In the first episode of the fourth season of Person of Interest<\/i>, the team is scattered about New York, uncertain how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll work together, when the Machine finds unique ways for them to cross paths. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of racial stereotypes<\/b><\/p>\n
I just want to state that Link was<\/i> played by Jamie Hector, who was Marlo Stanfield on The Wire<\/i>. (Garrison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actor was also on that show!) I WAS NOT WRONG, I SHOULD NOT SECOND GUESS MYSELF.<\/p>\n
Anyway, now that this totally important fact<\/i> is out of the way, help??? This is what season four is going to be like, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not ready<\/i> at all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a bold opening episode, and it sets the stage for the complicated battle that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to come. If I thought the earlier episodes this week reversed the core concept of Person of Interest<\/i>, then this is an extreme version of that. The writers\u00e2\u20ac\u201donce again!\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcommit to what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve set up, and the four members of the team are stuck in alternate identities\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well. Wait. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not right, is it? At no point do we find out what it is that Root does aside from talk to The Machine.<\/p>\n
Out of the four of them, she probably has it the best. Shaw certainly<\/i> has the worst identity, but as Root said, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be a reason the Machine stuck her in a department store. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little confused about the dating app and the van she jumps into, but I guess it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of the plan, too???) It makes sense that John is working for the NYPD, since it allows him access to some <\/i>resources he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have had otherwise. Harold\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s identity as a professor is a little more complex, and I wonder if it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a clue from The Machine about the role it wanted him to play. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lost on me that he was teaching a class on Ethics, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also obvious that the dissertation was the Machine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way of pushing Harold to where he needed to be.<\/p>\n
More on that in a second. I am not sure if there will be much of the Brotherhood in this season, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also not sure how I feel about them. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re used here to introduce Ali Hasan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s VHF network, which allows the team to communicate with one another without<\/i> Samaritan listening to them. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big deal, and I love the way these subversive technologies are being used to fuel the plot. The team has<\/i> to get creative, and that in turn means the writing team has to do so, too. How will they subvert Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s panopticon?<\/p>\n
Which is why the invocation of Brotherhood feels a little stale. At this point, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re nothing more than a street gang, and every<\/i> single member of that gang is black or brown. They either have no lines, shitty lines, or are one-note characters, and I am suspicious of this show after their treatment of plenty of other non-white characters. (Most especially their treatment of black characters.) If Person of Interest<\/i> is going to do this, I need<\/i> for this storyline to have the depth granted to all the other characters. Look at Elias, for instance, who is contracted by John in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Panopticon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to work against the Brotherhood. The mob storyline in this show has been remarkably complex and fascinating. Granted, it has had three seasons to develop, and the Brotherhood storyline has only been around for a single episode. I want it to be great, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being cautious at this point.<\/p>\n
As for Decima\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 good fucking god, they wasted no time going STRAIGHT FOR EVIL. The execution of the journalist at the start of this episode is all the evidence anyone needs that national security doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter; Samaritan is protecting itself. That makes people like that journalist collateral damage. How many more people will be targeted by that machine? Will dissidents and protestors end up on its list? Will Decima or Greer even care about who gets caught up in Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s need to protect itself?<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I am so thrilled that Harold was directed to a possible new headquarters. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally what that abandoned station is, right? At this point, the five people working for the Machine are the only ones who have the capacity to stop Samaritan. (I do wonder when Lionel will finally be shown the truth. Doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he deserve to know by know?) Despite all of Harold\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doubts and second-guessing, this war cannot possibly be won by forgetting why<\/i> the numbers matter. This whole case was a reminder for Harold, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back in.<\/p>\n
The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Panopticon\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 first episode of the fourth season of Person of Interest, the team is scattered about New York, uncertain how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll work together, when the Machine finds unique ways for them to cross paths. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for … Continue reading