Season 1, Episode 14:
Wolf and Cub
Andre: His being a superhero's not about a cape or a cowl. It's about protecting your fellow man, looking out for him when no one else will.
The latest number is Darren McGrady (Astro), a teenage boy whose older brother was recently murdered by small-time thugs. Reese intervenes in time to stop Darren from trying to kill the thugs himself, and when efforts to hole the kid up somewhere safe prove futile, Reese decides to take Darren under his wing and help him get non-lethal revenge on the thugs who killed his brother. They work their way up the ladder to Andre (Malik Yoba), who runs a comic book store and a numbers game, but when Darren tries to take Andre out on his own, Reese is forced to take on the whole crew and deliver them to Detective Carter.
Meanwhile, Will Ingram (Michael Stahl-David) is continuing to investigate his father's legacy, specifically the seven-year period where he shut down his company, IFT, and put it to work on a secret project. Will has found a champagne cork and a reference to the Machine going online on February 24, 2005, a day before the $1 contract was signed, and tracks down Nathan's government contact, Alicia Corwin (Elizabeth Marvel), who has since retired to a small town in the countryside with no wi-fi, no cell reception and no way for the Machine to track her. Alicia doesn't spill the beans about the Machine, and at the mention of "Harold Wren" — Finch's alias he uses with Will — she rabbits. With his father knocked off a pedestal, Will decides to leave New York.
Detective Fusco reports what he's learned in his investigation of Finch: he attended university under the name Harold Wren and graduated with Will's father, Nathan, who died a couple of years earlier. In response to Reese and Fusco's new intelligence on Finch, the Machine classifies them both as potential threats to its admin and decides, for the moment, to continue monitoring them.
Tropes
- Badass and Child Duo: Reese and Darren. Reese even lampshades it near the end when Darren shows him the drawing of them he made.Reese: You know, I always wanted a sidekick.
- Bad Boss: The boss invites Darren to shoot his underling and take the man's place in his organisation.
- Broken Pedestal: Invoked Trope by Alicia Corwin, to stop Will investigating what Nathan was up to.
- Call-Back: Reese takes a single coin payment, just as Nathan did to build the Machine.
- Comically Small Bribe: Inverted. Darren offers Reese all the money he has to hire him to find his brother's killers; Reese only takes a quarter.
- Deadpan Snarker:Finch: In other words, the idea of letting a fourteen-year-old hire you to avenge his brother has backfired?
- Dramatic Gun Cock:Reese: That was the signal, Finch.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Again, Reese tries to make would-be vigilantes realize this, speaking from experience.
- Interrogation by Vandalism: Reese convinces a local goon to talk by taking a blowtorch to the money he's supposed to deliver for his boss. The goon panics, since his boss would never believe that someone was willing to just burn so much money; he would assume the goon stole the money and have him killed. With no other choice he tells Reese everything he knows.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Subverted. At first Reese menaces the gang courier with a blowtorch, but then begins burning the courier's money instead.
- Lampshade Hanging: On Reese and Finch's shadowy vigilante shtick.
- Naked People Are Funny: Reese dumps a criminal naked in the back of a patrol car outside a police station, surrounded by beer bottles. The cops think it's pretty hilarious.
- Money to Burn: Done by Reese to extract information from a gang member.
- Mysterious Past: Fusco points out that even 'Harold Wren' is a false identity.Fusco: This guy spent so much time being someone else, he probably doesn't know who he is anymore.
- Non-Lethal Warfare: Reese uses beanbag rounds in his shotgun.
- Not Wearing Tights: Discussed at one point, with someone asserting that it's not powers or a costume that makes a superhero. (And blatantly implying it's perfectly valid to view Person of Interest as a superhero series.) Ironically, the man expounding warmly on the wonders of heroes turns out to be the villain of the episode.
- #1 Dime: The champagne cork.
- Oh, Crap!: Both Harold and Alicia become visibly unsettled when Will mentions Harold to Alicia.
- Properly Paranoid: Alicia Corwin. She's mentioned as living in a small town in West Virginia with no wifi or phone reception, presumably to remain out of the eyes and ears of the Machine. When she meets with Will in New York City she's very obviously on edge for the whole conversation.
- Put on a Bus: Will Ingram heads off to the Sudan at the end of the episode.
- Rōnin: Darren explicitly compares Reese to the ronin of history.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode's title is a shout out to Lone Wolf and Cub.
- The Art of War (Sun Tzu) is mentioned and quoted a couple of times in the episode.
- Shown Their Work: There exist a handful of towns in the United States that have no digital or phone reception.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Darren almost becomes this, but in the end he can't go through with it.
- Taking the Bullet: Fusco takes a bullet for Darren. Specifically, in the ass.
- They Know Too Much: Reese and Fusco. The last shot in the show is the Machine framing them both with red boxes before choosing to monitor them.
- Time for Plan B: It's even labelled as such. Over the course of the series, the bag gets several new items ranging from a SPAS-12 shotgun to a high caliber sniper rifle.
- Warrior Therapist: Reese, with his sidekick lampshading the references to The Art of War.
- Who Are You?: Reese notes that he's going to have to think up a good answer to that question.
