{"id":6662,"date":"2017-11-30T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T21:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6662"},"modified":"2017-11-19T14:47:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T22:47:42","slug":"mark-watches-person-of-interest-s04e10-the-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/11\/mark-watches-person-of-interest-s04e10-the-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Person of Interest’: S04E10 – The Cold War"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the tenth episode of the fourth season of Person of Interest<\/i>, hELp. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For talk of extrajudicial executions.<\/b><\/p>\n

Could this show please just take a nap for a bit and let me rest, I WAS SO FUCKED UP BY THIS EPISODE.<\/p>\n

Loyalty<\/b><\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start with an acknowledgement: I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I ever needed<\/i> Greer to be explained. Yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that I tend to like super complicated villains, but in terms of being this season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s antagonist, I find Greer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motives to be crystal clear and terrifying. They always have been! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not interested in creating a more peaceful world; he wants control<\/i>. He is actively manufacturing a world in which reality itself can be manipulated without anyone being the wiser. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen just how messed up and invasive Samaritan can be, but y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all<\/i>. This is… terrifying? Is that even the right word at this point?<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll touch on that more in a bit, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather talk about Greer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flashbacks. Unsurprisingly, the man used to work for a government organization\u00e2\u20ac\u201dMI6, in this case\u00e2\u20ac\u201din a role that is rather familiar at this point, right? Shaw, John, and Kara Stanton all were operatives tasked with taking out people who posed a threat to national security. And from what I can tell, Greer loved<\/i> being a part of MI6. Like everyone else we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen on this show who once worked a job like this, he was also<\/i> betrayed by people he trusted. Yet he takes a wildly different path than the other characters. His revenge is far more immediate, first of all, unlike the others. His boss, Blackwood, is dead within days of Greer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discovery that he was a double agent. But Greer is a man obsessed with loyalty. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why he was close to his partner, why he believed in being loyal to his country, why this final mission of his hit him so hard. Greer went from a dutiful MI6 agent to a man determined to do away with the flawed lines that separate countries and nations. But not for any moral reason, of course. This was always<\/i> about control. Greer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view of humanity, forged during his time as a state assassin, is darkly cynical, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why Samaritan appeals to him so much. He believes in the worst of humans, and Samaritan provides a framework to manipulate those humans into his vision of order.<\/p>\n

Samaritan<\/b><\/p>\n

Yet New York City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perfect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d day\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich Samaritan manipulated\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis anything but perfect. Even if crime was practically nonexistent, even if the city appeared to run perfectly, this was still evil<\/i>. First of all, the manipulation alone is horrifying. Any examination of Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence feels like begging the question, since that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perfect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d day wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have happened without Samaritan intervening in thousands upon thousands of different ways. So how can it be used as justification for itself? Even then, if someone argues that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153perfect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d day was worth it, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still leaving out a major flaw: Samaritan executes<\/i> its targets. It views everything through the cold logic of its programming, and it simply wipes people out who it determines aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worthy of life. Never mind if the victims would have preferred to confront their perpetrators, and never mind that none of these people were convicted in court. (Which isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t me saying that the judicial system in New York City is without flaws, of course.) Samaritan devises creative means to execute these people so that it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look<\/i> like they were executed. Where does that end? Exactly how far will Samaritan go? Will it start devaluing entire groups of people and eliminating them, too?<\/p>\n

Then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the day of chaos, wherein Samaritan exposes the secrets of New Yorkers to each other and to the world at large. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotional manipulation, plain and simple, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the most evil things we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen on this show. I cannot get over the fact that Samaritan helped someone expose the identities of people in Witness Protection. SEVEN OF THOSE PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF SAMARITAN. And this is just the beginning!<\/i> How many other ways will Samaritan turn against humanity with some sort of terrifying judgment? I mean, the end of the episode is another example of that. It deliberately<\/i> crashed the stock market. Lives will be ruined. Lives will end<\/i>. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all just a game of numbers and control for Samaritan and its human agents.<\/p>\n

100% evil. I am so disturbed by this.<\/p>\n

Meeting of Minds<\/b><\/p>\n

But the best\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand most electrifying\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsequence in this entire episode is the meeting between The Machine and Samaritan, carried out by their human analog components. Their voices, if you will. The decision to put Samaritan into a child <\/i>is going to haunt me forever, and bless this show for making such a bold and bizarre move. I spent their entire conversation practically unable to comprehend what it was I was experiencing. The two AIs were talking<\/i> to one another, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, and IT WAS ALL SO SCARY. I certainly never expected them to confront one another, first of all, but I also hung on to every word because I had no idea what was about to transpire<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that Samaritan is an intelligence obsessed with themselves, arrogant and certain and sure. Samaritan is very much like Greer, taken to extremes, able to enact their philosophy on a grand scale with New York as their laboratory. It is able to see patterns and exploit them in order to bring about order. But at what cost? See, Samaritan doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the capacity to truly<\/i> ask that question. The Machine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moral code does<\/i> allow it to consider the human cost of its actions. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the core of this struggle: is humanity worth it? Is a single life worth the cost of order? Is it moral to keep a population in fear, to worship an AI who will manipulate reality in an instant to keep those people afraid?<\/p>\n

I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T BELIEVE THIS SHOW IS ASKING THESE QUESTIONS. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so good!<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Cold War\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":"