Monday, April 30, 2012

Person of Interest - "Matsya Nyaya"

Person of Interest 1.20: “Matsya Nyaya”

“Whoever sent us here, doesn’t want us to retrieve the package. They want to confirm it’s destroyed. They want everyone who had contact with it destroyed. And you just gave them a beacon.”
- Reese

We start this week in 2010 in the Middle East while Reese and his partner Stanton are working. Reese is watching her interrogate some guy when Reese swaps out the SIM cards in his phone and he’s got a message from Jessica. She sounds kind of scared and he immediately calls her back. She didn’t think he’d do it. He says she’s okay but that she needed a friend to talk to. Before she hangs up, Reese promises to come for her. He just needs 24 hours.

Back in the present, Carter and Reese are at a bar. She wants more detail on how process works. So he tells her they’ll work the current number together. He points out a guy and girl at a table and says that girl is not the guy’s girlfriend. A woman storms in and pulls a gun. That’s the girlfriend. Carter manages to take the girlfriend down without anyone getting hurt (though a shot does go off). She’s a little annoyed that Reese said they’d be working it together. He doesn’t have too much time to revel in his witty quip back because as usual, they’ve got a new number. Tommy Clay (married ten years with a 9-year-old son) works as a hopper for an armored car service. He’s the guy that has to go in and out of the truck with the goods. Reese is going undercover as a trainee guard. This should be fun. He plants a license plate detector under the car to see if they’re being followed.

At first, things are looking pretty good. They make it to a couple stops with no problems, though Tommy doe explain they don’t always know what they’re carrying. As they’re getting back in the truck after a stop the driver says he’s spotted guys with guns coming their way. Reese reacts accordingly, especially since the plate reader picked up the same plate three times that day) but when he gets to the back of the truck again, Tommy jumps out with a clown mask. Apparently it’s a little ritual hazing for the new guy. Unfortunately, as Finch points out, the Machine never issues a false number. The robbery will happen. And on the HR front, Lionel has been tasked by Lynch (one of the higher ups) to go with a street thug who used to pay the mob to get the money so HR can take it. I can tell this is not going to end well at all.

We jump back to the Middle East in 2010 where Snow shows up with some other woman and they issue orders that Reese and Stanton need to go to China to retrieve a computer with a program that was supposed to be able to disable Iranian nuclear devices. Apparently, they were also developing it for use against China. Reese tells them to find someone else as he has a family emergency and needs leave. Snow blows him and tells them they need the team to go now. On his way out, Reese has a little chat with Snow. Snow ants him to kill Stanton when the job is done because she’s been compromised. As her partner, Reese should have noticed so now it’s his problem to fix.

In 2012, Reese is getting ready for day 2 on his undercover gig. Finch hacked the system so he knows the route and figure out what they’re picking up. I have to say Finch really is clever. Reese is still waiting on a call back from Carter on the plates from the day before when he gets a call from Lionel with an update. Reese just tells him to keep gathering info. Finch made the point earlier in the episode that he thought it was time to tell the two cops about each other. Reese of course said no. But I have to agree with Finch on this one. Not only do we only have three episodes left in the season, but I just really want to see the look on Lionel and carter’s faces when they find out. Reese finally gets in touch with Carter and she says it belongs to a seventy-two-year-old guy. But it looks like his nephew is out on parole for armed robbery. Looks like he’s the guy casing the truck. We get a little scene with the armored truck guys in a diner for breakfast and we meet Ashley, the waitress. The driver notes the really nice diamond bracelet on her wrist. She brushes it off as a gift from her grandmother.

Most of the stops are no problems, just like the day before. Finch seems a little confused when they pick up raw platinum and nothing happens. He spoke too soon. The truck hits something that explodes and it gives the robbers some time to start shooting at the truck. Reese takes both of them out (though he doesn’t kill them) just in time for Tommy to climb out and shoot the driver and Reese. Of course it was an inside job. We jump back to 2010 again but this time we’re in China. Reese and Stanton are getting instructions from the guide to the little town where the computer should be. They head into the town which is under quarantine. The locals were told it was bird flu. Reese and Stanton quickly figure out that everyone in the town was killed.

