PERSON OF INTEREST RECAP: Allegiance

Person of Interest 3.18: Allegiance

This weeks’ POI is Maria Martinez, an engineer working for a private energy company. Reese and Shaw surveil her as she meets with an Iraqi immigrant whose brother is a refugee being held by the government as a suspected terrorist. He gives her a package and they leave the restaurant.

Root reports to Finch that multiple copies of the chip have now been made and Samaritan is soon to be up and running. She’s trailing Greer. He’s aware that she’s following and uses various tactics to throw off the Machine and escape.

Shaw and Fusco watch Maria take pictures of a man on the street – a French diplomat that works for the UN. They watche Maria put a GPS tracker on the man’s limo.

Later, Shaw follows Maria into a reception. She pulls the package from her handbag and hands it to the French diplomat. It contains a file on her employee that was detained by the Department of Homeland Security. The diplomat calls security, but another man steps in before she can be thrown out. Maria tells the man, a Greek diplomat, her story and he offers to help her.

Reese and Finch approach the French diplomat under cover as the detainees lawyers to get a look at the case file on the man, which includes a letter from the Iraqi government linking him with terrorists.

Shaw, Fusco, and Reese thwart an attempt to kill Maria. They take her to a safe house and ask her about the detainee, Omar. The man saved her life when the two of them were working in Iraq and afterward he begun to receive death threats, so he applied for asylum in the US. The Iraqi government sent the US a letter suggesting that he was a terrorist.

Finch goes to the detainee center pretending to be Omar’s lawyer. He tells Finch that after they left the hydroelectric project they were working on in Iraq, no one ever finished installing the generators, leading to blackouts that caused a lot of hardship for the residents. He read a customs document for the generators that was signed by Maria’s boss. Their discussion is interrupted when the guards come to tell Omar that his request for asylum is denied and he is being deported.

Shaw realizes that Maria and Omar were lovers, not just friends. Shaw shares with her that her mother was also saved from Iraq. The two women review Omar’s file and realize that the letter from the Iraqi government is forged – they were both written by Maria’s boss. Maria distracts Shaw and escapes the safe house, locking Shaw in.

Reese rescues Omar, but now Maria is headed straight into trouble. She goes to the Greek diplomat at the UN to find evidence to clear Omar. To rescue her, Reese and Fusco fake a fire and then go into the UN as firefighters. Root calls Finch right when he needs a password to bypass a security system – the Machine wants to give him the password…and she’s in the library and needs to borrow Bear.

Finch and Reese run into bad guys in the UN before they can get to Maria. They prevail, of course, with some help from Shaw.

Meanwhile, the French diplomat finds Maria digging around in his office. It turns out that her “protector”, the Greek, actually is one of the guys out to get her. He shoots the French diplomat and is about to succeed with his dastardly plan to kill Maria when Reese, Fusco, and Shaw come to the rescue. They all escape as they hear sirens approaching the building.

Later, Fusco delivers the good news to Omar and Maria – his asylum has been approved, and the Greek diplomat was renounced by Greece and arrested for the French diplomat’s murder.

Root and Bear track Greer to a park where he meets with Maria’s boss – the generators were for him. Greer accepts a package from him and then his men abduct the man. Root then uses Bear to track Greer through the subway tunnels. When she finds him in a deserted tunnel, he’s waiting for them. Greer suggests they team up but Root wants to kill him. A couple of goons with their guns trained on Root discourage this plan. Greer walks away and his men also retreat, leaving Root and Bear alone.

My Thoughts: 

Just a so-so episode, in my opinion. Definitely a letdown after the intensity of the past two episodes. Greer’s ability to trick the Machine, even with Samaritan not yet online is curious. Only 5 more episodes left in the season and I imagine they are going to be pretty exciting!

Memorable Quotes:

I have an idea, but it’s going to require a smoke screen and a big ass truck – Reese

Two hard drives, a superconducting chip, and 6 generators…which means you either want to bring Samaritan online, or your the world’s most ambitious gamer – Root

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