In the twenty-second and penultimate episode of the third season of Person of Interest<\/i>, I can barely believe what this show has turned into. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of suicide, racism\/racial profiling, imprisonment.<\/b><\/p>\n
Holy shit, SO MANY DIFFERENT PIECES JUST CAME TOGETHER, I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T DEAL WITH THIS.<\/p>\n
Collier<\/b><\/p>\n
Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I got a Collier flashback, and in doing so, Person of Interest<\/i> made him one of the most compelling characters on the show. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing<\/i> about flashback to paint him in a negative light. Instead, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given the explanation for his initial interest in Vigilance… sort of? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one complication here, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to in a bit. But we learn that Collier\u00e2\u20ac\u201donce named Brandt\u00e2\u20ac\u201dused<\/i> 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<\/i> crafts stories from terrible realities, and the story of Jesse Brandt unfortunately rang too<\/i> true. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A House Divided\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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<\/i> without a trial before he was freed by the courts, and he died by suicide, too. Thus, it was impossible for me not<\/i> to see this as an issue of race, an issue of unconstitutional imprisonment, a tale of how truly fucked up our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153justice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d system is when it comes to issues like these. Because of the over-reaching power of our government to hold people in issues of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153national security,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made to keep people so hopelessly powerless?<\/p>\n
The people who handled Jesse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about justice. They are absolutely responsible for Jesse losing hope, and thus, I sympathize with Collier completely<\/i>. The government took intelligence and twisted it to their own end. Who wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> be pissed after an experience like that?<\/p>\n
Samaritan<\/b><\/p>\n
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<\/i> into use in the government. They simply do not care about the ramifications of their actions. In their minds, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re much like Greer: the Machine and Samaritan are both creations of pure logic. Thus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no second-guessing with the information they get, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ultimate flaw in the logic of these people. Everything is definit<\/i>e. <\/i>They act as if the future is set in stone due to what the AI tells them, even though we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen the Machine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s team divert people away<\/i> from committing crimes. But Samaritan won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an extreme form of extrajudicial execution, and guess what? Not a fiction at all<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The Endgame<\/b><\/p>\n
Which is why there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a petty, horrifying brilliance to what Vigilance plans and completes in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A House Divided.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I mistakenly assumed that Control knew<\/i> that Vigilance was headed in her direction, that they were going to basically terrify Manuel Rivera into compliance by showing him what life without<\/i> 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<\/i> 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<\/i> who he has tried to kill. AND THAT THE SHOW DOESN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T IGNORE HOW SILLY THIS ALL IS!<\/p>\n
But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that final scene that excited me so much. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a terrible irony in the fact that the very people who will be given a public \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Vigilance did not grant a trial to any<\/i> of the people that they murdered. And if I understood this correctly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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???<\/i><\/p>\n
The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A House Divided\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[676],"tags":[677],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-person-of-interest","tag-mark-watches-person-of-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}