Recap / Person Of Interest S 04 E 13

Season 4, Episode 13

M.I.A.

Don't judge a town by its cider. Monsters love small towns.

—Root

Following the clue they recovered in the previous episode, Reese and Root track Shaw to a small, apparently idyllic town which is under Samaritan's control. Meanwhile, Fusco teams up with a previous number, Detective Dani Silva, to handle the newest.

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• An Aesop: Reese tells Mrs. Thomson not follow orders blindly. Even when she had no choice.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: At the end of the episode, Root resorts to pleading with the Machine for answers.
• Batman Gambit: How Silva and Fusco stop Weiss. They know in the past he's killed cops who find out he's a serial killer, so they make it look like Silva isn't expecting Weiss to break into her home. She is.
• Battle Discretion Shot/Sound-Only Death: Root's rampage.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Carrow Industries is marketing microchip trackers, and the neurosurgeon is forced to wear a tracking anklet after being framed for malpractice.
• Big Damn Heroes: Silva and Fusco save each other from Weiss. Root saves Reese from a Samaritan mook.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: Root mentions that she's "good with computers."
• Brick Joke: We don't see what happens to Wicker after Root gags him. After the Mayor is captured and dragged to the same hotel room, she blusters "I warn you, the police will come looking for me." Reese replies, "I wouldn't bet on it." and there's a Reveal Shot of Chief Wicker Bound and Gagged in the bathtub next to her.
• Bridal Carry: Subverted; it ties up Reese's arms at a crucial moment, and he's only saved by intervention from Root.
• Call-Back:
  • Shaw wakes up in a bed with Greer talking to her, much as Kara Stanton did after the Ordos operation. The first thing Greer said to Stanton was "You're in the afterlife," and Shaw's first line here is "If this is the afterlife, it sucks."
  • The POI uses lye to make bodies disappear.
  • In the quote at the top of the page, Root is making reference to her own small town childhood, as shown in the flashbacks in "Bad Code."
  • Finch called up Dr. Enright from "Critical" to take care of Delia.
  • A closeup of Fusco's watch resembles the ticking clock shot in "If-Then-Else".
  • Reese recalls the Machine helping him search for Finch after Root captured him at the start of Season 2.
• Disposing of a Body: Weiss' Creepy Basement filled with lye and bleach. Played for Laughs with Root's handy man-sized bag, which she uses to haul the Chief up the hotel stairs past the owners.
• Face-Revealing Turn: The woman handcuffed to the bed is not Shaw.
• Faking the Dead: The woman "Mrs. Thompson" used to be is listed as dead after her heart attack.
• Fanservice: In another rare case for Person of Interest, we see Dani Silva in her bra.
• Face Death with Dignity: After realizing she's been used, "Mrs. Thompson" stays behind to "quit my job." It is unlikely that Samaritan or Martine will let her live long enough to collect unemployment benefits.
• The Generic Guy: Weiss' cover. In actuality, he's a "cleaner" for gangs, because no one would suspect an everyman hardware store employee of being a gang assassin.
• The Heart: Finch tries to stop his friends torturing Mrs Thompson.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Root appears to have this after the Machine tells her to stop asking about Shaw.
  • A mild case with Fusco where every sound in the precinct seems too loud, until Finch interrupts.
• Hope Is Scary: Or as Finch puts it, painful.
• Impersonating an Officer: Root pretends to be Reese's partner.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Fusco has to talk to his mother, i.e. Finch.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique/Impaled Palm: Root takes a medical drill to "Mrs. Thompson" to get information on Shaw.
• Jumped at the Call: Just as frustrated as his friends over what happened to Shaw, and with his disappeared partner inciting the wrath of his captain, Fusco grabs a chance to handle the Number of the Week just to get out of the office.
• Just Following Orders: "Mrs. Thompson's" excuse; Samaritan sent her emails with instructions about how Maple and the factory are to be changed.
• Knee-capping: "I hope you've got a good physical therapist in town."
• Leave No Witnesses: It's suggested Samaritan has disposed of all witnesses to the Stock Exchange shoot-out. One is kept alive for testing its implants.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Well, Root was a recovering crazy to begin with, but Shaw's disappearance is causing her to backslide.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Weiss kills off any police officer who discovers his secret, making it look like suicide. It's implied Samaritan has been doing this in Maple to anyone who becomes inconvenient, or just as part of its experiments.
• Military Alphabet: As usual, used by the Machine.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Root and Reese find an empty truck with a gurney and bloodstained medical equipment.
  Root: We need an answer. I need an answer, if she is alive or dead! [to CCTV camera] Please help us! Please...
• Not Named in Opening Credits: Sarah Shahi and John Nolan.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: The town of Maple is "the biggest little manufacturing hub in Upstate".
  Root: Town could use a better tagline.