Reese comes to in the hospital and watches as the driver from the armored truck dies in the ER. Luckily Carter is there to sneak him out of the ER for a chat. Finch calls her cell and he’s quite happy to hear that Reese is alive. Finch doesn’t really show it much but I think he cares a lot about Reese. Anyway, Reese is going to try and track Tommy down before he can fence the platinum. Carter is going to talk to his wife. It doesn’t take long to figure out Tommy’s been having an affair. Finch is a step ahead of her and manages to clone Ashley’s phone. Reese finally tracks Tommy’s burner phone to a hotel but he’s too late. The other two robbers are dead and Tommy’s gone. Or so Reese thinks until he hears someone at the door. He lies in wait and grabs the guy. It turns out to be Lionel, sent there by Lunch to get the platinum from Tommy. Man are things getting super complicated.

We jump back to 2010 in China yet again. I swear this episode has more flashbacks than any other episode we’ve had this season. Apparently Reese isn’t superman because Stanton has to talk to the one guy who managed to sort of survive. He says that some people came and took the machine. So the computer they’re looking for is gone. But she doesn’t tell Reese this. Obviously, something is up. They find a case though and decide to wait somewhere “safe” until the helicopter picks them up at dark. Back in the present, Lionel feeds Lynch a line about the two guys being dead. Well I guess it’s not really a line since it is true. They’re going to check all the places Tommy could fence the platinum together. I guess Lynch doesn’t really trust Lionel to not screw him.

Meanwhile, Reese scares Ashley into telling him that she was supposed to meet Tommy but that he never showed up. Reese learns from Finch moments later that Tommy got a new burner phone and had a voice mail message from his fence about where to meet. Reese heads off and Carter is about to join him when she gets sidetracked by Snow and his buddy showing up. They tell her to stop talking to the FBI about Reese. Okay, really? We’re going have to his immature inter-agency nonsense? I just want to smack that stupid little snide grin off his face. Anyway, things go south pretty quickly. Turns out Ashley and Tommy were working together. Reese sees it coming too late that Ashley is turning on Tommy. Her solo act doesn’t make it far. Lynch and Lionel show up and shot her. Lionel’s quick thinking saves Reese’s life. So that’s one more HR cop out of the way.

We end up back in China as Reese and Stanton are heading out to meet the helicopter. Stanton thinks soon they’ll all be replaced by technology and drones and stuff. Reese isn’t so sure. Unfortunately, he has a momentary change of heart about shooting her, giving her the window to shoot him first. Snow told her that he’d been compromised. Looks like neither of them were supposed to make it out alive. Reese staggers away just as the helicopter launches a rocket and we see a really big explosion where Stanton was just standing. So it appears she’s dead. Except, when we jump back to the present, we find Snow and his partner sneaking into a room paid for with funds from the Caiman Islands that they think they tracked to Reese. But they were wrong. Stanton’s alive and well and seriously pissed at the CIA.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

How the time flies!

So I've been thinking I might need to change the title of the blog come May 25th as I'll no longer be a law student. That's right, in a little over a month, I'll be a graduate!

I kind of can't believe how fast the last 3 years have gone. a lot has happened. I've been agented, and parted ways. I've written several manuscripts. I've teamed up with Jen over at More TV Please! It has been a great 3 years.

After graduation, I dive in to bar prep land so probably won't have a lot of time to write. And pretty soon the Person of Interest recaps will be over for the season. I will be blogging series 1 of Sherlock though, so once those go up on MTVP, I'll link to them here.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Body of Proof - "Mind Games"

Body of Proof 2.20: “Mind Games”

“Here’s the thing about apologies, Wilson. They don’t come naturally to me.”
- Megan

