PERSON OF INTEREST RECAP:

Person of Interest 2.02: Bad Code

Fusco, Carter, and Reese meet for an 8am (!) drink to discuss the plan. Reese reveals that he thinks that Root’s real name is Hannah Frey and she disappeared in Texas at age 14. He of course won’t tell them his source, but he’s got it all worked out – he and Carter are going to Texas and Fusco is going to man the fort at home and take care of Bear, Reese’s new dog. Meanwhile, the shadowy politicians have gotten their hands on all of the remaining evidence for the Corwin murder and are getting closer to figuring out what she was up to.

Reese and Carter arrive in Texas and check into a crappy motel. It’s the start of deer season and apparently rooms are in short supply. There’s only one room available and it only has one bed. Awkward! Reese chivalrously offers to sleep on the floor. Carter stops by the local sheriff’s office and attempts to use her charm and her badge to get a peek at the Frey case file, but the good ole boy sheriff she talks to isn’t cooperating, so Reese sneaks in disguised as a courier and steals the case file while the sheriff is occupied. Carter realizes that they are going to have to start from scratch, so they go to the library where Hannah was last seen to interview the librarian.

1991 – Hannah is seated at the library, playing Oregon Trail, but of course her character dies of dysentery (Man did I love that game!) Two other teenagers are also hanging around. Hannah checks out a few books and leaves the library, never to be seen again.

Back on the east coast, Root has Finch tied to a chair and is treating him to another of her creepy, flirtatious monologues. Hanging from his arms from the rafters is the boyfriend of the woman that Root poisoned at the restaurant. Not surprisingly, he’s struggling for breath. Root takes off his hood – it’s Denton Weeks, one of the men to whom Finch sold the Machine. Turns out that Weeks once authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which Root is currently putting to use on him. She wants to know where the Machine is, but he swears that he doesn’t know – he’s just a White House lawyer. Finch begs her to cut him down and she complies. Weeks begs for water and she gives him water appears to be water, but what she then says is sodium pentothal (truth serum), then leaves them both tied up while she runs an errand. Once she leaves, Weeks tells Finch that he recognizes  him and that they have to make sure that she does not gain access to the Machine.

Reese and Carter interview Hannah’s father. Carter asks if anyone has ever tried to contact him about Hannah and he tells her that he occasionally gets credit card junk mail in her name; he even got once recently. Carter looks through the trash and finds it. She runs a credit check and finds out that there is a bank account in her Hannah’s name, opened 2 years after her disappearance.

Hannah’s bank account was opened with $100k, which was withdrawn 3 weeks later. The money was wired from a drug trafficker/murderer’s account. The co-signer on the bank account was a man named Trent Russell, who was in the library the night Hannah disappeared. Turns out he became the husband of the librarian and he died 15 years ago – shot to death in a suspected drug killing. Carter confronts his wife with the proof that he co-signed for Hannah’s account and she asks them to leave. Reese goes out to the garage to look around and finds a car with the same license plate that a witness reported seeing Hannah get into the night he died. It seems that Russell may have kidnapped Hannah, but then she escaped and set him up by stealing the money and then framing him for it.

Back on the east coast, Finch and Weeks discuss their situation. Finch doesn’t trust him because he tried to hack the Machine, but he said he had to make sure it was safe. Finch assures him that Root will not get to the Machine through him. Weeks convinces Finch to help him. Finch manages to get his chair over near where Root left a knife she was using. He manages to get it over to Weeks just as Root’s car pulls up. She enters the house, gets suspicious, and pulls her gun, but Weeks quickly overcomes her. He starts to kick her and Finch begs him to stop. Weeks assures him that he’s not going to kill her as he wants to interrogate her…and Finch.

Carter and Reese search Russell’s house and finds 16 copies of Flowers for Algernon, which was the book that Hannah checked out the night of her disappearance. Russell’s wife tells them that they just arrive anonymously every year on April 15th, the day she disappeared. The most recent copy has a receipt in it, though, and Reese is hoping it will help lead them to Root. Carter and the sheriff play the 911 call for the wife and she identifies the caller as one as a friend of Hannah’s that was at the library with her that night. The girl had told her the same thing she told 911 and she accused the girl of lying and bullied her into keeping quite because she was in love with Russell. She looks out to the patio and tells Carter that Russell redid it shortly after Hannah disappeared.

