The season opens with The Machine having moved to an unknown location by itself and resuming its sending of “irrelevant” numbers to Finch. Shaw is now collaborating continuously with Finch’s team however she still considers herself as a one-woman team and completes what’s assigned to her with violence. Root (Amy Acker) is now playing god in a psychiatric asylum, planning an escape with the help of The Machine which does talk to her naturally, more than “she” ever talked to Finch besides just giving him the numbers of possible victims or perpetrators. On the other hand, in the first couple of episodes we can also see detective Carter planning the eradication of corrupt police criminal organization, “HR”, for good right after formally meeting HR’s head Alonzo Quinn, the godfather of dead detective and Carter’s former love interest, Carl.
Person Of Interest has of course a brand-new show intro, as usual in every season of the show. It has also always had a superb musicalization and this season was no exception. The first great musical selection to accompany the fantastic scenes of the show is in the season opener which features for the second time in the TV series the song “She’s Long Gone” by The Black Keys, but this time in a less fitting scene, as background music for an underground bar, unlike the perfect scene where they previously used the song (the closing scene of the episode 3 on Season 2).
The third episode of the season was very enjoyable too, though not truly important for the main backstory, the “POI case of the week” is fun to watch nevertheless because it features the tough women of the TV show all dressed-up and out-of-place in a club, doing their thing as a team alas Charlie’s Angels: Shaw, detective Carter and Zoe Morgan (occasional character and Reese’s lover), against a “lady killer”. The most awing scene of the episode however, is near the end when Root scapes the mental facility guided by The Machine. It’s one of the first times we see Root with the raw power of The Machine in her ear, helping her meticulously plan her escape and shooting at enemies without even watching.
The fourth episode of the season featured a case in which Reese ultimately said: “I’m in the business of stopping bad things from happening. I’m not so sure what’s about to happen is a bad thing”. Leaving the POIs to kill each other which was a nice twist on the show because neither the “victim” nor the “perpetrator” were persons “worth saving”. We also see Carter with a rookie police officer as a partner, sent to spy on her by HR. Episode five is where Shaw tones down her tough attitude by a 10-year old and in contrast we see flashbacks related to her emotional constipation. Resse confronts HR member Simmons. After some of the best action scenes on TV and a massive explotion, Carter finally comes clean with his rookie-HR-spy-partner, Lasley…
“You don’t work for HR anymore son, you work for me now”.
– Carter. Awesome!
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Trivia time!
It has made a total of four appearances in the show. What’s Finch’s phone number?
oʍʇ-xıs-ǝǝɹɥʇ-uǝʌǝs ǝʌıɟ-ʇɥƃıǝ-oʍʇ (uǝʌǝs-ǝuo-ǝuıu)
In episode Mors Praematura we see Vigilance leader, Peter Collier (played by Leslie Odom Jr.) for a second time resuming his “fight for privacy” after having killed social network creator Wayne Kruger in the second episode of the season. This episode also features guest star Kirk Acevedo (“Charlie Francis” in Fringe). Additionally it is the first time we see Shaw and Root team up, of course, Shaw is untrusting and at first helping against her will. Carter also learns about HR’s relation with the Russians. An episode later we see Root locked up by Finch, Quinn builds up his plan with Simmons, and finally the death of Lasley when he tries to do things right when Carter confronts yet another dirty cop.
Person Of Interest is a show that, in this extraordinary season more than ever, continuously builds up the plot of the now much more prominent story. The POI of each episode now always seems to be related somehow to the main plot, some people will love this and few others will be disappointed. The show has evolved tremendously in the last three seasons. It makes a direct move away from the “the-case-of-week” style CSI fans probably liked about the show into something much more meaningful. But even when the backstory is center-stage now, the writers of the show do a fantastic job weaving it all in, building up momentum. Unsuspecting viewers in the first half of the season see the fall of HR but the writers silently, smoothly and masterfully develop-in a parallel –another much more frightening– main enemy, Vigilance.
