Mark Watches ‘Person of Interest’: S03E22 – A House Divided

In the twenty-second and penultimate episode of the third season of Person of Interest, I can barely believe what this show has turned into. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest. 

Trigger Warning: For discussion of suicide, racism/racial profiling, imprisonment.

Holy shit, SO MANY DIFFERENT PIECES JUST CAME TOGETHER, I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS.

Collier

Y’all, I got a Collier flashback, and in doing so, Person of Interest made him one of the most compelling characters on the show. There’s nothing about flashback to paint him in a negative light. Instead, we’re given the explanation for his initial interest in Vigilance… sort of? There’s one complication here, which I’ll get to in a bit. But we learn that Collier—once named Brandt—used to be a prosecutor. Well, he was studying to be one, that is, and his career was derailed by the surprise arrest of his older brother. Once again, Person of Interest crafts stories from terrible realities, and the story of Jesse Brandt unfortunately rang too true. “A House Divided” aired in the midst of 2014, and in 2015, Khalief Browder met the same fate as Jesse did in this show. The details are different, of course, but the general similarity is undeniable. Young Khalief was held in Rikers for three years without a trial before he was freed by the courts, and he died by suicide, too. Thus, it was impossible for me not to see this as an issue of race, an issue of unconstitutional imprisonment, a tale of how truly fucked up our “justice” system is when it comes to issues like these. Because of the over-reaching power of our government to hold people in issues of “national security,” people just like Jesse can have their constitutional rights trampled on. And how do you beat a system so expertly designed to crush people? How do you fight incompetence and ineptitude and racial profiling and the arm of the state when it’s made to keep people so hopelessly powerless?

The people who handled Jesse’s case didn’t care about justice. They are absolutely responsible for Jesse losing hope, and thus, I sympathize with Collier completely. The government took intelligence and twisted it to their own end. Who wouldn’t be pissed after an experience like that?

Samaritan

This episode is designed as a contrast. On the one hand, we watch how the intelligence gathered on Jesse Brandt ruined his life and the lives of all those who cared about him. In the present day, Control and Senator Garrison scheme to bring Samaritan back into use in the government. They simply do not care about the ramifications of their actions. In their minds, they’re much like Greer: the Machine and Samaritan are both creations of pure logic. Thus, there’s no second-guessing with the information they get, and that’s the ultimate flaw in the logic of these people. Everything is definite. They act as if the future is set in stone due to what the AI tells them, even though we’ve seen the Machine’s team divert people away from committing crimes. But Samaritan won’t be used in such a manner! A target will be identified, the government will view it as flawless intelligence, and that target will be executed without a trial and without due process. It’s an extreme form of extrajudicial execution, and guess what? Not a fiction at all.

The Endgame

Which is why there’s a petty, horrifying brilliance to what Vigilance plans and completes in “A House Divided.” I mistakenly assumed that Control knew that Vigilance was headed in her direction, that they were going to basically terrify Manuel Rivera into compliance by showing him what life without the numbers was like. Instead, Vigilance finds a way to neutralize all intelligence in New York City by SHUTTING OFF ALL POWER. The show does an incredible job of portraying the chaos of the blackout (I loved that one person filming everything on a cell phone), but it also uses it to invoke ONE OF THE VERY GREATEST TROPES IN THE UNIVERSE: enemies and allies FORCED TO WORK TOGETHER. I adore that Hersh (George! His name is George!) is reluctantly shoved on to the same team as Shaw and John, that he has to work alongside people he hates and who he has tried to kill. AND THAT THE SHOW DOESN’T IGNORE HOW SILLY THIS ALL IS!

But it’s that final scene that excited me so much. There’s a terrible irony in the fact that the very people who will be given a public “trial” by Vigilance did not grant a trial to any of the people that they murdered. And if I understood this correctly, it’s going to be aired live, and EVERYONE WILL KNOW ABOUT THE SECRET SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM. Oh my god???? How???? And will the next episode tell us who sent Peter that text???

The video for “A House Divided” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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