PERSON OF INTEREST RECAP: Exactly the same, but entirely different

Finally our 4 month long hiatus comes to an end and we get to see the new world order for ourselves – our heroes in hiding and Samaritan and the Machine are both online and battling for control.

Episode 4.01 Panopticon

The first thing we see is that the surveillance feeds are no longer from the Machine – now we see Samaritan’s view.

We then see a guy in a bar who has had a bad day. He starts chatting with a pretty blond with a great accent. He tells her after a few drinks that he thinks an AI “has escaped” and that he lost his job, missed a flight, etc because of it. She tells him that he’s 1 of 3 who has figured it out and the other two will die in a traffic accident in 14 minutes. She then kills him.

Greer is chatting with the Senator, who is worried about accountability and where the NSA feeds are really going now that Decima has been disbanded. He’s worried, as he should be, that Greer might not be around when the sh$t hits the fan. Greer is communicating with Samaritan via text messages on his phone and it tells him that it’s not time to get rid of the Senator yet.

Elsewhere, Shaw is in trouble at her new job at a department store beauty counter because she’s shockingly not a good saleswoman. Root shows up under the guise of wanting a makeover and tells her to trust the Machine, follow the calendar on her phone and check the online dating app on her phone for matches.

Luckily, Shaw doesn’t know that Reese’s new identity much better suits him than hers. He meets under a bridge with some drug dealers. They make the mistake of trying to double cross him and he grabs the gun, and shoots some knees. A bunch of marked cars police arrive and Reese flashes his NYPD badge (Detective John Riley) and hands the men over to the uniformed officers.

Fitch is apparently not fairing much better than Shaw. He’s now Professor H .Whistler and is teaching a nearly empty, bored class on the “Ethics of High Frequency Decision Making”. The class gets smaller as he talks. His relationship with his new boss is clearly tenuous, even before he’s told that Bear is not welcome on campus. The man has read Finch’s dissertation and was kind enough to mark a bunch of typos for him.

Reese meets up with Fusco at a murder scene on a rooftop. A young man was killed apparently trying to do something with the cable or other wiring on the roof. Fusco questions why Reese is now working in narcotics and never seems to get to things in time like he used to.

The calendar apps on Shaw’s and Reese’s phones direct them to, of all things, a “Positivity Seminar”. They promptly meet up, ditch the seminar, and walk out by a payphone, which rings and presents them with the first number since they went into hiding.

Later, Finch, is in the park with Bear and meets Reese for a chess game. Reese tells Finch that they are getting numbers again, but Finch tells him that he’s out. He thinks they’ve killed more than they have saved. He tries to convince Reese not to pursue the numbers as it will certainly get them all killed.

The number is the owner of an electronics store and some gangsters want him to fix some glitches in a private phone system he sold them. After the thug leaves, Reese clones his phone and approaches the man, giving him his police business card.  Reese then gets Fusco to help him stake out a meet between the store owner and the thug. The store owner gives the man another phone with a huge external battery and assures him it will work now.

The thug walks away with the phone and the store owner sends a text which Reese intercepts – it’s a detonation code – it seems that he’s the perpetrator, not the victim. Reese breaks the car window and retrieves the phone just in time. He chucks it under a parked car just as it explodes.

Reese and Fusco arrest the store owner and interrogate him. He tells them that tried to kill the men to protect his store and family. The men had threatened his son. He had given the police information about the phones before but they hadn’t helped him, so he took matters into his own hands. Reese tells him that the men didn’t die in the bomb. He worries for his son and so they go back to find the store ransacked and the man’s son abducted.

Reese calls Shaw for help but she’s [surprisingly] a bit more cautious about blowing their cover, despite her complaining to Root.

Reese busts into the gangsters hangout like a one man SWAT team and quickly disables them all (you’d think gangsters would learn how to actually hold a gun and shoot…), throwing one out the window, of course, for dramatic effect. He’s interrogating one of the men about the location of the store owner’s son and gets the info that he’s “with the whale” when he is hit from behind and knocked out. It’s not one of the thugs, though, it’s Shaw.

