Person of Interest 2x20-2x21 watchalong

[kindkit]

Anyone'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.

Comments

2x20, "In Extremis"

[kindkit]

1) The Nelson plot is tropey (poisoned man must find his own killer in the 24 hours he has left!) and didn't do much for me, but I'm struck by how intense Reese is about the whole thing. He's never been as emotionally involved as this with anyone else they've helped. Partly it's not being able to save him, but I think it's also that Nelson is not unlike Finch in a lot of ways. He's brilliant like Finch, as Reese himself points out, and he's also a small man and, once the polonium takes hold, a physically vulnerable one. Being unable to protect him has got to bring up Reese's worst fears, and of course his memories of the kidnapping.

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.

[kindkit]

1) POI keeps surprising me with how well it brings its story threads together. I keep fearing the kind of incoherent mess that happened with Heroes or most of New Who's season finales, but no, the show keeps managing to make its unbelievably complex plot work. Shaw, Root, Decima, HR, even Elias--it's all here and it all makes sense.

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.