Friday, May 18, 2012

Person of Interest - "Firewall"

Person of Interest 1.23: “Firewall”

“He’s in danger now, because he was working for you. So you’re going to help me get him back.”
- Reese

The finale has finally arrived! I’ve been waiting quite anxiously since last week to see how everything played out this week. And let me tell you, did not disappoint. We start with an in media res with Carter getting a call from Finch saying that Reese needs help. She heads out when the FBI agent swoops in to drag her away. They’ve spotted Reese on surveillance and they plan on catching him. We rewind to 6am that morning and find Finch waiting for Reese in the library. Reese has been encouraging Lionel to show initiative and get noticed more by HR. It will have to wait though because they’ve got a new number, Caroline Turing (played by the lovely Amy Acker. She’s been popping up in guest spots all over my favorite TV shows this season). She’s a psychologist for the rich and secretive. As Reese is spying on her, it sounds like some of her clients have some issues that might prove dangerous to her safety. Meanwhile, Lionel finally meets the top brass of HR and they give him and Simmons an assignment. With Elias gone, it seems that HR is moving into murder for hire. They’ve been contracted by a wealthy guy to take out someone. That someone turns out to be Caroline. Right off the bat things are going to be really complicated.

Reese installs a motion sensor camera in a thermostat outside Caroline’s office and ends up posing as a new patient to keep an eye on her. She makes some accurate observations about him and he has to read very carefully in how he answers her questions. S ay the wrong thing and it could get very messy. And as if things weren’t complicated enough with the case, Alicia (from the NSA) has found Finch and is watching him. She sees him go into the library. After their session, Finch alerts Reese to the fact he’s brought in an old friend to help them narrow down which client put the hit out. Enter Ms. Zoe Morgan. I really have to say I like the way she and John work together. I hope they bring her back more often next season. She has narrowed it down to three possible clients and is going to check them out while Reese keeps an eye on Caroline some more. Finch also lets Carter know that things are fishy with one of HR’s top brass, a city Councilman. So I guess she knows about the corrupt cop network, too. Speaking of, Simmons and his guys are setting up how they’re going to take out Caroline. They’ll ambush her and make it look like a robbery gone bad on her way home from work. Of Course, Reese is there to save her.

Reese and Caroline duck into an expensive hotel and of course the only available room is the honeymoon suite. But they take it. They don’t have much time to settle in, though because HR has found them. We do have a kind of touching scene where Caroline starts to freak out and Reese gives her chocolates to make her feel better. I have to say I laughed both times I watched that. He delivers it so straight-faced but that makes it all the more amusing. We get the scene we started with where Finch calls Carter for help and she sees Lionel is among the people in ops. Finch has an idea though. The person who had the penthouse before them had a helicopter that’s still there. Reese may be a little rusty but he’ll give flying it a try to make their escape. They don’t get far though because the FBI has figured out where they are. The HR crew is on their tails now, too. So they’ve got both sets of guys to worry about.

Zoe has gathered a little more intel on one of the potential clients, a prominent prosecutor. The guy Reese saw in Caroline’s office was a fake. He was blackmailed into doing it. So Zoe is headed for Caroline’s office to snoop around some more. Meanwhile, Finch is on his way to meet Reese and Caroline after they make their escape. Unfortunately for him, Alicia’s still spying and she breaks into the library. That can’t possibly end well. Meanwhile, the HR crew is going to blow up both Reese and Caroline and make it look like Reese (who they’ll say is unstable and would do anything to resist capture) did it. Carter is frantically sending Reese texts to help him evade both the FBI and the HR gang. Someone is obviously feeding HR intel because they figure out Reese was on the freight elevator. It doesn’t look good for Lionel because Carter notices him texting furiously on his phone, too. Just as both teams are about to make their move, Finch shuts down all the cell towers in the surrounding area, hacking it so that only he can call. Meanwhile, Carter goes to confront Lionel about his involvement and we get the scene we’ve been waiting for since Carter started working with our boys. Lionel admits he’s been working with Finch and Reese and Finch calls Carter and confirms it. But they’re all going to need to get downtown to help Reese get out of the predicament he’s in.

