Person of Interest 4×6 Review – “Pretenders”

Team Machine Goes on Offense-With a Little Help From its Friends

In last week’s episode, Finch almost despaired at the fact that his team seemed always to be operating twenty steps behind Samaritan. He also realized that it was time to have heart to heart with The Machine; which must have been productive because by the end of “Pretenders” Finch ended up steps ahead of Samaritan. At the same time Elias finally emerged from the shadows and went head to head with The Brotherhood (an epic confrontation that we predicted two episodes ago). He won too. This time. Looks like it’s finally time for Team Machine and its unlikely allies to stop playing defense. We love this development. Samaritan and The Brotherhood are both newer, bigger, and more ruthless than the “old guard”. If episode had a theme it was that one should not count out or underestimate the “old guard”.

Pretenders wasn’t all nail biting darkness. It showcased Person of Interest’s particularly effective ability to interject a bit of timely levity to otherwise dark weighty stories. After last week’s heart stopping show, we needed that. The “pretender” detective in this episode was charming and more than a little bit goofy, but still played an integral part in helping Reese and Elias win a round. He added some lightness to an episode in which things seriously heated up between two powerful criminal organizations and displayed Finch’s willingness to play dirty in order to take the fight to Samaritan.

So, let’s get down to the specifics of why we thought this episode was just plain fun.

The Gun’s The Thing…

The “big guns” in this episode catalyzed an epic confrontation between the two biggest criminal “machines” in town: Elias and The Brotherhood. As we anticipated in our review of “Brotherhood”, the lines were drawn between the veteran an an upstart who thinks it is better than “the old man” (Elias). We love this parallel with the conflict between the “old technology” (The Machine) and the upstart (Samaritan).

Basically we had an insurance agent (Walter Dang) trying to prove that an apparent suicide by a co-worker’s brother was something else. As it turned out to be. The dead man had been trucking a shipment into New York but ditched it when he found out he was carrying huge guns that shredded Kevlar like paper and put bazooka sized holes in armored vehicles. The gun runners (led by a guy called “The Armorer”) came after him to find out where the shipment was and he fell to his death trying to escape.

Reese’s reaction to “Scarface” (Elias’ second) attempt to abduct Dang as well as his subsequent confrontation with Elias was both classic and amusing. Saving numbers is, to say the least, important to Reese. Elias basically spit in the face of that when, in their first encounter, he pretended to be an innocent teacher so Reese could rescue him from rival gang members. Since his and Reese’s relationship has been at various times adversarial, reluctantly allied and even friendly (albeit warily so). And it was Elias who ultimately killed the guy who gunned down Carter. In this case Reese was furious at Elias who he thought the gun runner . It turned out that Elias was only trying to locate the guns to prevent them from hitting the streets. He was not interested in turning New York into a war zone and only wanted to talk to Dang because he thought he could help find the missing truck.

“Personally, I don’t care much for the illegal gun trade, but someone has to keep it under control. Otherwise the city turns into Chicago. Chicago’s a mess John. It’s like a freaking Tarantino movie.”

The fact is that although his methods certainly differ from Reese’s, Elias is, In his own way, trying to protect his city.

After it was established that the shipment could be tracked through the driver’s phone (which Dang had acquired, we’re not sure how), Reese, having found the location through tracing the phone’s GPS “cloud” footprint, attempted a rescue but instead ended up with a bullet in his arm, completely out manned and out gunned. Only to be rescued by Scarface who was carrying one of the big guns. After a rather one sided battle, Elias revealed that he had already found the shipment. He’d also concluded that the “Armorer” was just a front for The Brotherhood. We knew this from the beginning. Honestly “The Armorer” is a name that, while appropriate in a comic book hero show like Arrow or The Flash, was just too…wrong…for Person of Interest to ever convincingly fool anyone.

To our surprise, Elias’ actions prompted a face to face “meeting” between Elias and Dominic. Dominic declared that Elias could not hope to defeat The Brotherhood and should have stayed in hiding (an ironic argument in light of the fact that Elias had just confiscated and destroyed a shipment of Dominic’s guns). Elias in turn warned Dominic to stay out of his way.

