PERSON OF INTEREST Recap: Red-handed

Person of Interest 2.10 Shadow Box

Last year, the fall finale had Carter turning Reese over to Agent Snow, only to change her mind and let him go after she sees Snow attempt to execute him. A lot has changed in one season! This time, Carter is caught in the middle between the FBI and Reese and Finch and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

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In a surveillance camera shot, we see a man walk into a motorcycle store, steal something from a display case, and then ride off on a motorcycle, right through the front windows of the store.

At the library, Finch and Reese are giving Bear a bath while they discuss the new number – Abby Monroe, an honor student who spent the last year working for a military charity – Homes for our Returning Heroes. She quit her job a week earlier and got a temp job in the city planning office. She’s gone off the grid for the past week. Reese rushes out to get eyes on Abby.

Detective Beecher stops by to say hello to Carter and ask her out again. She asks him about Davidson, the internal affairs cop that is missing, that she received the tip about last episode. He suggests that maybe HR took him out.  He tells her that not all of the cops from HR are behind bars or dead. Before he can tell her more, Agent Donnelly interrupts and calls Carter  away. He tells her that now that HR is pretty much taken care of, they are focusing on catching Reese. They think that he works for a private intelligence agency, probably backed by China and that Agent Snow has been turned and is probably working for him as an asset. He offers Carter a temporary assignment to the FBI, with the possibility of it becoming permanent. Carter tells him she will think about it and then calls Finch to ask where to find Reese.

She goes to the Department of City Planning, where Reese is using his stolen police badge to get info about Abby. She stole some building plans and then left the building earlier that day. The plans are for a certain block of the city that is mostly offices and an investment bank. The address she left with the temp agency is fake and the number is a payphone.

Reese is enjoying his role playing tremendously but Carter isn’t so amused. She chastises him for pretending to be a cop (again!) and then warns him that Donnelly is “hot for the man in the suit” but he already heard the conversation from her phone.  She’s even less amused after realizing that that they listen in on most of her conversations and having Reese suggest that Beecher is good for her but that he will take care of him personally if he doesn’t treat her well. She suggests that they need to set some boundaries (I can’t believe she’s put up with all of the surveillance for this long, has she really not realized how it worked?).

Reese tells her about Abby Monroe. Back at her desk, she pulls the security footage from outside the City Planning office and they see Abby hop on the back of a motorcycle. The plate identifies it as the one stolen from a used bike showroom in Queens. Carter reviews the security cameras from the bike shop as well (Finch hacks into the NYPD computer system so he and Reese can see as well).  They realize that the man who stole the bike has a prosthetic hand. Reese suspects he’s ex-military. The license plate has also been flagged as having been involved in another robbery, this time of plastic explosive and blasting caps. Carter suspects that the couple has some domestic terrorism plot planned, but Finch insists it must be personal or the Machine wouldn’t consider Abby to be irrelevant. Carter puts out an APB for Abby.

Fusco is asking around about Beecher and finds out he had a fondness for expensive things and beautiful women. He asks a friend if Beecher might have been on the take but he won’t confirm or deny it, but tells him that he was a narcotics cop, so there was always money and drugs lying around.

Reese checks out the payphone that Abby gave the temp agency as her number. It’s been tapped and the wire leads to a neighboring apartment complex. Reese searches the apartment and finds a flag, a picture and service medals that belonged to Abby’s younger brother. He also finds a video on her computer that is an apology to her parents. She tells them that she’s about to “break the rules in a big way” because “it’s right”. She thinks her little brother will be proud of her and hopes that her parents will be as well.

Finch goes to her old employer, Homes for Returning Heroes, a charity that provides loans to veterans. He pretends to be a member of her family inquiring about her. He finds out she was fired for stealing and that she associated with an ex-marine named Shane Coleman. Carter finds out that Coleman lost his right arm in an IED a few years earlier, so he is likely their biker.

Finch isn’t able to get any more info from the head of the organization, a man named Phillip Chapel, so he leaves and calls Reese from the car. He sees Chapel talking on the street with two gun-toting guys in suits and is pretty sure he’s telling them how to tail him using the GPS locator that he slipped in Finch’s pocket. Of course the transmitter is on the side of a laundry truck as Finch watches from the car.

After dark, Finch breaks into the charity building. While he’s there, Coleman shows up and Finch tells him that he is also a vet and is there for the same reason he is. They find a safe and Coleman opens while Finch pulls some information from a computer. They head for the exit, and Coleman jumps on his motorcycle as two guys in suits come running around the corner with their guns drawn. Coleman tells Finch to climb on and the two race off while the men shoot at them.

Finch provides Abby and Shane with ID and a reason for being in the bank. Photo courtesy of CBS

Abby comes home to her apartment and is surprised by Reese. He tells her he knows everything and wants to know why her and Shane are going after Chapel. Finch calls – he’s being held at gunpoint by Shane. Reese talks to him and suggests they meet and exchange Abby for Finch. Reese tries to talk Abby out of going through with her plan by appealing to her as a veteran. She tells him Shane lost everything after Chapel gave him a loan and the interest rate tripled in a year. Shane lost his home and his fiance. She went through the records when she worked there and found out that the place was a fraud. One of Shane’s friends lost everything and ended up killing himself.

They swap Finch for Abby but now they have a way to track Shane as Finch put a tracker on Coleman’s prosthetic arm.

