Recap / Person Of Interest S 03 E 07

Season 3, Episode 7:

The Perfect Mark

"I don't understand, he was such a good therapist!"

—Sven Vanger

The latest Number, Hayden Price, is a con artist, posing as a hypnotherapist, who skims money from his patients—and one of his patients is a money launderer for HR. Speaking of which, Carter, with help from her mole Laskey, is finally closing in on the identity of HR's head man.

Tropes in this episode:

• Action Girl: Carter has to knock out Laskey, to make it look like the Man in the Suit rescued Natalie. Shaw shares some good advice.
  Shaw: Remember, the aim shouldn't be to hurt him, just incapacitate him a little. Also, watch your knuckles. I've punched a lot of guys.
  Carter: [knocking out Laskey] So have I.
• Almost Dead Guy/Dying Clue: Tierney.
• Always a Bigger Fish
• Animal Motifs: Posing as a patient, and asked to choose a picture that reflects his emotions, Finch selects an image of a flock of birds in flight.
• Anyone Can Die: Tierney & Laskey.
• Asshole Victim: Hayden Price.
• Big "NO!": Carter when Laskey is shot.
• Breather Episode: But certainly not the final scene.
• Con Man: Price and Natalie.
• Continuity Nod: Natalie stays at the Coronet Hotel, which Finch bought at the end of "Booked Solid."
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Tierney touches his bloody hand to the photograph with Quinn.
• Death Equals Redemption: Carter pleads with a dying Tierney to reveal the secret head of HR. He does.
• Death Faked for You: The Swede after Laskey is told to kill him.
  Fusco: I'm going for kind of a hollow point special motif here.
• Ditch the Bodyguards: Price has Natalie stage a loud argument to fool Reese, while he ducks out the hotel fire escape.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: Vanger is not actually a Swedish surname, though it sounds plausible enough. It was made up for The Millennium Trilogy.
• Humiliation Conga: Tierney has a rough day to put it mildly. Getting uppercutted by a bar stool courtesy of Reese is just one of the highlights. It's all capped off with him being gunned down by Carter.
• Handshake Substitute: Reese and Carter exchange a fist bump when agreeing how to split up the case.
• Hannibal Lecture: Root says that Finch cutting her off from the Machine is due to his jealousy that the Machine has chosen her to communicate directly with, not him.
• Hypno Fool: averted. Price doesn't hypnotize his patients into giving him money, he extracts personal details in his therapy sessions that he uses to access patients' bank accounts by answering the security questions (e.g., "What was the name of your first pet?") in the "forgot your password" function—and then sets up a recurring EFT that looks facially legitimate, but leads to an account he controls.
• I Have Your Wife/Hostage for MacGuffin: Natalie is cuffed and duct-taped in the back of a HR vehicle, in exchange for the baseball.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Invoked.
• It's What I Do: Price's reaction when Reese catches up with him? "Hey, I'm a crook."
• Karmic Death: Tierney. Shot in the chest by the very woman he tried to shoot In the Back at the end of Season 2.
• Karma Houdini: Natalie gets away scot-free and $4 million dollars richer.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Things finally catch up to Tierney. Apart from the horrendous day on the job, he's once again distracted in his second attempt to kill Carter, allowing her the opening to shoot him dead.
• Love-Interest Traitor
• MacGuffin: the "Murderers' Row" autographed baseball.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Elias invites Carter to share his wine. She approves.
• Meaningful Echo: Finch gives the "It's for your own good" explanation for isolating Root from the Machine. As with Dr. Carmichael, Root doesn't buy it and deconstructs Finch's motives.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Price pulls a con with a fake cop, then steals from him as well. In the end he loses all his money when Natalie turns out to be pulling a long con as well.
• Properly Paranoid: Quinn tries to get Carter to open up about her investigation, promising support from the Mayor himself. Carter is tempted, but decides not to reveal anything, which is just as well.
• Redemption Equals Death: It's no surprise that Laskey is killed after expressing regrets in this episode about his role in HR, and his willingness to help Carter take them down. When Tierney tries to shoot Carter, he draws his own weapon and gets shot by Tierney, who is shot by Carter in turn.
• Rewatch Bonus: When Natalie is first introduced, she has a soft drink in her hand that looks like Snapple. During The Reveal at the end, she buys the same kind of drink from the Soda Kid along with the baseball.
• Shout-Out:
  • Fusco refers to Vanger ("The Swede") as "Dragon Tattoo."
  • The ending is one to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
• Staged Shooting: Hayden and a fake cop pulling off a con to steal from a bank clerk.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Quinn does not respond well to Simmons reporting that HR has killed the Swede before finding out where the baseball has gone.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Root tells Harold that the future is coming and he can't stop it.
• Working the Same Case: Once again Carter's investigation of HR intersects with the Number's dilemma.