Dominic: “This is the second time you’ve seen fit to interfere in my business. You should have stayed underground.”

Elias: “Years ago, back before the icebreakers, this water would freeze over in winter sometimes, all the way across. It looked quiet. Almost dead. But it wasn’t…After it’s winter period it would roar back to life, the water flowing so fast,an unwary man could drown…I have never interfered in your business Dominic, I have only conducted my own. You would do well to stay clear.”

Dominic: “A man is not a river, and you are not a king.”

Ah, the entertainment value in witnessing the posturing between two Alpha Criminal Masterminds.

The two sides walked away from each other this time but now the stage is set for what we believe will be a season long and possibly game changing conflict.

Finch Flirts and Fights?

In the meantime, Finch told his team that his university had sent him to Hong Kong to attend a conference. When Finch almost immediately found himself at flirtatious odds with Beth Bridges, whose company (Geospatial Predictive Analytics) was sponsoring the conference, we were, quite frankly disconcerted. We’ve seen the romantic side of Finch before but this all seemed very sudden. When a mugger stole Finch’s and Bridges’ bags we thought it might be just a part of their bonding process though it also presented a problem for Finch as it left it without papers. It seemed entirely appropriate that Finch could track the thief through a logo on his bike. But when Finch started beating the mugger with a large stick in order to recover the bags (which he did), we were…shocked. Finch…violent? What was going on?

The conference concluded without further incident. Bridges said she would be in New York in a month to secure funding from an “angel investor” that would really put her company on the map, and asked Finch on a coffee date. Finch, almost nervously enthusiastic, accepted. Bridges then kissed him on the cheek and walked away, leaving Finch looking charmed and happy until she was out of sight.

And that’s when the deception was revealed. Finch’s face went from almost dreamy happy to stone cold in about 10 seconds (Michael Emerson once again demonstrating his acting prowess). Then the “mugger” approached him and he asked him if he had planted the tracker on Bridges’ computer as they had arranged, which the mugger confirmed. When the mugger objected to Finch having beat him, Finch coldly handed him an envelope of money.

What? WHAT? That’s what we were saying to the television as it was happening. We were completely unaware of Finch’s deception (although in retrospect, the fact that we were so disturbed by his previous behavior should have been a hint). So why did Finch tag Bridges’ computer? Cut to New York where it is revealed that Samaritan is behind the Angel investor and is very interested in Bridges’ algorithms though its people don’t know why. We suspect it’s because Bridges, as Finch once did, believes that the end justifies the means. Bridges believes that people have a right to science without real regard for the morality of progress. Finch has learned the hard way that people also have a right to responsible scientists.

What is clear is that Finch knew in advance that Samaritan was interested in Bridges and that he had no problem manipulating her in order to finally get ahead of Samaritan.

Finch and The Machine must have had some talk between last week and this because this level of ruthlessness from Finch is new though probably necessary.

We are very much looking forward to seeing where this will go.

The Legend of The Man in The Suit Lives

Dang the insurance broker’s plan to to uncover the truth about the “suicide” involved a secret identity. Specifically, he pretended to be a NYPD detective named Jack Forge (seriously, Jack Forge? How awesome is that?). The disguise even included a trench coat and hate we are sure was a tribute to Sam Spade. As he bumbled through the episode as a Pretend Detective, we could not help but be touched by his drive to do the right thing regardless of how out of depth he was. Touching or not, we still felt for poor Fusco, he of the newly straight and narrow path, who now had two pretenders on his hands and found himself having to cover for them. Which he did, albeit grumpily.

After Reese single handedly thwarted the “Armorer’s” first attempt to abduct him, Forge called him a superhero. Reese’s attempt to deny it went out the window when Shaw and Fusco showed up in red and black cars respectively, dressed to the nines (looks like Fusco’s “Wingman” makeover stuck) and oozing bad-assery. We have to say that Fusco and Shaw walking up to Reese (in slo-mo no less) reminded us a bit of one of the most memorable scenes in Buckaroo Banzai, when “the team” assembled, also in slo mo, just oozing cool attitude. *Geek tingle*.

