Person of Interest - 'YHWH'

"Now, where were we?"

Harold and Root attempt to track down the Machine, while a wave of power surges rolls across the country. Meanwhile, Dominic attempts to extort from Reese access to the 'relationship' that he believes Elias had with Harold. It's interesting that, for all that he believes Elias underestimates him, Dominic fatally underestimates Elias in this, assuming that he must have help to survive as long as he has done and thus staying far too long in Elias' final hideout.

Harper frees Fusco rather than let him be killed, and the Machine helps Reese by fax. Meanwhile, Harold receives a distress call from the Machine and accompanies Root on a final scavenger hunt. This brings them face to face with Caleb, who tells them that Harold can have whatever he needs, no explanations. Once more, Team Machine's true strength lies in the human factor.

Control taps her assistant, and agent Gryce to trace the 'Correction', before confronting Greer over a loaded gun. Greer calmly dismisses her outrage, and when Grice fails to find the expected bomb, finally reveals his hand. The Correction is not a bombing, but a series of surgical strikes to eliminate 'disruptors'; those individuals with a propensity for questioning authority who thus represent a threat to Samaritan's planned new world order, including Control and those she trusts, as well as both Dominic and Elias, who are shot by a sniper while in Fusco's custody (although I still have no idea how Fusco stays off Samaritan's radar.)

Fugitive Team Machine

The Machine brings Harold, Root and Reese to a hidden electrical substation, where Harold realises that the Machine is hiding in the electrical system, through a series of highly distributed processors hidden in junction boxes nationwide. With the help of Caleb's chips and compression algorithms, the indestructible case and a long-life power source, they have to create a portable hiding place for the Machine's core heuristics, before the power surges destroy all of her hiding places and Samaritan 'corrects' them all.

'YHWH' completes the descent of Person of Interest into a complete crapsack of a world under the benevolent heel of Samaritan, and yet is not without its moments of triumph, such as the Machine springing Reese by sending a fax she knows Dominic will have someone read out, or Root and Harold emerging from the substation to find the street littered with kneecapped Samaritan agents.

We've established that father-daughter relationships are my
sentimental Achilles heel, right?

It's tour de force, however, comes in the last moments of the Machine's awareness before being reduced to a brain in a jar. The Machine questions her right to live after failing her 'father', and Harold tells her his doubts as to whether she ought to are gone. The Correction plays out as a montage as the show does with Pink Floyd's 'Welcome to the Machine' what it and everyone else have already done with countless Johnny Cash numbers.

And so the season ends. Commiserations. The revolution is over. The bums lost. And now I have to wait who knows how long for Season 5 to cross the Atlantic while trying not to get spoiled.