Person Of Interest

Oh man. Shit just got real.

Really enjoyed last night's episode:

John is still locked up with three other guys suspected of being the man in the suit, with Carter assisting Donnelly in interrogating them. Carter is trying to deflect suspicion away from John while still putting on a good show for Donnelly. One of the other suspects says he'll reveal the man in the suit's identity in exchange for immunity, but Finch blackmails him into giving up the wrong guy, who happens to get assassinated in his cell by a government agent disguised as a prisoner. We also find that John is being held at the same prison as Elias, who wants to be "friends" with John (he declines to give John up, saying he doesn't want to lose Finch as a chess partner). Donnelly strongly suspects John of being the man in the suit, and when interrogation fails, he decides to drop him in the recreation yard without any guards, expecting to see John's fighting skills when the other prisoners attack him. John realizes what's going on and just lets the other prisoners beat him up until Elias calls them off; meanwhile, Carter provokes another suspect into attacking her during interrogation, seemingly clearing John and getting him out of prison. All throughout this episode, we see flashbacks to John's time as a government assassin on a mission with Agent Stanton. In the last flashback, John is given orders to kill Stanton after their next mission is over; John initially tries to warn her about it, but she shoots him first and he realizes that she was given the same orders. He escapes just before a missile hits their location.

Back out of prison, John reunites with Carter - only to be confronted by Donnelly, who suspected John all along and released him in order to follow Carter to him. Donnelly arrests them both; Harold tells Fusco to meet him at Carter's last known location, but then gets a new number from the Machine - it's Donnelly. Harold tries to call Donnelly and warn him, but a truck smashes into his car. Someone then shoots Donnelly, and we see that it's Stanton, who is somehow still alive.

edited 11th Jan '13 6:46:45 AM by MasterInferno

You must be new to the show. Cara Stanton was revealed to be alive for quite some time. After all, she killed CIA Agent Evans (Black Dude Dies First), took Mark Snow hostage, put an Explosive Leash on him and is using him to do her dirty work. Then again, the dude tried to have her and Reese killed, so it's not like you should feel too sorry for him.

I have to say, what is it with Reese and Finch meeting murderous, psychotic women in cars?

This week's episode revealed that Cara Stanton is one cold, bucked-up woman. She kills people without a qualm, and gives off vibes of being The Sociopath and a Psycho for Hire. She treats basic morality like it's something to spit on, insultingly called Reese a "boy-scout" and said that she prefers him to be a killer. Apparently, Reese and her were lovers during their time together, but it evidently meant more to her than it did to him. She did call him "lover" before knocking him out with chemicals. Although I wonder if her feelings toward him were more In Love with Your Carnage than anything else.

I have mixed feelings about Agent Donnelly's death. On one hand, it felt like Dropped a Bridge on Him. On the other hand, it had to happen, because He Knows Too Much, he had gone off the rails, and he was upsetting the status quo. That, and his paranoia worked against him by having no backup with him at the worst time possible. It's too bad everyone underestimated his Inspector Javert tendencies and the Determinator part that goes with it!

That's right, I completely forgot that Stanton was shown alive earlier on. Blaah.

It's okay. Everyone makes mistakes!

Is it just me, or is Cara Stanton giving off some serious Yandere vibes toward Reese? I bet she'll try to kill Carter in what she thinks is Murder the Hypotenuse. Eek! <Dismayed>

Finale has been set up. And is Kara really dead?

edited 31st Jan '13 11:17:05 PM by ZeEngineer

Man, I caught the new episode last night. If that wasn't a Wham Episode, then I don't know what it was!

1. It turns out that Cara was working for an old Evil Brit guy for an exchange. She would upload something from a hard drive and he would tell her who was responsible for ruining her and Reese's lives. The name she got was none other than Harold Finch.
2. From the look of things, Cara Stanton and Mark Snow have experienced Karmic Deaths. I sincerely hope that they have both been Killed Off for Real, and Never Found the Body doesn't kick in.
3. The FBI subplot was wrapped up without fanfare. One Agent Ross concludes that Mark Snow was the Man in the Suit, and that seems to be the end of it.
4. Harold is trying to get into that hard drive to find out what was uploaded. It's apparently so encrypted that even he the super-hacker can't break through it quickly. As it is, he has five months to figure it out before the software activates and...something happens.

Speculation:

Whatever was in the hard drive going off in five months means it's going off just in time for the season finale. And since it's some kind of advanced computer software, I strongly suspect that Finch will have to get help from Root to stop it.

Finch seeks to use The Machine for good, Root wants to set it free, and I suspect this mysterious third faction wants to destroy it, or maybe wrest control of it from the government.

Didn't the FBI guy say that Stanton and Snow were dead?

Oh! Well, I suppose that's true. I guess I've seen so many examples of Never Found the Body that I was just not 100% sure!