Reese manages to get Caroline to the service tunnel that she needs to take to get away but he’s going to stay behind and old off the guys with guns as long as he can. Finch is waiting for her at the water treatment plant. And in a small scene that I missed before, Reese breaks in the HR car and steals a gun and sees the remaining explosives in the trunk. Person of Interest wouldn’t be complete without a big gun fight and this one doesn’t disappoint. Just as Reese thinks he’s out of luck and time (Simmons says as much) Carter and Lionel show up and give Reese enough cover to get in their car and they take off, HR in hot pursuit. Thanks to the explosives, Reese manages to blow up the HR car. We also get a rather funny scene where Carter and Lionel were complaining to Reese about him not telling them about the other. Meanwhile, things aren’t going very well for Finch. As he’s waiting for Caroline to arrive, Alicia gets in the front passenger seat with a gun trained on him. She knows who he is and she wants some answers. She’s obviously come a little undone since the whole inception of the Machine. He tries to tell her that the Machine didn’t kill Nathan (I’m guessing they had some kind of connection beyond business contacts) but that people did. Before she can say more, Caroline arrives and shoots her. She reveals that she’s the hacker from “Root Cause”. I have to say that I’m quite excited by this revelation (though I initially thought Alicia might be the hacker). We get Amy Acker going from sort of Angel season 3 clueless Fred to Dollhouse season 2 evil Whiskey. I like it. She’s quite excited to finally meet Finch and she was glad that he and Reese figured out she was in danger, although she made sure she would be by taking the hit out on herself. Reese gets to the drop off point to find Alicia’s dead body lying on the ground and the car gone. Caroline has taken Finch. It turns out that the FBI agent was the mole and he gets arrested. But Simmons is still out there running around. So we have a nice set up for season 2 and more Amy acker to come! At the end Reese addresses the machine, telling it that he needs help to find Finch. It looks like the Machine isn’t quite as tied to human control after all. A nearby payphone rings and we are left with Reese answering it.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Person of Interest - "No Good Deed"

Person of Interest 1.22: “No Good Deed”

“I know who wants Peck dead and I know why. I know what he’s been asking questions about. They want him dead because of me.”
- Finch

Our penultimate episode of season 1 is a very Finch-centric hour. Not that I’m complaining. I think the writers have done a good job balancing the emphasis on the various characters (though admittedly, I’d like to see some more of Lionel’s history in season 2). But regardless, this episode sets us up very nicely for what should be a tension-filled season 1 finale. We begin this week back in 2009. It’s the day before Finch and Nathan are supposed to turn the Machine over to the government. Finch wants to keep it running as long as possible. Nathan is starting to worry about Finch. He’s spent so long watching other people that he’s not spent time, developing his own life and relationships. Finch smiles and suggests that maybe he has. Back in the present, Reese is back to tailing Finch to try and find out anything about him. Lionel calls with some interesting news. HR brass wants to meet with him. Reese is more focused on Finch right now (especially since the meeting with HR doesn’t go down for a week). Reese watches Finch buy a magazine and get an alert on his phone. Finch ducks into a pay phone and moments later calls Reese with news of a new number, Henry Peck. He’s a financial analyst but he’s got really good security. Reese alludes to the fact that Finch is the same way and wants to know how the Machine communicates with Finch, since there may come a time when Reese has to do this alone. Finch brushes it off, saying he has a contingency if that were to happen.

So Reese is doing his usual surveillance of Henry while Finch tries to crack his online security. It isn’t going well. Finch can’t hack the security on Peck’s company and Reese can’t get signals from his Wi-Fi or phone. So he tries the charming approach and fails. Well okay so if the secretary didn’t have a gun pointed at him from under the desk it might have worked. Probably would have helped too if it weren’t an NSA listening station. It reminded me a little bit of LOST with the Dharma stations. Finch slips in dressed as a delivery and handyman and hooks up a camera to a new coffee maker so they at least have eyes and ears sort of inside. Reese is monitoring Peck at home when things get interesting. He gets arrested for having felony weight Adderall. He makes bail the next morning and heads back to work. Carter shares that he had one charge against him but it was expunged. Apparently it was “the principle of thing” and that’s why he sent the judge an obnoxiously long brief to wipe the speeding ticket. Anyway, things go from bad to worse for Peck. He gets kicked out of work because of the drug charge. At home, he’s greeted by an assassin. Reese manages to fight him off but loses him again. Finch tracks Peck via his phone and we learn that Peck asked some questions about how a name ended up in a report he wrote three weeks ago (the name led to the aversion of a major terrorist attack). Finch puts it together. Henry’s been asking about the Machine.