We’ve made it to the season 2 finale! It still remains to be seen whether ABC will return Megan and company for a 3rd go round or not. But we should know that in a few short weeks. We have a sort of in media res beginning with Megan narrating about how she’s not very good at apologies. She’s on the phone, then locking the door. She gets thrown over her desk and ends up bound and gagged. We cut to five days previously following a girl ta bar tossing back shots. She goes around kissing random guy sand before we know it; she’s dead in the alley behind the bar. Something ripped her throat open. She’s a college freshman named Nikki and someone took photos of every guy she kissed. Back at the morgue, Megan finds some strange things on the body, including a chunk of hair missing, a white substance on her hairline and faint circles on her stomach and hips. Kate is quick to point out it was likely Nikki was pledging a sorority. I have to say I was grateful my sorority forbade hazing. There were definitely groups on campus that were rumored to that kind of crap, though. Kate goes with Bud to talk to the sorority girls but she’s obviously more in my camp. She sees hazing as betraying what a sorority is supposed to be about. The girl they’re talking to took the pictures as part of one of their traditions. Nikki also had to go commando for a week (which explained the no underwear thing). She does note that she didn’t take the final picture but she knows the guy and he was obsessed with Nikki.

Back at the lab, Megan is helping Lacey with her insulin pump and Lacey is complaining that she has to keep a food journal and count calories. Megan reminds her it’s just a period of adjustment. Back on campus Bud and Kate confront Nikki’s would-be stalker and lip-lock number 31. OF course, he denies killing her. He was only at the bar to get a kiss since he’s really not Nikki’s type. Back at the lab, Ethan is trying to wheedle the gender of Bud’s baby out of him so he can get an appropriate baby shower gift. Megan interrupts and Ethan shows her a strange x-ray that has fractures to the front of her face. That tells Megan something (along with Ethan making a comment about someone shoving a screwdriver up the victim’s nose and twirling it around…yuck) and after some rather gross head sawing, we find that dearly departed Nikki is missing her brain.

Megan’s seen this MO before in a serial killer named Wilson Polley. She worked the case a few years back. Her first case in fact. He murdered three women on the PTA at his daughter’s school after they refused to go out with him. Bud and Megan head out to talk to the first person suspected of the crime (he was in the last victim’s house three hours before her death). He’s made a lot of money off writing a tell-all book about it. He’s surprised to see that Nikki is the latest victim. She was the third victim’s daughter. That’s not creepy at all. Curtis has discovered that the red stuff left in Nikki’s hair was a chemical and it looks like maybe the killer has a signature (and is a copycat). He also found a webpage for people devoted to Wilson (that always really wierded me out. People admiring serial killers). Megan pays Wilson a visit and he hands over some letters from his fans with the expectation that when Megan realizes she was wrong and he’s innocent, she gives him an apology.

Peter arrives at the lab with molds from the previous three victims, ready to cast Nikki’s skull to see if the tool marks match. Kate’s beat him to it. She’s got some sorority girl connection with Nikki and wants to help. Things are looking good for Megan when they discover all 4 skulls have the same tool marks. Bud has brought in Nikki’s stalker. He admits to writing to Wilson and he also admits to cutting off a lock of Nikki’s hair when she kissed him. But he swears he didn’t kill her. Megan is back at the prison and spouts off to Wilson about how he convinced the kid to kill Nikki so Wilson could get out of jail. Things get heated and emotional when Wilson (he probably just Googled Megan) starts saying that between them, Megan’s the only one who has taken a life. He references the patient that she killed and says she’s so arrogant that she pushes everyone away, from her ex-husband to her father who killed himself. She fights back saying he was so pathetic he let a woman saying he was boring in bed rile him up to kill three women. She storms off and gets a call from Peter. The white substance they found on Nikki’s head matches a prescription the first suspect has. They search his place and find a real Egyptian embalming hook.

The suspect (Grubnik) says that the box arrived on his porch with the hook inside. He didn’t kill Nikki. The lab lifts a print off the hook and it points to Wilson’s daughter, Sophia. So, dutifully Bud brings Sophia in and she vehemently denies killing anyone. She says Grubnik showed up with the hook and asked her if it was real. This case is getting way too confusing. I can usually tell who the killer is pretty early on but this time, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Meanwhile, Wilson calls Megan and tells her to stay away from his daughter. He makes a not so veiled threat against Lacey which sends Megan scampering home only to find Lacey not answering her phone or in the apartment at all. I have a feeling she took Peter’s advice to live her life. Megan calls Bud in a panic and he tells her to stay at the apartment and keep trying Lacey’s cell. He’s sending a squad car over to her place. And I was right. Lacey’s at a party. Megan picks her up and tells her she’s staying at her dad’s because of Wilson’s threat. That seems to quell some of Lacey’s rebellious streak. And Megan’s not too happy with Peter for dolling out parenting advice to her daughter. She’s really just pissing people off left and right.