Funny enough, I was watching the episode with my dad (he really likes watching the show). He's a big believer in the "It's just a show, I shouldn't think too hard about it!" school of thought. But...the beginning of the episode had him of all people pointing out some Fridge Logic to me. It's like this:

1. Carter regains consciousness, and she is handcuffed to some object. Had Donnelly handcuffed her and Reese to something in the car beforehand, or had Stanton done that?
2. Carter explains to Finch that she's convinced Stanton had snatched Reese. How does she know that, when she was knocked unconscious before Stanton even appeared?
3. Why did Stanton not shoot Carter? Did she not see her? After all, she shot Donnelly while the guy was confused and helpless, and she could have done the same to Carter!

Maybe something obvious is being missed here, but there are so many details to keep track of!

Just finished watching. Holy, what an episode.

I was wondering about Carter too. I didn't think Donnelly had handcuffed her, but she may have. It also seems weird that Cara didn't shoot her

edited 1st Feb '13 6:49:14 PM by zombielovescore

Maybe Stanton saw her unconcious and just assumed she was already dead? Seems unlike her not to make sure but it's the best I got.

Last night's episode was pretty different, wasn't it?

That Logan Pierce makes the late Steve Jobs of Apple look like a total dullard. He's wild, unpredictable, and more cunning than you might think. He gives Reese his million-dollar, tells-time-to-the-nanosecond watch as a "thank you" gift at the end. Reese shows it to Finch, who crushes it under his foot. It turns out that Pierce put a tiny GPS unit in the hopes of finding out more about Finch and Reese. I hope he doesn't fall victim to Curiosity Killed the Cast. <Nervous>

It was interesting to see the dialogue between Fusco and Carter. Carter is willing to trust Fusco, but she makes it clear that if she finds out that he's been doing criminal activity, she will do her duty as a cop and take him down. I just keep getting this feeling that a Downer Ending might happen to Fusco eventually.

The Flashback was a little surprising. It turns out that Nathan Ingram was the one who started the whole business with intervening for "irrelevant numbers". Could he have died as a result of intervening?

Any of you guys noticed the blue frames? Has someone tampered with the machine? Here are links for those frames. First◊ second◊ third◊

edited 8th Feb '13 8:37:00 PM by ZeEngineer

Might be Kara's malware from last week.

I'm hoping the billionaire becomes a recurring character, someone who's not an enemy but a Wild Card type of character.

edited 9th Feb '13 6:39:30 AM by tricksterson

I know, right? That billionaire is the epitome of Wild Card!

I love Jimmi Simpson, so it was a great surprise to see him on the show. I loved his character. He was a lot of fun and I thought he had some pretty great interactions with John. I have a feeling we'll definitely be seeing some more of him.

And we have another wild card on the show.

So I haven't watched the show since the first Paige Turco episode, but I came back because I heard it had got its claws into Amy Acker — and where she goes, so goes my army.

Episode was actually good (the Sarah Shahi one). Some typical Bad Robot type shit, but also really cool sense of attrition — I love anything that rips of The Longest Day/Die Hard, basically. I take it the show's been this good for a while then? I might just get back into it.

Yep, it's still going. I wonder how it's all going to end up.

I think we can all agree that last night's episode was as different as it could be. It definitely had What Measure Is a Mook? written all over it. Root is on the prowl, and the episode focused almost entirely on an operative who handles relevant numbers (i.e. terrorism threats) on behalf of the US government, or more specifically, Pennsylvania Two. I wonder who PT answers to. It was interesting how her life ends up in great danger, because her hacker partner questioned how the research department gets accurate numbers every time (and he figured out enough to realize that the "research department" doesn't exist at all, because the Machine produces the numbers). In other words, He Knows Too Much and guilt by association got them into big trouble.

Pennsylvania Two seems to come off as Affably Evil and a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Hey, stopping terrorism in its tracks is good and all, but it sure sucks when you actually try to question the process.

I thought the operative got killed off at the end there, but it turns out that she's still alive by the skin of her teeth.

Have you noticed that the Machine is behaving strangely? For starters, what's with the blue boxes? I could swear I've never seen those before. Also, the screens are showing lots of red boxes.

What if the malware that was put into the Machine is causing it to consider everyone a threat? That could lead to nightmarish scenarios if that was the case.

edited 22nd Feb '13 6:02:38 AM by TiggersAreGreat

Last night's episode definitely had its own feel and it really left me with a positive impression. Finch doing his Mr. Exposition thing with Shaw was great and the ending was another prime example of Po I's use of music ("Future Starts Slow" by The Kills, for anyone curious) to accentuate what's happening onscreen.

Hope to see more of Samantha Shaw. She evoked a sort of mirror image of Reese while still being an interesting character in her own right, I think. I also enjoyed her scene with Root, with whom she amusingly shares the same first name (assuming Shaw's isn't an alias).

About the blue boxes those may be people who handle Relevant numbers.

Those red boxes are probably the Machine frantically trying to determine the threat while the malware eats away at it.