In the seventh episode of the fourth season of Person of Interest, HEISTS UPON HEISTS UPON HEISTS. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.
Oh, I just loved this episode to pieces, y’all. Obviously, there’s the one element to this that y’all knew I would adore, given my longstanding love of heists. This is a story about LIKE FOUR HEISTS IN ONE SCRIPT. There’s literally a sequence where one heist finishes and another begins!!! THIS IS WHAT I DREAM ABOUT, Y’ALL.
Despite that I would have loved this episode purely for the heists alone, there’s just so much more here that I adore. “Honor Among Thieves†is a subtly intense story because it shows us new ways in which Samaritan is influencing American society, particularly using methods that seem moral and good. That’s the sort of moral complication that I love from this show, and this script is no exception. Granted, at the end of this episode, we don’t even know who wanted the Marburg virus, aside from the fact that the government was going to take possession of it. AND I COUNT MYSELF AS EXTREMELY AGAINST SAMARITAN HAVING ACCESS TO TEN VIALS OF THE MARBURG VIRUS, JUST FOR THE RECORD. Knowing the specifics almost doesn’t matter, though. Samaritan is being trusted implicitly by Control, Greer, and everyone else who is working on it, and that’s so terrifying.
Which is why it’s so important that we see both of the agents working for Control at a place that is deeply familiar to us. John went through it; Shaw went through it; Kara went through it. These agents of the state obey their orders, hold misguided beliefs that they’re protecting national security, and then are suddenly thrust into the reality that they are disposable pawns who have been lied to by their employers. Here, we watch one Relevant operative question the how little context they are given for their missions because they don’t have to investigate their numbers anymore. There’s no human judgment involved in the process anymore; it’s all automated. Thus, it becomes impossible for these agents to change their techniques or to address possible complications in the orders they receive lest they be seen as traitorous.
And that’s exactly what’s going to happen, isn’t it? The man who Shaw trained was lied to and told that Shaw died, and SHE CLEARLY DIDN’T. Plus, his orders changed from destroying a deadly virus that could wipe out 90% of those who come into contact with it to securing it for the government, and he knew that was a bad idea. Yet Samaritan is there, archiving the evidence that the operative didn’t do as he was told. He’s dead, isn’t he? GONNA DIE SOON.
It’s part of the reality that is now hard-coded into the world. Then there’s the complication of the One Tablet Per Student program, a charity that would arguably do something incredibly important for the students of New York. Could you imagine if students were provided with the tools to keep up in our modern age, that used creative and entertaining means to teach them about the world? Could you imagine if the cost-prohibitive act of owning a tablet was taken care of by 3D printing? Yet all those tablets also provide a means for Samaritan to spy inside homes. To direct propaganda through apps and education. To insidiously integrate itself into the lives of every family who has one of those things in their home. Do we ever get absolute confirmation that this is what Samaritan intended? No. Root and Harold are only tasked with destroying the tablets based on the possibility that Samaritan will use them to further its own agenda.
So I get why Harold is torn over this. Being a man of technology, he loves the idea of OTPS. (I do, too, since my OTP is definitely Shaw/Root, whose flirting is now undeniable at this point.) He wants students to have access to tablets, and it probably would have provided them with an enriched experience. But at what cost? Is it worth it if Samaritan now had access to the private lives of millions of people? I’m with Root/The Machine on this one, but oh LORD, do I love complicated stories.
I also love bi/pan Shaw flirting with Tomas and Root in the same episode, THIS IS TOTALLY WHAT’S HAPPENING. The larger implications of Samaritan and Tomas’s involvement in these heists were more deeply satisfying to me, but I also don’t want to end this without definitively stating again that the main plot was a whole lot of fun. I’m glad that this show can be fun as often as it can be thematically challenging.
The video for “Honor Among Thieves†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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