In the sixth episode of the second season of Person of Interest, Reese maintains a cover in the suburbs in order to protect a family. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.Â
This show keeps killing it, y’all, I’M SO HAPPY. I mean… well, I could use a lot more of Carter, but at least in this season, it’s Fusco who is used less this time around instead of Carter. As much as I adored the endless tension of watching Zoe and John pretend to be a married couple (which absolutely reminded me of The X-Files episode “Arcadia”), how cool would it have been if that was Carter? Look, I’m not complaining about getting two episodes in a row with Zoe in them, but it was a possibility, right???
Anyway, I’m also enamored with the recurring motif we’re seeing over the course of this show that teases Reese and Finch with possibility. The story of Graham Wyler is one that Reese and Finch can relate to, given that he once did things that he is not proud of. He left that life behind, but in the process, he stole an identity. He started a family. He got a job that had nothing to do with theft, and he also dodged responsibility. But unlike Finch and Reese, Graham found a way to find normalcy. So it was easy to see why the two of them were so willing to help Graham. He had what they didn’t, and they felt that after all those years, he deserved a family.
The reality is a little more complicated than that, of course, and Person of Interest‘s cast of writers consistently find ways to avoid extremes. Graham might be a good person, and he clearly means a lot to his family. But is it fair that by sheer luck, he refused to work a job that got his two partners arrested and thrown in jail for twelve years? Does that absolve him of all the crimes that he committed? Those are interesting questions to ask, and “The High Road” doesn’t ignore them! When his old partners find him and begin to terrorize him, it’s not easy for Graham to simply ignore them, especially when they LIGHT HIS CAR ON FIRE. Or steal his daughter’s jewelry and then threaten to murder his family if he doesn’t do one more job for them.
The truth is that I really do enjoy fiction that shines a lot on the grey spaces. While it might be more comfortable for the world to be split into a binary, for there to be categorically good people and bad people, Person of Interest is far more invested in the many shades of humanity. When faced with the choice of facing his own death or refusing to break into a safe again, Graham doesn’t see this as one of personal honor or pride. It’s about safety. Look, he’s not a fool! That man knew deep down that if he went with his old partners, they’d kill him once that safe was open. But the other path would have left his family open to constant harassment, fear, and intimidation.
So he chose to end it. BUT NOT EVEN THE WAY THAT I THOUGHT HE WOULD. I know I just wrote about complicity in regards to this show, but this is another way that the writers explored this theme. Graham chose to turn himself in, even though he could have just gone home. He chose honesty. Yes, it took him fifteen years to get there, and he was forced into the decision, and it’s important to acknowledge that. But in the end, Graham has something else that Finch and Reese don’t: the opportunity to be honest with someone else. Even Zoe is still in the dark as to what’s really going on, you know?
The truth exists in shadows within Person of Interest, and as we get new flashbacks, it’s clear that the audience barely has the frame of the whole portrait. Each new thing we learn about the Machine, about how it was programmed, and about how it destroyed lives, makes me want A BILLION MORE THINGS. There’s no mistaking that it became an intelligence anymore, especially we saw how it BASICALLY LED FINCH TO GRACE. Which is certainly a creepy way for a person to meet someone else, and I wonder how much of that we’re going to see within the show. I assume Grace never found out what Finch worked on, nor did she know how he came to know that she existed. Right??? And if the Machine can determine relationships between people, no matter how strange or convoluted, can it also measure a potential relationship? Is that why it pointed Finch in Grace’s direction???
The video for “The High Road” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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