We jump back to 2009 to find Alicia meeting with Nathan. She seems nervous about things but he tells her everything will be fine and that the less people that know about the Machine the better. And Alicia assures Nathan that they have a way to disseminate the information so it won’t track back to the Machine. In the present, Finch admits that he knew measures would be taken to protect the Machine, he just didn’t realize how deadly they’d be. Peck gives them the slip after finally talking to Alicia. She gives him something to look into and tells him to run. So he does. Empties his bank account and gets rid of all his credit cards. Finch finally locates him at a youth hostel. Meanwhile, the team who is hunting Peck reports in to Washington that they’ve hit a snag. Their contact tells them to just get it done. We jump back to 2009 again and it’s the night before the Machine gets turned over to the government. Nathan wants to put in a back door to completely shut it off in case something bad happens, like the government abusing the tech. Finch says that he built the Machine in such a way that it can’t be abused or hacked or altered and that putting in a back door exposes the Machine.

Peck sneaks back onto the NSA and finds some files. Reese manages to tackle him out of the line of fire but he takes off again. He gets himself arrested by throwing a bottle at the cops. This guy is just not having a very good day. I mean, really. He ends up spilling his guts to Lionel but clearly Lionel thinks he’s crazy. Reese breaks him out of the precinct but isn’t fast enough to stop him from calling the Office of Special Counsel. Apparently one of the government people who knows about the Machine works there and sends a sniper to take Peck and Reese out. Things aren’t looking good when the cab they’re in gets hit and explodes. But Reese manages to get out and take down the sniper. And yes, he loses Peck again. Reese really needs to pay more attention to what he’s doing. His job would be so much easier if just handcuffed people to railings or something while he took down the baddies.

In our final jump back to 2009, we find Nathan sneaking back in to put in that contingency in the Machine. I guess maybe someday we’ll find out what it was. Meanwhile, Peck has contacted a reporter and unbeknownst to him, more assassins have been sent. Luckily Reese intercepts them while Finch meets with Peck. He gives him some answers (that the Machine does exist and that Finch built it0 but he also provides a new identity. Later that day, Reese thinks he’s found where Finch lives but he’s a little off. Finch had a fiancée named Grace and he used to live there. Now he just watches her from afar. Knowing about the Machine put him in harm’s way which put her in the line of fire, too. I find it interesting that both of our lead guys have lost people they loved because of their work. I kind of hope that someday Finch can come out of hiding and reunite with his fiancée. We end with the Machine rolling back to Finch’s conversation with peck and we find Alicia sitting at a table nearby, listening and she catches Finch say that he built it. Obviously she’s surprised to hear his voice. After all, the world thinks he’s dead.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Person of Interest - "Many Happy Returns"

Person of Interest 1.21: “Many Happy Returns”

“It won’t be up to you, that’s my point. There are things you can do Detective and things you can’t. That’s where I come in.”
- Reese

At the outset, I just have to say I think that this episode would have made a very strong season finale. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we have 2 more episodes this season but it tied back to the pilot so much that I feel like if this was all we got for season 1, I’d be very happy. We had a lot of parallel imagery going on. We start this week with a brief revisit of scenes between Jessica and Reese. Obviously things are very unresolved still for him. In 2012, we find Reese already at the library when Finch gets in. But Finch says they don’t have any numbers and it being Reese’s birthday, Finch is giving him the day off. So Reese goes to play Chinese checkers with a guy named Han in the park.

Meanwhile, Carter gets a visit from Special Agent Donnelly from the FBI. Clearly she isn’t following Agent Snow’s decree of “stay away from the FBI”. He’s found a link to Reese up in New Rochelle to a suspected homicide from February 2011. Carter meets up with Finch at a pool hall to share the news. He tells her to go along and see what she can find out. Not surprisingly, Finch lied to Reese about a new number. This week’s POI is Karen Garner. And she happens to be the waitress for Finch’s table. We jump back to February 2011. Reese shows up at the hospital Jessica used to work at, only to find out she died two months earlier in a car accident. He’s rocking a scruffy beard (though not quite as bad as the pilot).