Endgame is the great episode when we see Carter’s character and audacity climax as she goes all-out against HR members and the Russian mafia by setting both groups up to confront each other. All their numbers come up as POIs by The Machine. This episode is also the first of a three-episode long story arc for a shocking mid-season. We see some great more intimate flashbacks about Carter and how she managed to be a single mother to her son Taylor and how in the present day she can finally trust her son back again to her former husband; all while she risks her life to take down HR. At the end of the episode: Things get ugly, Reese comes to Carter’s rescue, and they both take a hurt Alonso Quinn hostage as they plan to take him to the FBI because they can’t trust the police. Simmons show’s up and orders all the police force in the city after them:
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“The Man in the Suit dies tonight.”
– Simmons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kevbb1oezUk
The Crossing is easily one of the best episodes of the season as we see Reese and Carter powerlessly escaping from cops after them all over the city while they drag HR head, Quinn, with them. We also see the evolution of Kevin Chapman’s character, Fusco, as he gets tortured by HR but manages it outstandingly and has his kid saved by Shaw. In this very suspenseful episode, Reese and Carter eventually manage to get to the morgue where they drug and hide Quinn. Right before they get surrounded, Reese and Carter have an unexpected, lovely and unscripted kiss while they compare wounds and remember how they first met. Finch moves into action and helps Reese in the shootout with the corrupt cops by cutting the lights and eventually helping Reese get arrested into safety by a couple of honest cops. Carter manages to bring Alonzo Quinn into the FBI and into justice and all HR is dismantled except for Simmons. Everything seems to have gotten back to normal, Reese makes it out of jail, Carter gets promoted back to detective and tells Finch that she finally knows about The Machine. Right when everything seemed alright, the episode shockingly ends with Simmons reappearing in the scene of a dark alley while Reese and Carter are walking on the street. Just as Finch arrives and the public phone rings to give out another number, Simmons shoots aiming at John –whose number was up– and manages to injure him, but the phone ringing was about to announce that Carter’s number was up as she steps in the shooting, catching a bullet to her death. The episode ends dramatically with just the phone loudly ringing, Finch’s face of shock, and Carter bleeding to death in Reese’s arms as he cries.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B28SXzL7hPc
From time to time, Person Of Interest has some great scenes with fantastic music and The Devil’s Share is one of those high points. The episode beings with no intro, directly into a scene of an injured Reese, dramatic takes of Carter’s funeral and of his child and ex husband, and of everyone searching for Simmons as he plans an escape. Unsurprisingly, Simmons’s number is up. Then we see an emotional destroyed Reese seeking revenge on Carter’s death, violently looking for Simmons. It’s a heartfelt exquisitely painful intro with Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” playing on the background of the harsh takes. In this highly emotional episode we see flashbacks for all main characters remaining: Harold, Shaw, John and Lionel. This is one of those episodes written by series creator Jonathan Nolan and it also is one of the best of the season, bringing the three-episode story arc of the fall of HR to a close after Carter’s disheartening death. The episode has an apocalyptic feel to it after her passing-away and it’s action filled. it’s also one of the first few times we see Root empowered by the knowledge of The Machine so there’s a heavy awe factor there; additionally we see the best of Fusco, taking revenge on his partner’s death by bringing Simmons down.
Lethe is the episode that takes the season into a thrilling second half, in which we discover more about Finch’s childhood and the existence of Samaritan, a second Machine built as a parallel project by Arthur Claypool, the episode’s POI. Vigilance also enters the spotlight as the new main villains for the series. The next episode Aletheia concludes the plot, setting things in motion to the most terrible thing to happen around the last few episodes of the season; Decima’s Greer (John Nolan) managed to steal the hard-drives with all the information of Samaritan to then plan to rebuild the frightening supercomputer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyniHgiNNDA
4C is one of the last few separate-case episodes we see in the series but it truly is a very unique one. Emotionally-broken Reese takes a flight away from it all only to find himself aboard a flight with another number, another POI. The nice twist in this episode is that it’s one of the first times the team gets a relevant number and Shaw on land visits some old friends from Northern Lights to find out more information about this relevant number. Another cool factor: Reese is on a plane full of trained assassins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMsqeG71ptI
Trivia Time!
