, quite rapidly, and thinking a few things through. I think I have a scheme.
Random things striking me from having re-watched the first 8 episodes of POI S1:
- Jessica has no character at all. She really, really doesn't. She makes Grace look nuanced. Given that Reese later seems attracted basically to men and women but always to very competent, organised, powerful people, I'm kind of wondering what that was about. Him trying to be something he isn't, just like Finch with Grace?
- I'd forgotten Finch's bodyguards in the pilot till you mentioned them in one of the chats. Indeed, there they are. That was ret-conned, I think, although there seems no quite firm sense of who, if anyone, Finch hired before Reese and if so how many. (BTW, drive by fic rec: less bigger than the least begin (15954 words) by queenklu. A post-S2 but pre-S3 fic about this very point, I liked it)
- Nathan Ingram - I notice (going by the plaque at IFT) that the show has made him some 5 years younger than the actor who plays him, who is 2 years younger than Michael Emerson. Do we reckon to adjust Finch's age by the same amount?
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Date: 2014-04-16 05:24 pm (UTC)Ooh, good point. Yeah, I think Jessica plays the same role for Reese as Grace does for Finch, though for different reasons: she's the woman who could (theoretically) have changed his life and made him into a different, better person.
Nathan's age, and by extension Harold's age, is a strangely complicated question. The plaque, if I remember, says Nathan was born in 1962. But in a later episode, the one where we first see Denton Weeks and Alicia Corwin (it's the scene where Harold runs into Nathan's office and pours coffee onto his keyboard, and then when Weeks and Corwin arrive Nathan claims Harold is the IT guy) there's Machine text that says Nathan was born in 1956. The most likely date is somewhere in between, since Fusco later can trace the "Harold Wren" alias back to Harold's first year at MIT in the late 1970s. If we assume 1978 as Harold's first year at MIT, that gives him a possible birth range of, say, 1958-1961. Nathan's range will be similar because he and Harold graduated from MIT in the same year. (I know I definitely made them too young in my fic because I didn't own the DVDs yet and couldn't check details.)