Peter and Sam head back to the crime scene and find dead rats. Looks like they were poisoned and Curtis determines it was bleach. Not the stuff you can get at the store but the kind that’s used in hospitals and prisons. Megan figures out that Wilson killed Nikki and then snuck back into prison to have an alibi. I have to admit, it’s kind of genius. She, Bud and Sam get to the prison but things go downhill. The guard who was on Wilson’s cell block the night of Nikki’s death is bringing Wilson to the Warden’s office. They get there to find the guard down and his uniform gone. This is really not going to end well. Wilson’s on the outside. His phone is being tracked and it appears he’s heading to Canada and the US Marshals have taken over the case. So the rest of the team, minus Megan who will be along shortly head to Jeannie’s baby shower. Unfortunately for Megan, Wilson is not heading to Canada. He’s in the lab. I never noticed how many glass doors and windows the lab had in it until people and chairs go crashing through them. Wilson knocks Megan out and ties her up. He’s going to kill and he thinks he’s warded off any rescuers until Peter shows up and beings the crap out of Wilson. Megan manages to get loose and shoots at Wilson. He looks kind of surprised and then Peter tosses him off the side of the building. Which would be a great ending except that Peter’s got the damn embalming hook halfway through his stomach. We conclude season 2 with Megan trying to keep a bleeding Peter conscious.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Person of Interest - "Flesh and Blood"

Person of Interest 1.19: “Flesh and Blood”

“I’m going to do what you never could. I’m going to unite the Families and take control.”
- Elias

Overall, this week was a very heavy Elias episode. We start with him doing a little voice over on what his life would be like if his mother hadn’t been killed. We next see Carter dropping off her son at school. He’s a little upset about some rich kids picking on him but he refuses to let his mom get involved. Carter gets a call from a cop in SID (played by Lola Glaudini. I swear she keeps popping up in stuff recently) letting Carter know that Elias has moved all the money in his accounts.

Reese shows up to the library to find Finch putting up 5 pictures; the five heads of the crime families. It looks like Elias is going to take them all out and claim control. Reese is inclined to let it happen but Finch reminds him of the collateral damage that it would generate. They go to do some surveillance and find that the dons meet in a room with no cameras or cell phones. Finch rigs some of the writing in the building though to act as a microphone and they overhear the conversation going on inside. Moretti Jr. thinks it is a bad idea to trust Elias (being his half-brother notwithstanding) but the other dons don’t seem too upset. Reese tries to call Carter to apologize and give her an update but she ignores his call again. She wants to know what Elias is using the money for (he’s made a thousand different payouts) but it’s not that easy to find.

We find Elias bringing his father a sandwich and giving a brief Evil Speech of Evil. But Daddy Moretti isn’t interested. Meanwhile, Reese is going to try the direct approach with one of the dons. The guy’s not interested and he and his guys get as far as the end of the street in this big SUV before it blows sky high. Not a surprise in the least. There had to be at least one car bomb in the episode or else it wouldn’t be mobsters trying to off each other. Lionel takes a trip out to Queens to meet with his HR contact. Apparently, HR is backing Elias’ play and he tells Lionel to take some time off the next few days (after he looks into what the Feds know about Reese).

We get our first flashback of the episode to 1981. We find a young Carl Elias with his foster mom in a diner. He got beat up by some kids who were calling him names. He wants to know about his father (he has to do a family tree assignment for school) and his foster mom says he needs to be his own man. Back in 2012, Reese goes after Carter to keep her safe. She’s caught on to Elias’ plan (sort of) and is offering the remaining dons protection. Unfortunately 99% of the squad she’s with is HR and they bail. Don #2 is taken out but Reese manages to take out the gunman before much else happens. We get another flashback, this time to 1991 where we find Elias working for Moretti. It becomes obvious that Elias figured out who his father is. Daddy isn’t really interested in another son but says that Elias will find his place in the organization.

