In the eleventh episode of the second season of Person of Interest, Finch, Carter, and Fusco must work a case without Reese. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.
Trigger Warning: For discussion of suicide.
It definitely felt strange to have Reese in only two scenes in this entire episode, but it’s a bold choice for the show, one that allowed the writers a chance to give Finch a story that was far more personal. Which is something I don’t think he would have necessarily done if Reese had been listening in, you know?
I should back up, though, before I talk about the big climactic scene. The writers don’t ignore the significance of Reese’s absence, so it made “2Ï€R” a very strange episode. There are no moments of violence or usage of force, though that threat hangs over everything. We never quite know if Finch will have to fend anyone off, especially as this specific number takes him and Fusco on a journey. So there’s an oddness to this episode, but that’s a good thing. It kept me, as a viewer, on my toes. How would the team deal with Reese in Rikers? How would they deal with a number without Reese’s expertise?
So it made sense to me that Finch would go undercover. He generally seems willing to step outside of his comfort zone when the situation requires it, and this is the perfect example of that. He embeds himself in the life of a teenager who’s also a computer science genius, and it’s not until the final moments that we ever get close enough to understanding why the Machine spit out his number. There were so many possibilities, the first arriving the reveal that Caleb was behind the drug ring at his own school. That made it seem like he was the perpetrator, right? Except the Machine wasn’t going to cough up a number just because someone’s dealing, so that didn’t make sense. Then, I figured that maybe that Lorenzo dude was going to kill Caleb, and that was why the Machine picked up on him. BUT THEN! ANOTHER PLOT TWIST! Caleb’s teacher was trying to steal Caleb’s code and become a millionaire off of it!
Look, there was a lot going on here, but it never felt convoluted. I think part of the reasons that “2Ï€R” is so crowded is because the team was short a person. While Fusco was assisting Finch, Carter was busy doing everything she could to exonerate Reese and keep him from Donnely’s clutches. Which is a WILD plot line, too, LET US NOT FORGET THAT. I’m glad that they had her outright confirm that she had long ago stepped over the line of ethics in the workplace while helping Finch and Reese. But Carter is also in so deep that she has to protect Reese because she is implicated in a lot of his “crimes” as well! So there’s a personal angle here that matters just as much.
Yet in the end, it’s not Caleb’s teacher or Lorenzo who pose the biggest threat to his life. I suppose this means that the Machine can recognize when a person is going to harm themselves. Everything Caleb did – making money off the drug trade at his high school, signing over the code to his teacher to sell on his behalf, taking out trusts for his mother – was designed to be his last acts before he killed himself at the exact same age when his brother died from a foolish mistake.
It gives a new context to the entire episode. While Finch and Fusco assumed that the death of Caleb’s brother played a part in his life, they always assumed it was for the wrong reason. They also assumed that Caleb’s brother had died from malicious circumstances. No one thought it was an actual accident, that the brothers’ foolishness led to one of them dying. Thus, what we watch over the course of “2Ï€R” is a young man struggling with guilt. His brother’s tragic death makes everything feel less. Less real, less necessary, less true.
Thus, Finch’s decision to try to reach out to Caleb in the end hinges on the idea that the world is better off with people like the two of them – both of who made horrible mistakes, who lost people they cared about because of those mistakes – because the alternative is worse. They may be missing part of themselves, but have part of a piece of pie is better than no piece at all. It’s such a profound and touching thing for Finch to say, especially since we know he’s not bullshitting Caleb. Finch saved a life by baring his soul, and I respect that.
SO, HEY, WHO’S READY FOR THAT NEXT EPISODE AFTER THAT CLIFFHANGER? Not me, I need help.
The video for “2Ï€R” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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