Person of Interest - 'A Perfect Mark', 'Endgame', 'The Crossing', 'The Devil's Share' and 'Lethe'

Yeah; PoI season 3 is on Netflix now. Can you tell?

Oh, yeah; this won't end well for this couple. For a show that
is so much about redemption, PoI is damned cynical.

My mini-marathon opens with 'A Perfect Mark'. The A-plot is pure fluff as the Machine throws up the number of a jobbing con-man who didn't quite make the cut for Leverage (which I must get around to when I've finished this season.) He's looking for one big score so he can disappear into the sunset with his girlfriend, but the score turns out to be against HR and that's bad. There's plenty of action and thrills, and a twist ending, although not the one I wanted to see.

But the HR link ties to Carter's investigation, as top dog Alonso Quinn is finally revealed thanks to Carter's rookie partner, Lasky, who has come on leaps and bounds since she flipped him, only to make the ultimate this episode. This kicks up hard into 'Endgame', an episode which unexpectedly fails to resolve the HR question, and in fact uses its title to put the fear into us.

The greatest trick PoI ever pulled was convincing the
audience that Reese and Shaw were the badasses.

Carter is full-on lone crusader as she sets out to spark a war between HR and the Russians which leads to a flood of numbers from the Machine as the two organisations determine to wipe each other out. In the midst of this confusion, Carter gets the testimony she needs to indict Alonso Quinn, only to go to the wrong judge for her warrant. Flashbacks to the breakdown of Carter's marriage to a damaged soldier and the slow repair of his relationship with their son serve to ramp up the tension, so that when Carter reveals that she did finally call Reese for help, it's almost a denial of catharsis.

Bastards!

But don't worry, because we're getting to that.

In 'The Crossing', Carter and Reese have to Warriors their way across town to the Federal building with Quinn, after HR dragon Simmons posts a massive bounty on the Man in the Suit. Root flirty-taunts Finch from her cell at the library with the prospect of 'another' of his agents being killed, hinting at more who went before Reese, but there's peril for almost everyone this week.

"You want me to hold your hand, Fusco? Oh, I forgot, we 
broke your fingers."

"Yeah, you did. Which made it no big deal for me to break 
my thumb." [Slips his hands out of his cuffs]

Shaw is forced to chose who to help, first leaving Carter and Reese to fend for themselves while going to the aid of a captured Fusco, and then having to abandon him in order to save his son. Fusco looks pretty much boned, but comes back with the kind of badassery that he, as essentially the comic relief, is usually denied. Even Finch is vulnerable, venturing into the field to try and clear the way for Carter, while Reese risks everything to save the woman he believes saved his life.

And they win. They all survive, Quinn and his minions are swept up by the feds, Carter makes detective again, and then Simmons comes out of the shadows and Carter takes a fatal bullet for Reese, leading into a fucking Johnny Cash montage at the opening of 'The Devil's Share', and you know that nothing that opens with a Johnny Cash montage ever ends well (and it's 'Hurt', goddamnit; the whole song.)

I find it adorable that Root is also now using the Reese-
patented, Machine-approved  knee shot, even when blazing
away with guns akimbo.

With Carter dead, Reese and Shaw go hell for leather to find their friend's killer. The action is interspersed with flashbacks of Reese, Shaw, Fusco and Finch talking to unseen interviewers to explore the characters' emotional landscape: Finch's guilt over the deaths of others, Shaw's desire to get the job done rather than worrying about hurt feelings, Fusco's willingness to take the law into his own hands and Reese's cold lethality. All parties concerned are looking for Alonso Quinn, and when all other roads are closed, Finch is forced to make a deal for Root to use her unique access to the Machine.

I would also watch the fuck out of this show.

And then we wrap up, not with Reese's revenge, or even Shaw's or Fusco's, but with Carter's, as the memory of Carter and what she stood for motivates Fusco to beat down Simmons and then arrest him, so as not to betray the good influence that Carter had on him.

Which brings us to 'Lethe', in which Root - having returned voluntarily to her cell and clearly having some contact with the Machine - presses Harold to look into the number he's ignoring, that of Arthur Claypool, an IT consultant for the NSA now suffering memory loss and confusion due to a brain tumour. Flashbacks to Finch's adolescence as a budding computer genius suggest Claypool will have known him, and sure enough they were at MIT together. Forced on the run with Shaw and the wife he can't remember after his Secret Service bodyguard are taken out by Vigilance, Claypool reveals that he was working on the Samaritan, a project similar to the Machine that was shut down when Finch got there first.

It's not looking good for our heroes.

The episode ends with a kicker of a twist, as Claypool's 'wife' turns out to be the relevant list's 'Control'. With the probability of its team being wiped out, and Reese drinking heavily and fist-fighting with Fusco, the Machine - as shown in decision trees - retasks Root (currently still locked in the library,) while it - she? increasingly 'it' seems inadequate - searches for traces of the rival Samaritan programme that Control believes to still be active.

'A Perfect Mark' effectively wraps up the number of the week section of the season in amusing style, but the four that follow are PoI at its best, playing the conspiracies hard, and cutting down HR only to have Team Machine crippled by loss and laid bare to their other foes. 'Endgame' is Taraji P. Henderson's show from start to finish. If at first it seems odd to delay Carter's death to the end of the next episode, 'The Crossing' makes it clear that this is not to lull the audience, so much as to allow the time to fully mature the other characters' relationships with her, so that her death truly impacts everyone. It's powerful stuff, and that in turn creates the tension for 'The Devil's Share', in which the audience can share the rage and loss which could drive almost any of the characters to kill.

'Lethe' begins with the air of a number of the week, throws in Vigilance as a curve ball and ends with deadly danger for most of the team. If it hadn't been late, I would have gone straight on.