In the tenth episode of the third season of Person of Interest, HOW DARE YOU. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.
Trigger Warning: For extensive talk of grief, death, police brutality, and ableism.
Really? Johnny Cash’s cover of NIN’s “Hurt� You really gonna hit me with that?
My emotions are all over the place after “The Devil’s Share,†both because of the content of this episode and the meta-textual conversation I’ve been having in regards to Person of Interest. I can sit here and recognize the immense talent of the cast, the brilliance of this searing, gut-wrenching script, and I can also despise the writers for how they got Joss Carter off the show. I can adore the way grief is written about – the way it can twist the senses, the way it can push us to do things we would otherwise not be able to do, the way it can dull the edges and drown us – and I can also hate that we even have to be talking about grief in the first place.
All I was trying to say yesterday, as I was dealing with my anger over yet another black woman killed off in order to give pain and emotional motivation to all her non-black surviving friends, was that there’s another way. I knew going into Person of Interest that Taraji P. Henson left the show, ostensibly for Empire, and I actually thought it was going to happen in “Endgame.†For the briefest of moments at the end of “The Crossing,†I wondered if this was how she was gonna be phased out. Without HR to battle, would they suddenly give her nothing to do? Instead, she was killed by a vicious racist, by the absolute worst villain on the show, and it happened mostly by accident? John was Simmons’s target, and it’s not like Carter threw herself in front of a bullet for him. So it’s mostly by circumstance that she gets shot.
But even if that wasn’t the case, this is a show that has provided options to other people. Dr. Madani exists to provide secretive care. How many times has Harold created entire identities and made people disappear with millions of dollars? That was sort of the point I attempted to make. I get that if that had happened, this episode wouldn’t exist. “The Devil’s Share†is a brutal rumination on grief, and again, it’s good when I’m able to separate it from the reason it exists.
Which I can’t. There is a giant hole right in the middle of Person of Interest without Carter. It’s obvious. Glaring. Unavoidable. This episode just felt weird without her, even though the entire thing was about her. After that emotionally-destructive opening sequence, we follow both Shaw and Reese, who set out to find Simmons and enact their revenge. It’s bloody. Horrifying. Scary. Seriously, this episode reminded me of how frightening John can be, you know?
So even if it was intentional, the show still invokes the trope of killing off someone in order to give development to other people. Shaw doesn’t really change much here, so that means that three white characters benefit from a black woman dying. Reese confronts his own ability to disconnect from the world and not care about the ramifications of his actions. Harold is forced to release Root, who learns further about the frightening world that is coming for the Machine. (Though she doesn’t share it with us. WHAT IS IT.) Divorced of Carter’s death, they’re actually really, really cool plot points, but once more, I can’t separate them at all.
Thus, there was a lot here that upset me. Not just “Hurt,†not just the shot of Paul crying as he watched his ex-wife’s funeral, not just the blank look on Taylor’s face, not just the way Harold remained horrified and heartbroken as he said goodbye to his friend. I ached for the loss of Joss Carter, over the sheer unfairness of it all, because it’s not like I needed another reminder of how fucked up the world of Person of Interest was. We saw it in practically every episode. Humanity is awful, and this show deals with the worst of the worst. And right up there at the top was HR, the organization that exploited the power that police have in our society and then used it to steal. Set-up. Ruin. Murder. The cost of their dissolution, though, was Carter. Is that really worth it?
In a strange way, I suppose I did enjoy this episode. Or maybe I just admired it and the honest way in which approached Carter’s death. For what it’s worth, I felt like they dealt with the ramifications of it quite well, rather than trying to push forward and forget her.
But it was those flashbacks that impressed me the most. The four surviving characters are all part of interviews in their scenes, ones where the interviewing party is hidden in the shadows. Each of them revealed something raw and terrible about these people. Harold had survivor’s guilt that was exacerbated by his knowledge that he had caused Nathan’s death; Sameen Shaw used to be a surgeon until she was kicked out of her program for… well, the show still avoids saying it. They got so close! Writers, specificity matters. Name her illness or condition and write around that. It would have been more powerful, especially in terms of representation, if we knew what it was Shaw was fired for. Anyway, John’s flashback was a reminder of his days as a cold-blooded assassin, which was meant as a way to show us that he was reverting to that point.
And then there was Fusco, who once murdered someone on the job. Why is that scene so important? Because out of everyone here, Carter changed Fusco the most. She helped make him a literal better person. It still invokes the same trope I wrote of earlier, and I don’t know that this makes me feel a whole lot better about Fusco after “In Extremis.†Like, this is straight up police brutality, right? At the very least, though, the flashback helped demonstrate how much Fusco had changed and why he chose to bring Simmons in rather than kill him.
It’s all a mess, but it’s one I still had a lot of feelings for. This really was a “good†episode, and I feel weird admitting that. Mostly because I don’t want to think about Person of Interest without Carter.
The video for “The Devil’s Share†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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