In the sixteenth episode of the first season of Person of Interest, OH MY GOD, THAT WAS LUKE FROM FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, NO WONDER I COULDN’T PLACE HIM. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.
I’ll repeat what I said at the end of the video for “Risk”: WOW, WHO KNEW INSIDER TRADING COULD BE SO SUSPENSEFUL? Look, this is a topic I pretty much never really understood, so I worried in the first act of this episode that I wouldn’t get all of this. And yet, the writers do a fine job giving a general overview of what insider trading is and why it’s so insidious and awful. Granted, this is all through a character who, until pretty much the ending, isn’t all that sympathetic. Adam Saunders is a quintessential douchebag in every conceivable way, and he’s almost impossible to like as Reese infiltrates his inner circle. He is flashy; arrogant; selfish; he seems far more like an antagonist than the victim of some nefarious crime.
So it’s fascinating to me that amidst the world that we’re shown here – overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, OVERWHELMINGLY ANNOYING – I still found myself captivated by the story. That’s a credit to the framing, though. We don’t quite know why we should care about someone who seems so unrepentantly terrible, and if anything, we see the SEC agent as the only person trying to right a wrong. I couldn’t care about Adam at all!
Yet the events that transpire over the course of “Risk” show us someone who got caught up in the glamour and drama of being a Wall Street trader, who tried to do his uncle right after the man raised him, who was making up for the years and time and money lost to the father who ran out on him, who let his greed cloud him from the truth of what was going on around him. Well, until he did find out the truth of his firm and got wrapped up in a conspiracy involving… I’ll get to that. It took me until the assassination attempt on Adam’s life to get invested in this episode, since that was the point where it was clear that Adam was a target, not the perpetrator. Admittedly, it was fun watching Reese pretend that he knew what he was talking about when it came to trading, but once he revealed that he wasn’t in Assets to Adam, this episode got really good. I am finding out that I am super into these transition moments within the show, when Reese gets to reveal that he’s not whomever he’s pretending to be. And Adam’s reaction was so satisfying!
I was worried, though, that with the return to the homeless encampment that John was in during the pilot episode, we’d just get a superficial look at these people. For the most part, this isn’t some grand examination of the plight of the homeless, and y’all know I’m sensitive to this stuff already. Still, it’s not like… actively terrible? Joan proves to be the exception to what I expected, along with the fact that there’s no cruel humor extracted from putting a rich Wall Street trader in a community of homeless people. I expected that! You know, lots of wacky jokes about the contrast between these two groups, and yet? None. Not a single one. Joan is named; she is consequential to the story and to the main character; and in the end, everyone is rewarded by Adam’s uncle and with the promise that they won’t have to leave. It’s… not horrible? Oh god, I have set the bar so hilariously low that I’m impressed by basic human decency, y’all.
But there’s another low bar that this show can’t seem to meet: WHY HAVE WE SLIPPED BACK INTO GIVING CARTER LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME. Ugh, I’m a broken record, I know it! I mean, at least she’s the one to put together all the pieces of this and connect it back to the one person who would benefit from a quick four million dollars, who would be able to pressure senators to push a fracking bill to law, who would have access to the kind of muscle that killed Sydney Baylor and nearly killed Adam multiple times. IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF ELIAS. AGAIN. So, Carter is smart enough to comprehend the massive scope of what Reese and Finch were investigating, but… that’s all she gets? COME ON WRITERS. There is so much potential here! Stop ignoring it!
Anyway: ELIAS. Again!!! Oh my god, how the hell are they ever going to take him down? Y’all, there are three serialized plots unfolding on this show right now: Elias, HR, and The Machine. I CAN’T.
The video for “Risk” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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