Back in the present, Carter, Reese and Finch are having a little pow wow. Carter relays the information about the FBI task force while Finch agrees to use less conventional methods to track down the recipients of Elias’ money. Carter is going to try and convince the three remaining dons to go into protective custody. Reese gives her a bag of high powered assault weapons to protect herself in case he isn’t around next time. Next we see her she’s packing up the guns into her car and dragging Lionel along as back up. Reese is watching one of the guys on Elias’ pay roll and between him and Finch they realize Elias has people watching the families of HR (you need to have power of your allies in war according to Reese). Elias really is an evil prick.

The three remaining dons are hiding out in their little club when Carter and Lionel bust in and pretty much kidnap the three of them. Carter gets to use her fancy new tech to scare off Elias’ men. Finch gets them to a safe location but there’s still danger lurking. While Elias is monologuing about his mother some more, he gets a message that Carter has the dons. He involves HR and kidnaps Carter’s son in retaliation. Reese catches on and gets to the high school just in time to see Carter’s son being driven away. Reese calls Carter to give her the news but Elias calls on her son’s phone and gloats a bit. He wants her to trade the dons for her son but she refuses. Reese promises to get her son back and she’s left to stare angrily out the window as more of Elias’ men show up. One of the dons tells her about Lionel’s prior life as a dirty cop but she obviously thinks he’s just messing with her because he’s a crotchety old mob boss. Before much else can go down between them, Elias shows up and says he wants to talk things out in person.

Finch is working his own connections while Reese is waiting for Carter’s son’s location. He convinces the HR cop that Lionel is chummy with the call of his guys, get Carter’s son’s location and sever all ties to Elias. Finch can be very convincing when he wants to be. And color photos of the guy’s family don’t hurt. Back at the safe house, Elias’ guy starts blow torching the door to get through and we get our last flashback. We find ourselves with Elias and two other guys shortly after the 1991 encounter. They’ve taken Elias out to the woods to kill him but he gets the upper hand and kills them, but not before declaring he’s going to get rid of all of them. In the present, Reese and Finch have found Carter’s son’s location and Reese goes seriously bad ass. He has a thing for people hurting kids. He ends up rescuing Moretti too while he’s there. Carter gets kind of badass herself and shoots one of the dons for pulling a gun on her and Lionel. She starts shooting that fancy gun from Reese again. Lionel’s gone and called for backup that arrives just in time to arrest Elias and his men. So at this point, we’re down to two dons (plus Moretti). Carter is reunited with her son and thanks Reese for keeping his promises. It looks like she might be up to trusting/working with the boys again and that makes me happy. Elias is finally going to jail but not before making one last phone call to Dad. The car that he and Junior are in doesn’t exactly blow up but they both die. And then there was one old cranky don. Things are going to get very interesting.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Body of Proof - "Going Viral Part 2"

Body of Proof 2.19: “Going Viral Part 2”

“Peter, I get it. I know how much she meant to you, I do. But you’re not going to fill that void tonight, sitting here and right now I can’t do this without you.”
- Megan

We pick up pretty much where we left off. Kate collapses during the press conference and start’s seizing. Megan and Dr. Stafford manage to stabilize her a little with Eppi pens but she’s till carted off via ambulance to an isolation ward. Meanwhile, back at the lab, the joint ME/FBI/CDC taskforce has more dead bodies. But they’ve found 6 points of commonality of where the victims came into contact with the terrorist. Unfortunately, ten are outliers (including Dani) and it seems they’re going to just be ignored. Meanwhile, the lab geeks are having a similar pow wow and while there have been some similar symptoms, nothing would lead to death. Until Megan and Stafford examine the brains of a bunch of the victims. They all had cerebral hemorrhage. As they go through the three stages of the disease (lasting no more than 72 hours) we see Kate beginning to freak out over all the chaos surrounding her.

