Person of Interest - "Mission Creep"

Person of Interest 1.03: “Mission Creep”

“You’re playing a dangerous game and I’m not sure I understand why.”

- Detective Carter

We begin this week with Reese showing up at HQ and finding Finch asleep at his desk. Reese tells Finch he’s feeling guilty about blowing Finch’s cover and has been looking for a new cover position. Finch isn’t interested. The machine’s given them the number of a former Marine, Joey Durbin. He works as a doorman for a hotel in Midtown. It’s quite clear Reese identifies with Joey. Both being ex military and having seen the same things overseas. Reese even worked with a portion of Joey’s unit in Iraq. So he’s off to tail Joey and see what he comes up with. The first eight hours prove boring for Reese, though Joey gets a garbled text message which Reese sends to Finch to decipher. At this point Joey’s on the move (visiting his girlfriend, Pia, who waited six years her from to get back from deployment and window shopping). When Reese calls to give Finch the text message, we find Finch doing pushups while reading a book. It was rather amusing. Reese follows Joey into a bank and not two seconds later, three men in masks (Joey makes four) come in and rob the bank.

This week is apparently going to be more Reese flashbacks. We jump back to 2006 and Reese runs into Jessica. She asks when he got back state-side but he tells her he’s heading back overseas. When she asks why he’s not in uniform he makes a sort of shady comment that he’s got a new job. We’ll see this flashback play out over the course of the episode. Back in the present, Reese follows Joey to a meeting with a young blond woman and witnesses an exchange of money. And they also find the currier for the bank robbers, a guy named Willis who was also in Joey’s unit in Afghanistan. Finch also finds that Willis stopped at a bar on Coney Island called the Green Zone, run by former Master Sergeant Sam Lattimer (aka Captain Montgomery from Castle). So Reese pays Lattimer a visit to try and get in with the bank crew. Meanwhile Finch is busy creating a vacancy for Reese. He leaves some guns in the trunk of Willis’s cab and the cops pull him over. Good job Finch.

Over at police headquarters, Detective Carter gets to know a robbery detective. Apparently at the ban robbery the day before, they printed the guard’s holster that Reese touched to keep the guard from getting shot. Carter points out that the robbers are likely soldiers. Not looking good for Reese. Well, not from the police angle. From his perspective, it’s looking pretty good. He got a call from Lattimer. He wants Reese (who is going by Miller) to meet the team. Turns out Lattimer’s version of “meet the team” is having them kidnap Reese, drag him to a dark alley and threaten to shoot him if they don’t like him. He manages to sweet talk his way out of a bullet between the eyes by saying he trusted their unit in 2005 and they trusted him. It works enough to get a burner phone. Back at HQ, Reese says he doesn’t think Joey is the kind of killer that can do it up close and personal. Time to find out who is gunning for Joey.

Reese is back to following Joey who shows up where Pia works to talk to her. Joey kind of blows off her request to see apartments with her that night. And as Reese watches, we get the second part of the flashback. It turns out that Jessica got engaged to a guy named Peter back east while Reese was away. Jessica says she waited for Reese but he reminds her that he didn’t ask her to do that. She says that he just left without saying anything to her because he figured he’d die and he didn’t want to hurt her but Jessica thinks it was because he wanted to be alone. Reese explains that you learn in war that you’re alone and no one will save you. Cheerful guy, isn’t he?

Over at police HQ, Carter and her robbery buddy are getting further on the bank robbers. The radios they use are military issue (no surprise there) and Fort Drum reported a shipment stolen six months ago. She’s also surprised that they’ve pulled a dozen jobs together without imploding. Meanwhile, Reese spies Joey watching the blond woman pick up a little girl from school. By the way Joey’s watching, Reese guesses it is his daughter. And while Finch tries to ID the girl, Reese is going to have a little one-on-one with Joey. They “run into” each other at a bar and bond a little bit. It gets even better when a couple banker snobs try to butt in to the conversation and after being told to use his head, Reese head butts the nearest guy. He leans that Joey has what he calls an obligation, though denies it to support a child. He does explain that Straub has gambling debts. Finch also has some intel. The girl’s name is Amy. But there was no father listed on the birth certificate so he’s going to dig deeper. Reese is going to do a little surveillance on Straub. He meets with Lattimer, saying he needs more money or else the guys he owes will take his mother’s apartment. Lattimer says he’s got a job tonight that will score $400,000. When Straub brings sup the fact he needs to split the $200,000 he’d be getting with the rest of the gang, Lattimer says he doesn’t care how he splits the money. Either way he’ll have enough to pay his debts and retire. We are shown a photo of two other Marines who Lattimer says are retired. Lattimer assures Straub that if something were to go wrong and they had casualties on the team, the split would still be 50/50.

The cops are getting ever closer to the gang. They’ve put a trace on Teddy Dalloway’s phone (the driver). Carter and her robbery buddy show up to where the gang is going to be robbing (a gambling hall). Luckily, Reese has Finch monitoring the police band and hears when they call for back up. He gets the gang out before back up arrives. Straub is not happy they left so much money behind. Carter looks pretty pissed when they bust in to find just the patrons there. The next morning, Straub is filling in Lattimer about what happened and neither seems overly pleased. They’ve got another job and Lattimer tells Straub to watch Reese. They might need him to get in but the really don’t need him to get out. And Finch shuts down Reese’s theory that Joey is Amy’s father. Turns out he was Joey’s best friend who got blown up in Afghanistan on a shift that Joey was supposed to be on. So now Joey feels obligated to take care of her. But Reese fails to talk Joey out of doing the job. And he also fails to talk Pia into giving up on Joey if he doesn’t come around soon. Reese really has some mixed emotions about all this. I’ve no doubt he sees himself and Jessica a little in Joey and Pia. So he tells Finch that once he knows the next job, Finch can call the cops to round up the whole gang.

Carter has ID’d the two Marines that Lattimer told Straub were in retirement. They were both shot in the head. Not a good sign for the rest of the gang. We find Lattimer on the phone with a mystery man. Looks like the current gang is about to get replaced once the job is complete. The gang is en route to the evidence lock up and Straub makes Reese ditch his phone and earwig. So much for staying in communications with Finch. But it looks like Finch is a step ahead. When the guys get there, Finch is trying to get some evidence and it’s enough for him to get a message to Reese. Lattimer is going to kill them. They find what they’re looking for but Teddy get’s shot by a guard. They make it out of the building and to the van where Lattimer is waiting but he shoots Straub and Teddy before speeding off. Reese peppers the van with bullets but it doesn’t do much. Carter shows up and takes the radio she finds on Straub. He does get Joey out of the line of fine and successfully convinces him to get out of New York with Pia.

Carter gets son the radio and has a little conversation with Reese but it doesn’t turn up much for her. He is going to take his chances doing what he does and see what happens. She’s convinced he’ll end up dead or in prison in the end. Reese goes to find Lattimer to tie up loose ends but he’s too late. Whoever Lattimer was working for shot him after taking the evidence that the gang stole. It’s got the name Elias on it and so Finch has something to look for. We end with the conclusion of Reese’s flashback. Jessica asks Reese to ask her to wait for him and she would, saying it would take real courage to do it. She walks away and he whispers it mostly to himself. So now we’ve got a season-long mystery on our hands.