PERSON OF INTEREST RECAP: Distress Call

Person of Interest 3.15 Last Call

This week’s POI, Sandra Nicholson, works at a 911 call center, so Finch goes undercover at the call center. A young boy, Aaron, calls because several men are breaking into his apartment and he’s home alone. While she’s on the phone with him, the men find his hiding space and force him to tell Sandra to answer her phone. On her desk, her cell phone rings. She picks it up and speaks to one of the men – they are taking the boy hostage so she does what they want her to do.

The men make her call off the police, but Shaw and Reese have already been dispatched by Finch. The apartment is empty when they arrive, but when the call came in, Finch hacked the boy’s webcam and they see the men take Aaron away – based on their clothing and jewelry, they are professional kidnappers for a drug cartel.

The men are watching Sandra at her desk and next make her shut off the backup generator. The man makes reference to “little Joseph”, who she couldn’t save when she was a youth. Next, they send her to the server room to pull up the calls from two days prior – they want all the calls (30,000!) deleted or they will kill Aaron.

Meanwhile, Shaw has tracked back the phone based on GPS coordinates that Finch was able to obtain. Unfortunately, when she tracks down the phone it’s just a relay being driven around in a limo. Finch realizes that the man has put a small webcam on Sandra’s headset and goes to help her.

Finch realizes that the man wants to delete all the calls to hide the destruction of just one – and Finch has to find it, fast, while Sandra goes down to IT to get the key fob she needs to get access to the system. He uses some algorithms to reduce the number of calls and then enlists Fusco to help him sort through them to find the one that must matter.

Fusco ends up finding it – it’s a call from a woman whose death he is investigating. Sandra returns from IT and forgets to keep Finch out of her line of sight and so the man sets off a bomb in a parking garage as a warning – another bomb is strapped to Aaron. Sandra has 15 minutes to delete those calls or the second bomb goes off.

Sandra tells Finch that she was 14 and babysitting her 3 year old neighbor and giving him a bath, when she needed something downstairs. She ran down and was gone just a minute, but when she returned the baby had drowned and she was unable to revive him. She is not going to let another kid die, even if it means deleting those files.

Fusco and the rookie that he is working with go to see their victim’s boss and his wife. The fibers on her body match his car trunk carpet, and they were able to recover voice mails of her ending her relationship with her boss. Apparently this isn’t news to his wife – she hired someone to make sure that the 911 call got deleted, but she didn’t know the man was going to threaten to kill a child.

Meanwhile, Shaw and Reese roughed up some of the cartel kidnappers (Reese takes out an entire bar full of guys, then Shaw tortures the remaining man) and have the location where Aaron is being held. They arrive, take out the men, disarm the bomb with 2 seconds to spare, and realize that the man on the phone is not there – it’s just another phone relay.

Sandra is about to delete the files when the man contacts her again – his employers confessed to killing the girl, so the deal is off – no need to delete the files. He is still planning on killing Aaron, and her, though. As he says this, the power goes out and the call center employees all follow their evacuation protocol. Finch and Sandra take the back way out and run into the man on the phone. They manage to set a trap for him and find out that he is the voice, but not the brains behind the operation.

Later, Shaw gives Finch the last phone relay and when he looks at it, it rings. He answers and the man tells him that Aaron and Sandra have earned their lives, but he’s not happy with Finch. Finch lies to Shaw and Reese about the call.

My Thoughts:

Definitely one of my favorite episodes of the season – fast-paced, entertaining, and reasonably original. It was a lot of story for one hour and it played more like a movie thriller than a 45 minute TV episode. Having Finch in the middle of the action and the parallels between him working as a dispatcher at the call center and managing his team from the library were nice touches.

This week’s villain remains unknown but obviously has considerable resources and skills and we’re certainly led to believe that we haven’t heard the last of him. Finch is collecting more and more powerful enemies each week.

Memorable Quotes: 

Would you really want someone to call 911 and get me? – Shaw
Point taken – Finch

So, basically he’s you, but evil – Shaw

Hey, there is no dead in TEAM, so instead of going all Charles Bronson on me, let me clear the way – Shaw

Watch Person of Interest on Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS!