Recap / Person Of Interest S 03 E 22

Season 3, Episode 22

A House Divided

Control: Why are you protecting us?

Shaw: Because it's part of the...plan, or the greater good, or something like that. Look, honestly, I really don't know. I just know something bad's gonna happen.

Reese: Shaw, I'm heading your way.

(all of New York blacks out)

Shaw: Reese? What the hell was that?

Reese: You know that bad thing that was gonna happen? I think it just did.

When an unknown entity prevents the Machine from seeing the full picture of an impending catastrophic event, it sends the team five separate numbers to help them piece together the bigger picture. Meanwhile, Root's team of hackers arrives in New York.

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Tropes present in this episode include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  Finch: The Machine... it started developing abilities I never expected, things I hadn't yet programmed it to do. And there wasn't an algorithm in the world that could control its exponential growth. And by the time I figured one out myself it would've been too late.
  Greer: Too late for what?
  Finch: Isn't that just the question? Having built something significantly smarter than myself, how could I possibly anticipate its evolution?
• Association Fallacy: Collier's brother was detained without charges for associating with the cousin of a known terrorist, causing him to go into a downward spiral that resulted in his suicide. After his death Collier discovers the man was an acquaintance of his brother from AA who barely knew his cousin. The government's complete lack of remorse for this screw-up (it's even implied that the man responsible was promoted) inspired Collier to join Vigilance.
• Big Damn Heroes: Subverted. Reese arrives too late to save Control and the others from being abducted by Vigilance. Shaw doesn't mind, though.
• Call-Back:
  • Root's hacker team consists of Daniel Casey, Jason Greenfield, and Daizo. Casey immediately remembers Reese as the CIA hitman who made him pull out his molars while Greenfield is better disposed, recalling Team Machine saving him from Vigilance.
  • The above quote, when Control asks why Shaw is protecting her and her colleagues:
  Shaw: 'Cause it's part of the...plan, or the greater good, or something like that.
• Calling Shotgun: Shaw again. She volunteers Hersh for the role.
• Call-Forward: Collier's dialogue in the flashback scenes.
• The Chessmaster: Collier.
• Cliffhanger: Vigilance now has Finch, Greer and Control, and is putting them on trial.
• Create Your Own Villain
  Collier: You're supposed to lock up criminals, not create them.
• Cut the Juice: Vigilance do this on a city-wide scale.
• Driven to Suicide: A Decima mook in the Batman Cold Open (turns out their family doesn't get insurance benefits if they're captured) and Collier's brother.
• Enemy Mine: The only one that can find Finch is, of all people, Hersh, because he knows where Greer is hiding.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Machine cannot see the full picture of an imminent threat and analyzes flashbacks of Collier as research.
  • After it realizes what's going to happen, the Machine identifies the victims on-screen, except for Greer. It's even seen making the call to the payphone.
  • This exchange:
  Jesse: I'm just doing it for the bragging rights. My brother, the lawyer.
  Peter: How about "your brother, the prosecutor"? It's what I really wanna do.
  • "Sometimes when we hit bottom, we ask the wrong people for help. People who use our weaknesses against us, get us to do things we never thought we could, or would."
• First-Name Basis: Shaw sarcastically calls Hersh 'George'.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Collier, a mere lawyer, turns into the leader of Vigilance.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Collier's Start of Darkness began after his brother was detained for terrorism under false allegations and later committed suicide.
  • Greer saw the destruction of the London Blitz when he was a child.
• Insane Troll Logic: Collier is told that because his brother killed himself after losing his family, job and freedom after being branded a terrorist he couldn't have been innocent.
• Insufferable Genius
  Shaw: My friend is never wrong, which is as annoying as that sounds.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Root applies pressure to a Vigilance Mook's gunshot wound with her boot to interrogate him while Vigilance is making its move.
  Root: I'm not a big fan of kicking a guy when he's down, but sometimes it does the trick. Now tell us your plan.
• Jerkass Woobie: Collier becomes a whole lot more sympathetic when in the flashback the life of his brother who he loved dearly is completely ruined from being wrongly imprisoned, causing Collier to quit his promising law career and join Vigilance.
• Kangaroo Court: Vigilance's "trial".
• Literary Allusion Title: The phrase "a house divided" is originally from the Gospel of Mark, but given the Vigilance connection the intended allusion is probably to Abraham Lincoln's famous speech.
• Moral Event Horizon: An unnamed special agent manages to deliver a single line that causes Collier to lose his last bit of belief in the government.
  "Innocent people don't kill themselves, Mr. Brandt."
• New Era Speech/Ave Machina:
  Greer: I want to live under a more just rule. Samaritan will never sleep with its secretary, or embezzle money from its campaign fund. Its decisions will be based on pure logic. Now that's a leader deserving of our vote.
• Out-Gambitted: Greer, who up until this episode has appeared to be in total control of the situation, ends up being blindsided by Collier and Vigilance. Also applies to a lesser extent to Control and Team Machine, who get members of their own swept up in the same net. Or maybe subverted, since Decima is running Vigilance behind the scenes.
• Plausible Deniability: Greer offers this as a reason why the US government should accept Decima being in control of Samaritan.
• Rogues Gallery: Greer, Collier and Control all appear, similar to "Aletheia".
• Shout-Out:
  Shaw: Are you two hearing this? They're ready to get in bed with Decima and go 1984 on us. I mean, more than usual. Let me just shoot them now.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Root stops her hacker group objections, saying she'll have a slightly better chance of survival if they don't come along. Could also be seen as her trying to keep them away from danger.
• Skewed Priorities: Shaw and Hersh can't help bickering over who's driving and who killed who.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: At the end, this is how Vigilance orders the defendants: Manuel Rivera, merely the President's intelligence advisor; Senator Garrison, who is the go-between for the government and Greer; Control, who was responsible for the Machine's anti-terrorism program; Greer, who wants the Machine replaced with his own; and Finch, who built the Machine in the first place.
• Start of Darkness: Collier's is shown in this episode.
• Think of the Children!: Control talks about a terrorist that Northern Lights intercepted with a dirty bomb in the suburb where the Presidential advisor's children live.
• Trashcan Bonfire: Seen after the big blackout.
• Undying Loyalty: Reese and Shaw to Finch, and Hersh to Control. Curiously, it could also apply to Shaw to Root, since she bikes to another state because she thinks the hacker is "gonna get herself killed".
• Wham Episode: Although, aren't they all now?
• Wham Line:
  Greer: Whoever said I wanted to control it?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The GPS transponder that Root cuts out of the Decima operative's car. It's mentioned once afterward that Daizo's still trying to get info off of it, but that's it.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Shaw really wants to just kill Control to stop Samaritan from going online, unaware that it's already too late.
  • When Vigilance doesn't do this trope, Team Machine realise he has something else planned.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Finch feared this when he realized that the Machine was sentient and growing smarter everyday. That's why he took so much time teaching it to care about people and restricting the ways it could interact with the world. Greer, on the other hand, appears to be looking forward to this happening.