{"id":6670,"date":"2017-12-04T13:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T21:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6670"},"modified":"2017-11-27T07:07:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T15:07:27","slug":"mark-watches-person-of-interest-s04e12-control-alt-delete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2017\/12\/mark-watches-person-of-interest-s04e12-control-alt-delete\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Person of Interest’: S04E12 – Control-Alt-Delete"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twelfth episode of the fourth season of Person of Interest<\/i>, why is this show doing this to me. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For discussion of extrajudicial executions, racism, Islamophobia, and racial profiling.<\/b><\/p>\n

Good god, WHAT IS THIS SHOW.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m inferring from context clues that Shaw is probably<\/i> alive, unless we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re heading for the most cruel plot twist since Carter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death last season. (Seriously, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna be so pissed if they find her, only to discover that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been dead this whole time.) Even then, context clues COULD NOT HAVE PREPARED ME FOR THIS EPISODE. Oh, what a brilliant<\/i> turn of the story, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a disturbing way to examine how Samaritan is turning against<\/i> the people who are using it within the government, yet they seem unwilling to accept the truth. The focus this time is on Control, the otherwise unnamed character who has run Research for the US government for years<\/i>. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the perfect target here because few people have been as openly complicit in this nightmare as she has. She has no<\/i> qualms about acting as an agent determined to deny legal rights to those accused of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crimes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that were handed to her, initially by the Machine and now by Samaritan. National security is protected through execution<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Thus, the opening sequence of this episode is, by and large, something that Control is used to seeing. At that point in her life, she had been responsible for killing 850 people before<\/i> they carried out an act of supposed terrorism. The intel had always been solid, and on that front, we can at least assume that the numbers given by the Machine weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lies. Those people really were<\/i> terrorists. But for the audience, that facade of certainty has eroded ever since Samaritan came online. We know Samaritan has set people up, has tricked them into being pawns of its greater plan, has absolutely had innocent people executed. Thus, it became clear to me that something<\/i> was wrong with this case as soon as the team entered that home and there didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear to be anything <\/i>that spoke to those men as terrorists.<\/p>\n

But it was outright confirmed as soon as Samaritan denied Control, refusing to let her see what was on Yasim Said\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard drive. There was a reason<\/i> for that, right? What was it that Samaritan didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want Control to see? For what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth, Control recognized that this was suspicious and weird, and so she butted heads with Travers. (Played by yet another alumni of The Wire<\/i>. IS THAT ENTIRE SHOW A GUEST ON THIS ONE, JESUS.) Michael Potts plays Travers, the lead of the Samaritan team within the Pentagon, with a frustrating sense of superiority, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perfect<\/i>. Travers knows that he has the upper hand because, as he puts it, the US government is the guest<\/i> of Samaritan. Yes, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re using the NSA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feeds, but at this point, Samaritan could probably still do a lot without<\/i> the government.<\/p>\n

So what plays out is an aggravating and deeply disturbing nightmare. Control becomes subject to Samaritan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spying as she tries to get her operatives to determine what was on Yasim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s laptop. A theory started to formulate in me: What if this was it? What if this<\/i> was when Control realized that Samaritan was running the show? At that point, I assumed that Yasim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard drive contained evidence that he was innocent, as well as his three other friends. Samaritan was far too determined to have Yasim executed for his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crimes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so I was suspicious. But how do you turn someone like Control against<\/i> a surveillance program? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like she had no experience with this sort of system, and it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like she was thrown into it unknowing. She knew what Samaritan was, and she knew what it was that Research has been involved in since the Machine was first sold to them. She inherently believed in the power of the government to protect itself and its citizens by any means necessary. So why on Earth would she suddenly question Samaritan?<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal. Which is a damning indictment in and of itself, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Control never questioned what she was doing until<\/i> she was denied one piece of information. Yes, she does start to question the supremacy and power of Samaritan, but she also relents fairly quickly once Samaritan is shut down in the midst of tracking down Yasim. Even then, how far was she willing to go? She certainly tried to hide from Samaritan and got a couple of her operatives to track down Yasim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard drive. Yet even then, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not until John, Root, and Harold get ahold of her that she is given enough information to truly<\/i> doubt what she has and has not been told. And lord, I DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T REALIZE THAT SHE DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOT OUT IN THE BASEMENT OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE. I assumed she would! It seems like a HUGE thing to not<\/i> be told about!<\/p>\n

Of course, in hindsight, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obvious why she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Samaritan has been using the NSA feeds for its own agenda, and Control has no idea that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening. (Especially since Greer has his own team of operatives, like Martine, who are working for Samaritan.) She can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> know, either. If she finds out, then she will realize the truth: Samaritan can lie to her. Has<\/i> lied to her. HAS ORDERED THE EXECUTION OF INNOCENT PEOPLE FRAMED AS TERRORISTS.<\/p>\n

So why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Harold try to change her mind more than he did? Since this episode is from the perspective of Control most of the time, it limits information and understanding. The regular protagonists are focused on a different goal: locating Shaw. Thus, I imagine that the Machine never gave numbers for the men that Samaritan had murdered, so they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t concerned about interrupting Control\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pursuit of Yasim. He tries to tell her that she has no idea what Samaritan is really<\/i> for, he tries to get her to open her eyes, but at the end of the day, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not his goal. He just needs to find Shaw.<\/p>\n

Plus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a deeper problem at play here, one that Yasim vocalizes before Control executes him. Samaritan picked four men to do something<\/i> for it that would be easily mistaken as terrorists. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the main reasons that I believe that Control needs something much bigger than the events of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Control-Alt-Delete\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to get her to really<\/i> question Samaritan. Yasim looked<\/i> like a terrorist: on paper, in person, in theory. Those three men were killed without hesitation, and few people would ever question the death of three men who appeared<\/i> to be terrorists because… well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just who we are these days, right? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re brown. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153terrorist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d countries. And the evidence of their act was compelling enough because it fit a definable pattern… which is the whole fucking point. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter that they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t break any laws. In the minds of the people of the US government, they were already guilty, so executing them was their national duty.<\/p>\n

Maybe Control is finally starting to unravel this nightmare. That visit to the room where Shaw was shoot is a start, but guess what? Control has blood on her hands. She did long before this, but she executed an innocent man. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pawn of something greater and more terrible than herself.<\/p>\n

The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Control-Alt-Delete\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":"