Person of Interest - 'Terra Incognita' and 'Asylum'

The writers are officially just screwing around now.

Following a trail previously blazed by then rookie Detective Carter, Reese reminisces about his relationship with his old friend, and a stakeout where they discussed the loss of his beloved Jessica.

The episode mostly slides back and forth between the flashback and the current action, but there's a twist this week. I'd have to watch again to check, but I'm pretty sure that there are remarkably few Machine-view cuts, and as the conversation in the car continues, it becomes apparent that Carter is commenting on the here and now, as Reese experiences a dying hallucination - or perhaps visitation - after suffering a gunshot wound.

It's that woman ghost again.

'Terra Incognita' is another rather conceptual episode, and once more explores some heavy ground, with the ghost of partners past pressing Reese to acknowledge not only that he hasn't had anyone to confide in since Joss died, but that he didn't confide in her much when she was alive, most of the remembered conversation actually forming part of the hallucination. It also points up that while the Root/Shaw ship and whatever the Harold and Root show is have taken up much of the screen time, Reese does have both someone willing to accept and love him (Iris) and a partner whom he can rely on (Fusco.)

Well, this looks bad.

In 'Asylum', Control conducts her own personal black op, tagging and bagging Samaritan assets and interrogating an unassuming school teacher who has been acting as the central handler for turned Northern Lights agents. It doesn't tell us much that's new, aside from mentioning a forthcoming operation called 'the Correction', but gives Cathryn Manheim a chance for a real barnstorming performance.

Reese and Fusco once more get Elias' number as the gang war escalates. Together with Elias they are captured by Dominic, who brings in Harper as a human lie detector (although she reveals to Fusco that Thornhill has offered her a blank cheque to save them.) Intent on learning all that Elias knows, Dominic stumbles on evidence of a traitor in his own crew and coerces Elias into revealing the identity of the rat. This leads to the execution of Dominic's right hand man, Link, only for Elias to reveal that there was no snitch; he was playing Dominic to crack his crew's faith in the big man.

This looks worse.

Meanwhile, Root and Harold are lured into an Obvious Trap (TM) by a phone call from Shaw, which leads them to an asylum which houses the central Samaritan interface. Martine assures Root that Shaw has been broken and told them how to trap her, in order to use her cochlear implant to track the Machine. Root kills Martine, more or less to prove a point, but under threat of their lives, the Machine agrees to reveal its own location.

"You are wrong," the Machine tells Harold. "You are not interchangeable." This show of humanity from the Machine is counterpointed with Greer's utter disregard for human life, responding to Harold's warning that Samaritan may one day find him irrelevant by disdainful discounting the possibility that any human might be considered relevant.

And so we wind up to the big season finale with Reese and Fusco captured, Root and Harold heading for an unknown location to fight untold forces to save the Machine, and Control pondering her next move to prevent the creation of Samaritan's 'better world'.

So, despite seeming pretty bad before, things take a definite turn for the even crappier this week, with the few upticks being the mean and pitiable deaths of some enemy minions and the fact that no-one got barely-anaesthetised brani surgery (yay.) They're definitely going for a darkest before the dawn vibe here, and given what I know about the last episode already, I suspect we're actually barely past midnight.