{"id":6692,"date":"2017-12-26T13:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T21:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6692"},"modified":"2017-12-18T09:11:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T17:11:16","slug":"mark-watches-person-of-interest-s05e05-shotseeker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/12\/mark-watches-person-of-interest-s05e05-shotseeker\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Person of Interest’: S05E05 – ShotSeeker"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fifth episode of the fifth season of Person of Interest<\/i>, a number sets a grim pallor over the war with Samaritan. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For brief mention of suicide.<\/b><\/p>\n

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dark and sad but IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S DONE SO WELL. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chat!<\/p>\n

ShotSeeker<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a delight (and, admittedly, kind of creepy) watching this show address so many forms of surveillance, from the things that people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t aware of, to the ones that people openly accept. Thus, it seemed obvious that there must<\/i> be something in the ShotSeeker system or program that Samaritan wanted. Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it provide a new means of spying on people in public, perhaps when they were in places with cameras or cell phones?<\/p>\n

Yet even if this is the case, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ShotSeeker\u00e2\u20ac\u009d deliberately obfuscates its own endgame. Ethan is targeted after he realizes that the program lied<\/i> to him. (Which I assume Samaritan manipulated in the hope that no one would notice.) Through a simple coincidence, though\u00e2\u20ac\u201dEthan went to high school with Krupa Naik\u00e2\u20ac\u201dEthan noticed. It put him on Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s radar, which in turn triggered the Machine, and then… well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a twisted, complicated journey that unfolds over the course of this episode. Just watch the video for evidence of me being unable to figure out ANYTHING AT ALL. Part of the problem is that I, too, fell for Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frame job. It was so easy<\/i> to believe that Krupa had been targeted, that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been killed by a vindictive CEO who hated that she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sell her research to him, that the team he hired to take her was now going after all the loose ends. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S LITERALLY THE EXACT KIND OF CASE THAT TEAM MACHINE WOULD TAKE. (Which brings up an uncomfortable issue: Can Samaritan properly manipulate other people through its study of them? Because holy shit, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure the answer is a resounding YES, and that terrifies me.) They all take the bait. They all fall for this… up to a point.<\/p>\n

I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possibly provide you with a theory as to what actually<\/i> happened here, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ShotSeeker\u00e2\u20ac\u009d excels. Ambiguity within the Person of Interest <\/i>world generally means that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of a larger story. That being said, I still want episodes that feel like their own entities, and the writers find a way to make the big mystery a moral struggle rather than offering us plot closure. Root and Harold are faced with a terrible choice and very little time to decide it: Do they subvert Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans to kill Ethan and bury Krupa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s their general mission! Saving lives! So it seems<\/i> to be the ethical choice, but what if Samaritan is manipulating them into that<\/i> decision? What if Samaritan tricked them because it WANTED them to disseminate Krupa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s research? That mystery is a way of building up the sheer impossibility of fighting Samaritan. How can you fight against an entity that is everywhere, all of the time? That can manipulate reality so effectively that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing good? That is eight million steps ahead of you? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vital that this happens while the AI simulations play out because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all part of creating believable stakes and challenges. It hurts a little to watch this, of course, because this doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give us much hope. The Machine lost BILLIONS of battles with Samaritan, and Samaritan is still out there, rapidly changing the world, killing innocent people and kidnapping others, and y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all… I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what the path to victory is.<\/p>\n

Bruce Moran<\/b><\/p>\n

This is such a clever script because there are just SO MANY little twists and turns that I bought into. (I generally fall for everything, so maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a bad example here.) For instance, I completely believed that John had been kidnapped by Samaritan agents, not<\/i> Bruce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s men. But this plot is SO NECESSARY. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thread left unaddressed after the end of last season, and it helps push Fusco into a much more active role in Person of Interest<\/i>. Bruce wants the truth, but that truth is REALLY FUCKING HARD TO EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE IN LESS THAN A SOLID 24 HOURS. Seriously, how is anyone<\/i> going to be inducted into Team Machine at this fucking point? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just so much that they need to know, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no easy way to do it. Yet Bruce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desire for the truth about the assassination of Elias pushed Harold and John to finally admit that they had to give him something or he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever stop.<\/p>\n

So they give him Elias.<\/p>\n

First things first: I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THE CONVERSATION HAROLD AND JOHN HAD WITH HIM ABOUT SAMARITAN. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear he knows! He knows what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re up against, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why he begs Bruce to go back into the shadows. But exactly how long can that last? How long until Bruce is in Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crosshairs? How long until Fusco pieces together all the loose ends he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been collecting this season? We are reaching a critical point here, and Bruce shoved everything into the light as much as he could. We now know that Elias is alive (!!!!!! I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T BELIEVE I DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN QUESTION THIS !!!!!!), that he is aware of Samaritan, and that Fusco has noticed the uptick in suicides and missing persons cases in New York. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only a matter of time, right?<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ShotSeeker\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":"