Mr Not-quite-a-White-House-Lawyer still has Finch tied to the chair. He’s going to turn Root over to some professional interrogators. He’ll let Finch go, however, because he helped him, if he will tell him whether Root can get to the Machine. Finch tells him that it cannot be altered remotely and physical access would be required. Weeks thanks Finch for his help, then points Root’s gun at Finch’s chest and pulls the trigger. Lucky for Finch, the gun is empty. Just then, Root, who has been lying on the floor apparently unconscious, jumps up and tazers Weeks.

Carter and the sheriff have the patio excavated and they find Hannah’s body. Her and Reese touch base and he tells her that he found Hannah (Root) by tracing back the book purchase from the receipt and seeing where the credit card was last used. She’s in Maryland. Carter informs him that she found Hannah, too, and she’s dead. She thinks that Hannah’s childhood friend, who made the 911 call, is actually Root and has been the one sending the books. Reese leaves Carter in Texas to go after her.

While all this has been going down, back in NYC, Fusco is dutifully dog sitting and is hot on the trail of the shadowy government guys. He bluejacks one of their phones and finds out that they are looking for Weeks. He had a girlfriend (the woman Root drugged) and they had a place outside DC – the place where Root is holding Finch.

Turns out Root set up the whole thing with Weeks to show Finch what kind of people have the Machine. She continues her creepy courting of him but he’s more than fed up. He tells her to just kill him so he doesn’t have to listen to her anymore. She gets a text that Reese is onto her, so she injects Finch with a sedative, unties him, and puts him in a wheelchair. Then she makes one more attempt to find the location of the Machine from Weeks. With her gun pressed to his chest, he tells her that it was boxed up and put on a train that was headed towards Salt Lake City, and that’s all he knows, so Root kills him. Finch, meanwhile, was typing numbers into a phone while she was occupied but she sees it and tells him that she disconnected it. As she wheels him out, he drops one of his cuff links next to the phone for Reese to find.

Reese arrives in Maryland and touches base with Fusco. He tells Reese about the Denton Weeks connection and gives him the address. Reese arrives and finds Weeks’ body,  the cuff link, and the phone, which has a series of numbers on it. He decodes the message, which says “Trainstn”. Reese runs to the train station and Root sees him enter. She realizes that Finch must have helped him and is about to shoot an innocent porter as punishment when Finch launches himself awkwardly out of the chair and crashes into her from behind. Her gun goes off, missing the porter, and Reese draws his gun. In the ensuing panic, Root is able to escape.

Reese helps Finch up, who chides him for coming after him. Reese tells him that he saved his life and he’s returning the favor.  They both go back to the bat cave where Bear rushes to greet them with a well-chewed book in his mouth. Finch thanks Reese again, but before he can say much else, Reese’s phone rings. It’s Root. She thanks him for finding her friend Hannah and tells him that she won’t forget it and to tell Finch she’ll be in touch when she’s ready.

My Thoughts:

This episode messed about with the formula for the show and I think it worked well, although it did give it a bit more of a typical crime procedural vibe, save for the scenes involving Root. I am pretty sure that this is the first episode where there wasn’t a new number. It’s also the first time that I can think of where we see Carter and Reese outside of the NYC region acting as true partners. Choosing rural Texas as a setting definitely guaranteed them a setting much different from NYC and allowed for a bit of fish-out-of-water comedy.

The Root and Finch scenes were both disturbing and mesmerizing. Amy Acker does a phenomenal job making Root’s sweet-girl-next-door, Finch-and-Machine-obsessed psychopath both believable and disturbing. She’s making a strong case for Root to be included among some of TV’s most intriguing psychopaths (a short list that in my mind, coincidentally, also includes Michael Emerson, for his portrayal of serial killer William Hinks on The Practice in 2001).

Where with the series go from here? How will they protect Finch and the Machine from Root? Will Bear eat every book in the Batcave? I can’t wait to find out!

Favorite Lines: 

It’s a malware app. Little tip – someone offers you a great deal on any sort of male enhancement pill, don’t click on it! – Reese

Unfortunately, my apartment has a strict policy against dogs – Reese
I have a strict policy regarding rare first editions, namely, don’t eat them. Asimov – he has expensive tastes, I’m sure we’ll get along – Finch

Catch Person of Interest on Thursdays at 9/8c on CBS!