Megan and Stafford are trying to explain their findings to Agent Johnson but he just snaps at them about why they can’t just find the microbe that’s causing all the issues. He does however, posit an interesting theory. One of the ten outliers could be the terrorist since the disease kills in 72 hours. Megan and company are down examining the outliers and we find that Peter is off doing his own recon work still. He’s at Dani’s apartment and starts to piece together her last days. Meanwhile, Kate sort of bonds with a little girl and her mom as Kate administers an IV to the girl (the nurse was having issues hitting the vein). Too bad Marcel manages to ruin the moment by bitching about how he wants a last drink. I really hope he kicks the bucket before the end of the episode. Peter’s coming out of Dani’s building and is cornered by a reporter. He tries to get her to go away but she turns off the camera and says that she just lost her boyfriend to the disease. Peter goes on camera and calls out the terrorist as being a coward.

Back at the lab the examination of the ten outliers hasn’t really yield anything useful. The results on the syringes found in the previous episode may be a little more profitable. The lab is retesting one of the syringes because it found a substance it hadn’t been testing for before. It might lead them to the killer. Megan heads over to see Kate and Kate gives Megan another place to look. Marcel has been infected for four days and hasn’t died yet so something is up with him. It might be a step towards a cure. It turns out Marcel has 17 drugs he’s taking for pre-existing conditions. That seems like a lot to me. One of them is for a Hepatitis C infection. Megan and Stafford get back to lab and Ethan reports that the syringe had the same drug on it. So it looks like Marcel might be Patient Zero. Peter makes a call to Dani’s mom’s international number but has to leave yet another message. It has to be really hard for him. Megan’s done giving him leeway, though. She needs all hands on deck. Over at the precinct, a tip comes in from the terrorist and the cops manage to trace the call to a bar near the hospital. WE cut to a shot of Marcel not in his bed. The Feds and a handful of cops (Bud, Sam and Peter included) bust in but whoever made the call is gone. In the hospital, Kate sits with Marcel as he sobs, scared of dying alone. It obviously starts Kate thinking that her prospects aren’t looking so good.

Megan and Stafford are examining the blood samples they go from Marcel and the terrorist from the CDC. It turns out they’re not the same person. But they do have more of the disease in their bloodstreams and that means the docs can study it. Unfortunately, as Stafford zooms in closer, he realizes what the disease is. It’s a relative of the Ebola virus called Marburg. But worse. Much worse. There’s no cure for it. Well, Megan isn’t buying the “no cure” bit at all. She has guessed that the CDC has an experimental vaccine. After some prodding, she does convince Stafford to use it. At the same time, Curtis pays Kate a visit and cheers her up a little bit (her brother couldn’t get in to the city because the airports were closed down). And Sam and Bud have hit pay dirt on why the terrorist is infecting people in the clusters. They all have a high turnover rate with one or two entrance/exit points and one object everyone touches.

Megan and Stafford head to the hospital to administer the vaccine. Megan thinks they’re giving it to Kate but Stafford gives it to Marcel instead. It looks like it’s working but he dies. Stafford is not happy about Marcel’s death. Megan’s a little perplexed after she does the autopsy because there’s something off with his liver. Peter swings by and says he’s accounted for all but one hour in Dani’s timeline. They cross reference it with Marcel and find out she was on the number 24 bus. They get surveillance video from the bus and discover eight of the ten outliers were on the bus. They also have a name and face to put with the terrorist, Jacob Mount. We see him injecting himself to keep alive in a crappy hotel room overlooking a school. It looks like he may have found his next target.

They bust into the hotel room to find it empty. But Jacob is really sick so he can’t have gone far. Agent Johnson and his team race off to the school but Bud, Sam and Peter head for the Subway. The school doesn’t fit his MO. They corner him in the stairwell and Peter shoots him in the head. Back at the lab, Stafford announces he’s been fired by the CDC. Megan’s not so sure he actually killed Marcel with the vaccine. It turns out Marcel had a drink the day he died and his damaged liver couldn’t handle it. So they test it out on Kate and she seems to be fine. After a few days’ rest, Kate’s back on her feet and offers Stafford the use of some basement space in exchange for some free lab work while he finds his next job. Peter finally meets Dani’s mom and Megan is finally home with Lacey. All is relatively good.