Finch is in his office when Root pays him a visit. She tells him that Reese and Shaw are going to get them all killed if Finch doesn’t get involved. It’s 5 of them (plus Bear) against the world. The Machine is fighting for her life and has a plan, but she needs Finch’s help. The numbers all matter, she tells him, and he got them all into it, now he can get them out.

Reese comes to in a car with Shaw. She explains to him that they have to keep a low profile. Meanwhile, her phone’s dating app keep telling her that a guy named Romeo wants to meet her. She ignores him.

Finch shows up at the shop to help the store owner set up the thug’s network to buy time for them to find his son. The man has set up a clever network of un-tappable phones using existing television antennas on the rooftop. Finch helps him make the network functional and they contact the gangsters to get his son back.

Reese meets with Elias and lets him in on his new identity. He asks Elias about the gangsters who kidnapped the shop owner’s son. He finds out the gangsters are waiting on a huge shipment of heroin (aka “the whale”) to arrive.

Reese and Shaw stakeout the house where the heroin is being cut and Elias’ men create a fortunate traffic accident that takes out much of the gang that were on the way. Reese goes into the house to investigate and find the boy, but he’s gone. Shaw sees them slip out the back but can’t pursue them as the police arrive. Reese is able to apprehend the man and save the son. When the police arrive, he pulls his badge and plays his role once again.

The blond from the bar at the beginning shows up, sans accent. She tells the cops that she’s Homeland Security, looks over the scene quickly, discounts the cop’s explanation that it was a gang drug war and then leaves, tossing her Homeland Security badge in a trash can as she does.

Reese and Finch again meet in the park and Finch gives him a number of phones – they can use the gangster’s phone network to communicate without fear of Samaritan intercepting their calls. They assume that is why the Machine decided to give them that particular number.

Root stops by the department store where Shaw works again and suggests that she go out on the lunch date that her phone app keeps suggesting. Shaw waits at a restaurant and is ready to give up when a sketchy van arrives and the man, Romeo, offers her some extracurricular activities that seem right up her alley.

Fusco finds out that he’s getting a new partner – a new hot shot from narcotics is going to be taking over Carter’s old desk. Yep, Reese is now conveniently Fusco’s new partner.

Finch reviews the “typos” in his thesis that the Machine wrote as part of his cover identity based on a comment that Root made. They spell out call letters for a number of books in the campus library. Using the info from the books, Finch finds an unused subway tunnel deep beneath the city – their new secret lair!

My thoughts: 

Loved the Samaritan’s eye view of the city. If anything, the visuals were even cooler than the ones we saw with the Machine. The new blond female character (played by Cara Buono), some sort of Decima enforcer, I assume, is intriguing. Got to hand it to the showrunners for creating so many strong woman in POI, even if many of them choose to use their powers for evil rather than good.

After talking with Michael Emerson at Comic Con, I expected that it would take a bit more than one episode to draw Finch back into the fold, but maybe we’ll see some continued resistance. Love the new cover identities – Reese’s is perfect, Shaw’s hilarious, and Finch’s is just awkward. I’m not sure we exactly found out what Root’s cover is, though, other than the one mention to Shaw that she had a job interview. I can only imagine that it’s probably some relatively powerful position that will get her some sort of intel that will help them.

It kind of surprised me to see Shaw towing the line pretty much, while Reese was being more aggressive about flaunting their covers. On the other hand, he definitely has the safest cover of the two when it comes to busting the bad guys. The new team of him and Fusco should be entertaining and convenient and was quite a clever plot development.

As promised, our team now has a new lair. How they will develop it with their newly limited funds and how they will all manage to sneak down to it regularly will be interesting to see.

So, all-in-all, an enjoyable episode and I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes next!

Favorite Quotes:

The Machine put me in this silly ass job? – Shaw

Just promise me that John’s a barista – Shaw

We don’t need jobs, we need a purpose – John

Your associates, the Mayhem Twins, are back to trying to save people – Root

I’m a reformed man, Shaw, following the rules and keeping a low profile… – Reese

She has a reason for everything. Even if it means that sometimes you have to act like a well-adjusted member of society. Trust her. – Root

Catch Person of Interest on Tuesday at 10/9c on CBS!