PERSON OF INTEREST Recap: Dangerous Games

Person of Interest 2.07: Critical

This week’s [first] number is unique – it’s a repeat. Reese is heading to an address Finch gave him, wondering aloud who would be stupid enough to get into a life-threatening situation again, when a body is thrown through a plate glass window right next to him. It turns out that it’s not just any unlucky guy – it’s Leon, the POI that Reese rescued at the beginning of this season while Root still had Finch. Leon has clearly not learned his lesson as he got involved in selling virtual money for real money and managed to tick some people (e.g. the Russian mafia) off. Two unhappy men follow Leon out and don’t have the sense to go away when Reese politely suggests it, forcing him to do what he does best. After the guys are down for the count, Reese takes Leon to the hospital for his broken arm and then brings him back to the library, as he doesn’t know where else to put him where he’ll be safe and Finch called him to say that there’s a new number. He and Finch lock him in the library after telling him not to touch anything or Bear will eat him.

The new number belongs to a promising young cardiovascular surgeon, Maddy Enright, who works at a local hospital. Finch donates enough money to “help pay for a wing…or two” to get them access to the hospital. (How much money does Finch really have??). They get to speak to Maddy briefly before she is called away and Finch manages to swap out her glasses for a pair with a microphone.  Finch and Reese then get rushed out of the OR area because of a very sensitive patient. Oliver Veldt, an energy mogul, is at the hospital for a cardiac bypass procedure and it’s very important to him that his procedure and presence at the hospital remain completely secret. He’s accompanied by an assistant that is eager to advise the surgeon on the best way to do things, which of course really endears him to Maddy.

Fusco gets called down to a homicide along the water in Long Island City. In the victim’s pocket, he finds Carter’s business card. He calls her and she heads to the scene. The victim is a Croatian immigrant, working as a custodian. On the back of Carter’s card are 4 numbers and two letters that don’t mean anything to Carter. She investigates the victim and realizes that the numbers are an address for a corporation where the victim had worked.

Maddy is approached by a tall English chap, Alistair Wesley, who shows her a picture of her wife, Amy, who is working at an art show in a local park. He tells her that he has snipers watching the park and if she doesn’t kill Belt during his procedure and make it look like an accident, he will kill her. He tells her that she can’t stop the surgery, contact the police or warn Amy in any way.

After overhearing this exchange, Reese and Finch jump into action – Finch stays at the hospital (despite his major anxiety about them, no doubt due to whatever trauma led to his limp) to be near the doctor while Reese heads to the park to assess the situation. After getting a text message with a video of Amy in the park, Maddy starts taking the steps necessary to cause Veldt to have a fatal accident.

Unfortunately, being stuck at the hospital cuts Finch off from his computers and limits his hacker skills. He breaks into her computer, but he can’t do a whole lot without his set-up. All is not lost, though, as there just so happens to be computer-hacker/forensic accountant in the library with nothing to do. Finch calls and asks Leon to use his computers (which don’t have secure passwords??) to look into Veldt’s companies finances. Leon happily complies.

Reese manages to triangulate the location of the sniper in a nearby building and disarms him. He finds a phone in his pocket, but no ID. Within seconds, the phone rings and the Wesley the English guy tells Reese that he’s impressed but has several other snipers standing by. He wants to meet Reese for a drink.

Reese tasks Fusco with watching Amy while he meets with Wesley. He’s convinced that Wesley’s team is a group of professionals. They meet at a pub by the park. Wesley’s all James Bond to Reese’s kick-butt-man-in-the-suit and they assess each other, correctly deducing that Wesley is ex-MI-6 and his team ex-SAS and Reese ex-CIA. Wesley tries to buy Reese, but he’s not for sale. He tells Reese to stay away from the park and Amy or he will kill her. Just then, one of his henchmen comes over and Reese tussles with him and ends up shooting him in the foot while Wesley escapes.

Back at the hospital, Maddy is scrubbing for surgery when Finch approaches her. He tells her that he knows about her and Amy and he and Reese are trying to help. She begs him to help and then enters the OR. She starts the procedure and injects the drug that Wesley told her to use into Veldt’s IV line (heparin, an anticoagulant, it will cause him to bleed massively if a vessel is nicked).

Finch heads back to Maddy’s office to use her computer and to contact Reese. Leon calls to tell him that he found evidence of a number of short sales on company stock – someone is betting that the company goes down and what better way to do so than for it’s leader to die suddenly? On the server where he found the short sales, he also found Veldt’s medical records.

Back in the OR, Maddy starts to crack under the strain and takes a break from the surgery. Wesley calls her cell phone within minutes of her leaving the OR and tells her she can’t stop. He patches her phone through to Amy’s to motivate her. She talks to Amy but can’t warn her.  Finch realizes that Wesley knew that the surgery was stopped, so there must be someone on the inside at the hospital.

