In the sixth episode of the third season of Person of Interest, I’M STRESSED. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.Â
This show is TOO MUCH.
Carter
So, this episode was light on Fusco and Carter, though we did get the first glimpse of what her relationship with Laskey is going to look like. I say that with the full understanding that Laskey’s time is extremely limited at this point. LOOK, PEOPLE DON’T LAST LONG WHEN IT COMES TO HR. But what we see here is Carter’s commanding vision: she is going to turn HR against itself. She uses Laskey for information, but not without giving him a warning: his loyalty to HR will be tested in terrible, terrible ways.
We’ve seen that before! Fusco, even while working to subvert HR, was still asked to do miserable things. Yet Laskey wasn’t prepared for Simmons to teach him a lesson by making him bury his childhood friend. I know HR is evil, and yet I’m still shocked by just how far they’re willing to go to protect themselves. Literally everyone is expendable all the time. It seems Terney, Simmons, and Quinn are the only ones untouched by the violence of HR, and Laskey hasn’t been around long enough to be part of the upper echelon of the organization. So what does he do next? I suspect he’s going to stick with Carter for as long as he can because that boy looked terrified the morning after burying his friend.
I JUST WANT ALL OF HR TO DIE FOREVER.
Vigilance
I DIDN’T EXPECT THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE VIGILANCE STORY SO SOON. Like the previous episode, “Mors Praematura†manages to take a new case – that of Timothy Sloan – and fold it into an existing storyline. Collier is back, but this time, his target is a hacker who used to work for his activist group, but who turned state’s witness after Collier started killing people. Thus, this is a revenge plot, one that filter’s into Sloan’s life after he believes that his foster brother had been killed. I admit that I kept worrying that Sloan would be revealed to be a secret member of Vigilance the entire time, but that’s mostly due to my own paranoia while watching this show. I EXPECT THE WORST.
Sloan is a great guest character, one who has a clear emotional tie to this story, but who also gets to play a significant part in the tension-filled plot. I loved that his ability to locate hidden things mattered so much to this! (I’m also a general fan of Kirk Acevedo, anyway, but BIASES ASIDE.) Yet it was the seemingly unending power of Vigilance that frightened me. At this point, they still haven’t figured out who Harold is, but seeing their response to Jason was CERTAINLY enough to understand just how far they’re willing to go. Of course, there’s an inherent ironic cruelty to what they do! They want to protect the right to privacy, yet they violate Sloan’s privacy to get what they want. I don’t think that’s lost on them, but it’s still so disturbing. Plus, look how horrible Collier is in the end in order to protect himself. I’M SCARED OF VIGILANCE.
The Machine
I may have gotten this all wrong.
So, first things first: the dual storylines that then collided together were AMAZING. This episode is so expertly crafted in terms of plot that it still impresses me AND IT SHALL IMPRESS ME FOR A LONG TIME. Yet it is through this that a central question remains: Is the Machine speaking to Root because she was granted admin access last season, or is there really something more going on between the two? I had believed the Machine granted all of Root’s requests because she was an admin. But what if the Machine has developed an affinity for Root? What if Root isn’t deluded about her role in the grand scheme of things? WHAT IF SHE’S TELLING THE TRUTH?
I’d like to think that the Machine recognized it had multiple assets and resources and used them all (elaborately so) in order to best help Jason and Sloan. Yet even if that’s the case, that means Root is right: the Machine is evolving. Fast. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR THE STORY??? Oh my god, this show!!!
The video for “Mors Praematura†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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