In the sixth episode of the fifth season of Person of Interest, Shaw is tested; Team Machine tracks down a possible murder at a wedding; Fusco inches closer to the truth. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.Â
The contrast present in the multiple plots—particularly between Shaw’s story and the wedding murder—are necessary for Greer’s delusion to be all the more horrifying. There’s truly nothing quite as upsetting as a villain who believes that they are a hero, and here, we get Greer’s misguided attempt to convert Shaw to an operative by showing how Samaritan is saving lives. But it’s important that Greer doesn’t introduce this simulation as an attempt to demonstrate this. No, instead he says that Shaw believes her friends to be heroes when they’re actually the villains.
He then proceeds to never once bring this up again, and I kept waiting for him to show the morally grey area that the team sometimes balances within. But he doesn’t. All Samaritan does is focus on the crimes stopped, the CEOs who exploit others for profit, the subtle ways in which the world is cruel and unjust. No one doubts that, of course, and it’s part of the reason that Shaw doesn’t understand why all of this is necessary. She learned all of this years ago, and she certainly saw examples of injustice working with Team Machine. So what’s the difference? How is Samaritan not the same as the Machine? It’s an issue of time, or course: Samaritan has a much deeper grasp on the world, and it is able to recognize aberrations quicker, too. It can manipulate days, weeks, months in advance, providing operatives with enough time to properly take out the real villains.
I can see why Samaritan would try to appeal to Shaw this way. It’s what she’s good at: being an operative. But what I can’t see is Shaw accepting that the ends justify the means, at least in this case. Samaritan and Greer have done so many terrible things in the name of this kind of progress, which includes KIDNAPPING SHAW AND TORTURING HER FOR NINE MONTHS STRAIGHT. Kinda hard not to view them as villains, right???
And as this is unfolding, though, we get an intimate view of the case that Team Machine works on, one that highlights that THEY AREN’T VILLAINS AT ALL. They take such great care to solve the mystery of the potential murder at the Turner wedding, and they do so because THEY DON’T WANT TO RUIN THIS DAY FOR EVERYONE UNLESS THEY HAVE TO. Obviously, this is exploited for a lot of humor—Harold’s Twisted Sister cover! The fights during the songs! Everyone thinking John is security for stripper cops!—as well as a chance to explore some nicer moments between these characters. It’s the first episode this season where John, Root, and Harold get to take a breather. (Which isn’t to suggest that this wasn’t a tense episode. Those scenes with the assassins watching the ceremony were HAIR-RAISING.) But y’all, Harold sings in a terrible Irish accent; Root rescues John and the target WHILE ON HORSEBACK. She also bakes a quiche lorraine for her??? Who is Root??? WHO KNEW SHE COULD DO THIS?
But I love that this “break†means that Root gets to admit that she’s lonely, that she came on this caper specifically because she couldn’t be back at the subway HQ by herself. I love that the team decides to keep the perpetrators locked in the wine cellar for the night so that the bride, groom, and their respective families still get to enjoy the wedding night. It’s a sweet gesture, and it’s a cool way for the show to give Greer the middle finger. These people are the villains???
At the same time, “A More Perfect Union†doesn’t suggest they’re perfect, and the escalation of Fusco’s interest in Samaritan is proof of that. If Harold and John had not been so frustratingly vague with Fusco, if they hadn’t ignored him or treated him as they did, would he have sought out the answer to all those missing persons? Or would he have even noticed the patten in the missing persons? Fusco’s discovery of the truth would have been inevitable, I think, but this way is so UPSETTING. Does anyone even know he’s down in that tunnel? Was Finch able to find his location before the demolition went off? ARE THEY GOING TO KEEP LYING TO HIM EVEN AFTER ALL OF THIS?
The video for “A More Perfect Union†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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