• Pay Evil unto Evil
  • Chief Wicker gets knocked unconscious, then put in a sack Bound and Gagged after groping Root's behind.
  • Reese kneecaps an unarmed and unresisting doctor who was carrying out the implantation.
  • Reese pointedly tells Mrs Thompson she'll deserve whatever Samaritan has in mind when they catch up to her.
• People Zoo: Samaritan took over Maple and turned it into this just to understand human behavior.
• Police Brutality Gambit: Weiss uses this to get out of Fusco and Silva's custody.
• The Reveal: Shaw is alive, and in Samaritan's custody.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • Reese loots the police station's arsenal while Root knocks out the chief to get a look at his files.
  • Reese kidnaps the Mayor at a public event in broad daylight.
• Red Herring: It turns out that Shaw was never in the truck Reese and Root were following. It was a secretary from the stock exchange that Samaritan intended to test its brain implants on.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Reese knows that this is exactly what's going to happen to "Mrs. Thompson."
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Played with. Reese and Root seem to treat their search for Shaw more like a mission than Reese and Shaw treated their search for Simmons. Near the end of the episode, however, Root seems to go through this but she bounces back.
• Schrödinger's Gun: Discussed In-Universe by Root. Shaw maybe alive or dead in the absence of other evidence. Without that, Root prefers to believe that she is alive. At the end of the episode however, the gun is fired for the audience.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Silva in a Little Black Dress. Fusco is noticeably thrown.
• Shout-Out:
  • The name of Samaritan's front company, Carrow Industries, is a reference to Alecto Carrow, a Death Eater who taught at Hogwarts and indoctrinated her students to consider Muggles racially inferior.
  • The town name of Maple may be a reference to The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", which has a plot involving aliens studying human behaviour under stressful conditions, as a preliminary to a Take Over the World scheme.
  • The situation in Maple—small town under the control of an omnipotent but immature intelligence—is reminiscent of Jerome Bixby's short story "It's a Good Life". (Which was also made into a The Twilight Zone episode.)
  • One of Weiss' past victims is named Bill Buchanan, and the impound lot guy is named "Mason Bauer" (presumably after George Mason and Jack Bauer).
  • Two for The Leftovers: the episode's set in a small town in New York named "Maple" (a presumable riff on "Mapleton, NY", the primary setting of that show's first season), & the mayor's name is "Dowd" (likely after actress Ann Dowd, who played Patti Levin).
• Show Some Leg: Root does some flirting to get the Chief's cooperation, but knocks him out when he gropes her ass and refuses her access to the hard drive.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Fusco cops a Death Glare when he grabs Silva this way.
• Stepford Suburbia/Town with a Dark Secret: The town of Maple is Samaritan's testbed, where it experiments with controlling human behavior.
• Sunnydale Syndrome: An In-Universe version, as everyone is afraid of asking questions. That's probably how Reese and Root get away with so much Refuge in Audacity.
• Themed Aliases: This time Root's is Ginsburg.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Weiss
• Torture Always Works: Root sticks a drill through Thompson's hand, and she quickly reveals she does know something after all.
• Tracking Chip: Carrow Industries is selling them legitimately.
• Trilogy Creep: By Word of God, no less! CBS promoted the previous three episodes as a trilogy, but according to the writers, the arc includes this episode as well.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: Samaritan has been experimenting with brain implants to monitor, research and possibly even control human beings.
• Utopia Justifies the Means
• Villainous Breakdown: Weiss attacks Silva and Fusco in a rage, because he refuses to accept that he's been caught.
• Wham Line:
  • "Sierra. Tango. Oscar. Papa. Sierra. Tango. Oscar. Papa..."
  • Also:
  Shaw: If this is the afterlife, it sucks.
  Greer: I sincerely hope you managed to get some rest, my dear Sameen. You're going to need it.
• Working the Same Case: Fusco has the Number under surveillance, only to see Silva doing the same thing.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Root pleas the Machine to help find Shaw. The Machine responds via a call to a payphone... only to tell Harold and Root to stop.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Finch calls Root "Samantha" when trying to get her to stop torturing "Mrs. Thompson", though this is likely cause Maple is outside of their secured mesh network, and he can't address her like he usually does ("Ms. Groves" or "Root") because Samaritan would pick up on it.
• You Owe Me: Subverted with Mrs. Thompson, who woke up after a heart attack with a new identity and was told she had a second chance at life. Fridge Horror makes this an Implied Death Threat; after all, what's been given can be taken away.
• You Remind Me of X: Fusco to Silva:
  Fusco: You're a real terror. You remind me of a friend. A couple of friends, actually.

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Sierra. Tango. Oscar. Papa. Sierra. Tango. Oscar. Papa...