As Carter spends more time with Beecher, Fusco becomes suspicious and starts looking into things. He finds out that he is a bit of a player. He clones his cell phone when he comes to talk to Carter (he’s clearly learning from Finch and Reese) and follows Beecher when he goes out to for a meeting, which happens to be with Alonzo Quinn, the head of HR. Apparently Quinn is his godfather. Beecher tells him what he knows – it’s not clear if Beecher is involved in HR or not. While Fusco’s watching them talk, Simmons shows up and confronts him and Fusco leaves.

Finch determines that Abby and Shane’s target is an investment bank that is on the plans that Abby stole. The bank is in cohoots with Chapel’s charity fraud, to loan money to veterans to buy houses, then increase the rates and foreclose, splitting the money. Abby and Shane are going to use the explosives he stole to break there way into Chapel’s safe deposit box and steal his ill-gotten gains. Reese is impressed with their plan, but Finch insists that they must get to them and protect them.

The head of Chapel meets with his enforcers, who happen to be the two guys who looked like feds that Finch saw him speaking with earlier. He sends them to the bank to stop Abby and Shane from getting into the vault and the safe deposit boxes.

Donnelly summons Carter and he takes her phone and pulls out the SIM card. Ater she agrees to accept the temporary assignment with the bureau., he tells her that he thinks that Reese is very good with surveillance and the analysts at Quantico analyzed cell phone signals and found a unique cell signature and developed an ability to track it. They are sure it’s Reese because they detected the same signal at several crime scenes at which he was known to be. As soon as Reese uses the phone, they will have his location and will swoop in with a swat team.

Reese holds off Chapel’s men while Abby and Shane escape. Photo courtesy of CBS

Reese shows up at the bank as Abby and Shane are starting to set the first charges to break into the bank vault. He initially tries to stop them, but then decides to help them when he learns that they want to return the money to the people it was stolen from because it seems like the right thing to do – he hates when people screw veterans. Finch tries to talk him out of it, but Reese doesn’t listen. As they proceed, Finch detects the FBI’s interference on their phone lines and warns Reese not to use the phone and to leave Abby and Shane, but of course he won’t. They manage to get to the safe deposit box and empty it, but then Chapel’s goon’s show up and get into a firefight with Reese.

Donnelly has tracked Reese to the bank, where they also just received a call about an explosion. He asks Carter if she’s ready to roll, but she tells him she needs to make a phone call and calls Fusco while pretending to ask her mother to pick up her son from school. He calls Finch, who confirms that Reese is at the bank and asks Fusco to help in any way he can as he rushes from the library.

Simmons meets with Quinn, who shows him a picture of a man – a Russian mob enforcer whose father was killed by Elias. Quinn wants to talk to the Russian mafia to see if they are interested in funding his endeavors. The man is  in jail awaiting trial on numerous counts, but he’d like to ensure that he goes free. Simmons agrees to do what he can.

Finch arrives at the bank, which is about to open for the morning, and tells Reese that he has IDs for everyone if they can get to the lobby. They grab clothes from some lockers and change. Reese holds off Chapel’s goons while Abby and Shane climb up into the main part of the bank through the hole they blew in the ceiling.

The FBI arrives at the scene with Carter, as does Chapel.  Finch meets up with Abby and Shane in the bank foyer and gives them ID showing them to be employees of his insurance company, which has an appointment at the bank. Abby passes the info on Chapel’s accounts to Finch and he promises to empty them all and dump all the money into reputable veteran’s charities. The FBI accepts their IDs and it appears that they are safe.

Finch tells Reese to get out, but it’s too late, he’s trapped. He thanks Finch and smashes his phone and earpiece. The FBI gets down into the vault and finds four men, all wearing suits and white dress shirts – it’s Reese and Chapel’s suited goons. Donnelly asks Carter if she recognizes any of the men, and she tells him that she doesn’t, so they arrest them all.

My Thoughts:

This was a great episode to end the fall season as it opens lots of avenues for new stories when the show comes back from winter hiatus. The biggest question, of course, is how Finch, Fusco, and Carter are going to get Reese out of his current mess. Federal custody could prove a bit of a challenge, even for Reese. We also still don’t know what Kara’s end game is, or how Agent Snow ended up involved. I found it amusingly ironic that Donnelley is sure that Reese has recruited Snow.

Carter really ended up between a rock and a hard place this week – she’s been offered quite a promotion of sorts, but it’s all contingent on helping to capture Reese. Meanwhile, she seems to be falling for Beecher, whose allegiances and motivations are still pretty murky. I’m not entirely clear whether Fusco is interested in Beecher because of HR or just because he’s trying to look out for Carter, but regardless, I could see it all becoming a big issue for the trust that they have been developing.

Memorable Quotes and Other Musings

Mr. Reese, it’s your turn to dry him!
Abby could be in imminent danger [he strides off] – Reese
He’s your dog! – Finch
You’ll manage. – Reese

Only Finch and Reese bathe a dog in dress shirts (and vest and tie for Finch)

It’s great, Carter, just flash a badge and people tell you everything! – Reese

Things get heavy with you and Cal, we’ll be sure to tune out – Reese

Reese woke up happy – so you know things aren’t going to end well.

We are an odd bunch, Finch. – Reese
You *are* odd, but you’re also wrong! – Finch

What do they look like? – Reese
Like you, to be honest… low key and vaguely menacing – Finch

He’s a marine, you don’t want to meet him – Abby to Reese, in one of the most ironic statements of the episode

Who are you? – Abby
I find it hard to answer that, even to myself – Reese

Especially on the back of a speeding motorcycle, which was exhilarating, by the way. I might have to get myself one of those – Finch