Why is the episode called 4C?
˙ǝuɐld ǝɥʇ pɹɐoqɐ ɹǝqɯnu ʇɐǝs s,ǝsǝǝɹ s,ʇI
Provenance is a heist-themed episode and it’s a good episode with good action scenes and it’s entertaining, nothing more. It’s really great, it could easily beat any robbery-themed episode in another TV series or even a movie, but it’s just not the best for the high standards of Person Of Interest. The hip robbery scenes feature fitting music by Propellerheads and Fidelity Allstars. Last Call is another independent-case episode and the last of the season, it’s a good episode when we finally get to see on first-hand what happens when the numbers The Machine gives to Finch closely relate to 911, so close that it relates to the operator of the emergency call center herself. Again, great episode, easily better than most TV shows out there and intensely thrilling but, with so much going on with the main story of the show, this is an easy episode to forget when looking back at the season.
Person Of Interest features flashbacks on some of its episodes but not all because it makes use of them so carefully; when they truly are meaningful to present day situations in a metaphoric kind of way or revealing more on the backstory for some of the series’ characters. RAM is an episode that goes well beyond that. We finally get to meet Finch’s previous “helper monkey” (Rick Dillinger) before John Reese and how his distrust in Finch managed to ultimately lead him to his death. Surprisingly, he was killed by Sameen Shaw when she was still part of the Northern Lights team. But what made this episode so truly fantastic was how Rick Dillinger’s story fits in line of the complex narrative fragmented throughout the entire series about the Ordos laptop, a computer with a piece of programming of The Machine, turned into a powerful virus and sought after by the U.S. government and Decima Technologies. Dillinger was the one who sold the laptop to the Chinese and that was the reason why CIA Reese and his partner had that memorable mission to China before it all. The virus eventually made it to the hands of Decima and they released the virus attacking The Machine triggering the hard-reset of “God Mode” in the season 2 finale. Really, truly magnificent and cleverly written episode.
Root Path is the episode where after a few crossings, the paths of both The-Machine-guided Root and Finch’s Machine-given numbers collide. You can see that from the very start, the intro of the show. Root is all mature now after being tortured by Control. Root is a team by herself but we also see her for the first time with a couple of her collaborators, friends she’s made along the way of having an omni-present supercomputer speaking into her ear all the time. Decima is in full force planning to bring Samaritan online and we also get to see a bit more of a more robust Vigilance. The POI (Cyrus Wells) a janitor is the only one cleared to have retinal security access to a covered-up office of the NSA containing a chip to power “the fastest supercomputer ever built”. Greer’s Decima planned to use the janitor to steal the chip for Samaritan. And they succeed.
In Allegiance, POI María Martinez was working on a project in Iraq to ship six generators with the UN, they were intercepted by Decima to power Samaritan. They succeed, again. The episode is full of fantastic action scenes like Reese jumping out of a building’s window, like if it was nothing, face down onto a car’s roof while tackling one of the bad guys. The “firemen” infiltration to the UN building by Reese and Fusco is also great. The episode ends similarly to how it began, with some notable scripting in a dialogue between Greer and Root’s gun-pointed encounter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kduxC7jTvVs
Trivia Time!
What is the real life relation of “Greer” to the show’s creator?
˙uɐloN ɹǝɥdoʇsᴉɹɥƆ ɹǝɥʇoɹq sᴉɥ puɐ ‘uɐloN uɐɥʇɐuoſ ɹoʇɐǝɹɔ sǝᴉɹǝs ɟo ǝlɔun ǝɟᴉl lɐǝɹ ǝɥʇ sᴉ ǝH ˙uɐloN uɥoſ ʎq pǝʎɐɹʇɹod sᴉ ɹǝǝɹפ
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