Back in 2012, Finch is using Lionel to follow Karen since Reese still has time off. Unfortunately, Lionel loses her once she finally leaves her apartment. So Finch is going to take matters into his own hands. Up in New Rochelle, Carter gets the rundown of what happened with Peter Arnt and Jessica. She wants to talk to the local detectives about the suspected homicide. Agent Donnelly is off to talk to one of Peter’s bookies. He was so deep in debt that Donnelly thinks someone hired Reese to take him out. Carter isn’t so sure he’s the guy since it was so messy and he left DNA. Yeah, I’m thinking Reese had a different reason to be messy on this one. Back down in the city, Finch swings by the bar where Karen works, only to run in to Deputy Jennings of the US Marshals. He says Karen is a wanted fugitive and he just wants to ask Finch some questions about where he might find Karen. Finch isn’t quite sure how to get out of this one and looks a little relieved when Reese swoops in to save the day. Reese is none too pleased at being kept out of the look. He is a bit of a control freak, let’s be honest.

Finch says he wanted Reese not involved with this case because of Reese’s special sensitivity. In less silly terms, Reese has a problem with domestic violence. But Reese just bullishly demands Karen’s address and he’s going to help her. After assuring her he’s not a cop, she agrees to let him help her. Finch also discovers that Deputy Jennings is her husband. He’s using the whole US Marshal Service to hunt her down. Reese is not going to take that well. We zip up to New Rochelle where Carter gets the case file on Peter. She has some digging of her own to do. She pays a visit to the ME and learns all of Jessica’s injuries from the accident could have happened beforehand. She suspects a domestic abuse situation, much like Reese did. And once more, we find ourselves back in February 2011 where Peter is leaving the house. Reese sneaks in and takes a look around. He replays Jessica’s last voice mail to him (when he was in the Middle East). And we get a bit of a flashback accompanying it where we see Peter get kind of angry with her for making the call.

And Reese makes his presence known to Deputy Jennings by beating the crap out of him and three other marshals just so Reese can deliver his messages. Jennings better stay away from Karen or else Reese will kill him. Reese angry, Reese SMASH! I couldn’t help myself. It’s funny and given that the Avengers is in theaters, it just made me smile. Unfortunately, Finch has lost Karen and he’s rightfully concerned with the fact that Reese just antagonized an entire federal agency. Not one of his better moves if you consider he’s trying to stay off the grid. Karen has run to the train station, hoping to make a break for it but she gets nabbed by transit cops. By the time Reese and Finch get there, Jennings has already picked her up and is heading out of the city. Finch finds him using the hotspot function in his car and Reese gets a little scary. He orders Finch out of the car. I’m guessing it means he’s going to do something rather dangerous and illegal. Murder perhaps?

Carter and Agent Donnelly are talking with Jessica’s mother. She didn’t know anything about Peter’s money issues and she isn’t willing to admit there was any domestic abuse in the relationship. But she does let Carter look through Jessica’s things after she mentions she thought Peter was a better fit for Jessica than the soldier she had a fling with back in 2001. Of course Carter finds a picture of Jessica and Reese. She puts a call in to find out what she can about John’s service record. Meanwhile, Deputy Jennings checks into a motel with Karen and Finch contacts Carter for some help. Reese blew him off at the suggestion of police involvement and Finch is worried about what John is going to do. Carter heads out to find him. Lucky for Karen, Reese shows up and beats the ever-living hell out of Jennings. Carter stops him on the road and he says he’s got to do what needs to be done. We have our final jump back to February 2011 where Reese confronts Peter about what happened to Jessica. At least now we know what really happened and we have that piece of Reese’s backstory figured out. He and Finch meet at the same bench by the river as they did in the pilot (hence my earlier comment about similar imagery) and Finch gives him a business card with an address on it I can see both sides of why Finch kept quiet about the case and why Reese needed to work it. Obviously it dredged up painful memories for Reese but this time, he was able to save the woman in danger. Carter gets the file on John but shreds it and the police file from New Rochelle. She hangs on to picture of Reese and Jessica though. She gets a call from a prison warden down in Mexico saying a Deputy Jennings (aka Reese) dropped off a fugitive that Carter was supposedly looking for. So I guess Reese didn’t kill him after all. It turns out the key Finch gave Reese was for a new apartment (instead of the crap hole he’s been living in). It overlooks the park where he plays Chinese checkers. And in an interesting little twist, we see that Reese ran into Finch in the hospital after he found out about Jessica. Finch had a file with Peter, Jessica and Reese’s picture in it along with a social security number. I guess we’re left to wonder whose number came up.