Carter shows up at the address to find all the workers being evacuated after shots were fired inside. Carter sees Agent Snow exit the building and follows him. She finally corners him in a dark basement. He tells her that he killed a man for an ID to get into the company and then shot a guard because he had no choice. He shows her the bomb and Carter tells him he will help him to get it off, but he assures her that SHE won’t let that happen. She, of course, is Kara, Reese’s ex-partner. SHE shows up and bullets start flying. Carter escapes unharmed but doesn’t catch either Snow or Kara.

In surgery, they get to the critical point where Maddy must either kill Veldt or refuse. She realizes she just can’t do it and aborts the surgery and orders everyone from the operating room. Wesley heard her call off the surgery via a mic on the nurse and tells his men to kill Amy. Everyone goes but her nurse, who insists on staying to help her. As Maddy goes to remove her equipment, Veldt crashes – he’s bleeding heavily, but Maddy didn’t make the incision. Turns out the nurse is Wesley’s back-up plan and she nicked Veldt’s artery.  Maddy and the nurse struggle and Finch hits the nurse over the head with a surgical tray. This unfortunately leaves him as the sole assistant for Maddy who now has to crack Veldt’s chest to repair the damage before he bleeds out.

Reese has, meanwhile, been working on a plan to get Amy out of the park safely. He recruits Fusco to be a diversion and he picks an argument with another cop in the park while Reese slips a phone into Amy’s pocket. He calls her, and instructs her to walk through the park to meet him. Wesley’s men catch on quickly and approach her just as she gets to Reese, but he manages to take them out with his mad hand-to-hand combat skills and get Amy out of harm’s way.

Back in the OR, Finch tries his best not to pass out while staring at Veldt’s heart beating in his open chest. Maddy manages to repair the damage and save him.

Reese and Finch hood Leon and lead him out of the library. They turn him loose and advise him to stay out of trouble. (Apparently no one in NYC thinks it’s unusual for two men in suits to walk a third down the street with a black hood over his head, terrorist-abduction style?)

A phone rings in Reese’s pocket – it’s the phone he got off the sniper. It’s Wesley, and he’s remembered that they’ve met before, in Instanbul. John doesn’t remember Wesley, though. Wesley suggest that him and John should have a drink, then hangs up, ditches the phone, and jumps into a taxi bound for JFK airport. Both John and Finch expect that they haven’t seen the last of him.

Reese and Carter meet up at a dark diner. She tells him what she found out from Snow. She asks Reese who “she” is and whether he would actually tell her if he knew. He reminds her that she knows quite a bit about him and Finch now. They both had people once who cared about them, but no more, but she has a life and a son. He asks her to ask herself how much more she really wants to know.

My Thoughts:
 This was really a jam-packed episode that brought back some recurring characters crucial to John’s back story. The scenes with Kara and Snow were brief and gave us no inkling of her endgame, but definitely reiterated how far off the reservation she’s gone. I really loved the scene at the end with Carter and Reese. Carter wants Reese to share with her so badly. She looked like she was going to cry at any moment, but he showed how much he has come to care about her by warning to think about the consequences of knowing what Reese does.

The introduction of Alistair Wesley was interesting. He definitely presents an intriguing foil for Reese and the “forced to commit murder to save the person you love” created a lot of great tension, but the motives for anyone going through that much trouble to kill Veldt seemed questionable at best. Especially why Wesley would punish Maddy by killing Amy when she aborted the surgery just because he said he would – why bother to kill someone in a crowded park when it’s not going to in any way advance his endgame? I feel like the writers got too caught up in everything else this episode that they missed on the motive, which is usually much tighter on POI.

The other thing that bugged me were how bad the medical scenes were – apparently POI either doesn’t have a medical consultant or chose to ignore him or her because there were numerous things that were wrong or didn’t make sense in the hospital scenes. For example, Wesley tells Maddy to give Veldt 100 cc of heparin, which is a *huge* amount, but she fills a 3-cc syringe with heparin minutes later and gives it to Veldt. and her “sterile” technique in the operating room most definitely wasn’t. It’s not just POI, it seems like many shows screw this kind of stuff up ([easyazon-link asin=”B003L77G8I”]Bones[/easyazon-link] even joked about shows ignoring their medical consultants in their fun Hollywood-themed episode last season), but it always bugs me because it’s not hard to get it right. It’s one of my biggest TV pet peeves.

Medical scenes and elaborate murder plot motive aside, it was still an enjoyable episode that sets up some interesting stories for the future.

Memorable Quotes and Random Observances

Oh, you’re the boss. Never did figure John here as upper management – Leon, to Finch

Apparently Finch and/or Reese live on Ramen noodles and Hot Pockets judging by the piles of them at the library.

This is fun! This is what you and John do all day long? – Leon

I know your wife Maddy….and I know you love pastries from a French bakery on the west side. Personally, I think they use too much butter. – Reese