Later in the episode, Forge realized that Reese was The Man in The Suit, basically, his hero.

“A couple years ago, there was this, um, this vigilante I guess you’d call him, he protected people. Drove the cops nuts though-they called him the man in the… suit”

By the end of the episode was clear that Forge wouldn’t compromise Reese’s “secret identity” but he parted company with him, reassured that his hero never was still out there catching bad guys.

“That vigilante I heard about? The Man in the Suit? I didn’t tell you the rest. He disappeared a few months ago and crime went up-violence, killings, and the City needed someone to keep of the fight, so I figured, why not me? But you know, “me” kinda sucks. So I invented Detective Forge all because the Man in the Suit went away. But I was wrong, wasn’t I. He wasn’t really gone at all.”

During that whole scene Reese had shoulders, head and eyes down. His facial expression clearly conveyed his continued belief that he is not worthy of being called a hero, still often feels like his hero “mantle” is a fraud, and that he can never really find redemption for the life he led before he meant Finch. Last week we drew a comparison between Reese and Bruce Wayne/Batman and we are delighted to see that the show appears to be following through on this line of character development. We sincerely hope Reese will one day understand that his past is irrelevant to the good he has done and is continuing to do since hooking up with Finch.

FINAL VERDICT

As we said before, we thought Pretenders was a lot of fun while still advancing several plots in the bigger, more serious, story. It also did a mostly fantastic job of exploring the nature and extent of the “pretending” by the characters on this show. The episode was written by current Co-Executive Producer, Ashley Gable. While this is Ms. Gable’s first Person of Interest script, she is no stranger to television. Her writing and producing credits include The Mentalist, Crossing Jordan, Vegas, and New Amsterdam. We always like the writing on this show. We were especially impressed with the balance this episode maintained between levity and seriousness. The “number” was especially well conceived and delightfully written. We did however have a few nits about the episode and a larger concern that is less about the script and more about the overall show. While the deception with Harold’s story really worked we thought the the deception with “the Armorer” didn’t. In The Brotherhood we were genuinely surprised to find out that “Mini” was actually Dominic. In this episode we were not fooled at all. And we think it was mostly because of the name “the Armorer”. It was just too not Person of Interest to be convincing.

We are also concerned about Shaw. While it was nice to see her “doing nerd” and showing she could sort of sit in for Finch if necessary, we miss her edge. She’s almost “too” calm in the face of all that’s happened. Maybe it’s that Team Machine needs an “anchor” right now, someone on the team to be less ruffled and conflicted than Finch and Reese. But we’re not quite sure how Shaw got there between the end of last season and the beginning of this one (after all, selling cosmetics is not the most calming of jobs even for non former government sanctioned assassins). Hopefully the show will give us some Shaw story to fill in those blanks.

Pretenders was directed by 5 time Director’s Guild of Canada winner Stephen D. Surjik, whose credits include Burn Notice, Psych, Monk and Warehouse 13. We thought he did a stellar job with this episode. The decision to put Forge in that hat and do things like speak in the third person and break in on bad guys by flamboyantly announcing himself (absolutely the opposite of what a real detective would do) was inspired. What can we say about the confrontations on this episode (Reese and Elias, Elias and Dominic, Finch and the Mugger) other than that they were perfect. The locations were spot on. That gun room in particularly was *stunning* and the shot of Reese first walking in there was just…well there’s a reason we’ve included it in this review. The Bridge scene was just the right amount of dark. Too many shows shoot night time scenes so that the viewer can’t really tell what’s going on. That didn’t happen here. And can we just talk about the proper use of slo mo? Slo mo is one of the most overused things on big and small screen alike. It’s gotten to the point that we want to cringe every time we see it. But in this case it was used beautifully in a very targeted way and for a very specific reason: to illustrate why Forge was so convinced that Reese and his team were super heroes. How delightfully refreshing!

Season 4 continues to impress and as usual we can’t wait to see what happens next so bring it on!

Questions and Concerns

• What do you think about our take on Shaw?
• Will we see “Detective Forge” again?
• We think it’s inevitable that Finch will have to tell Elias about The Machine. Do you agree?
• How far will Finch go to stay ahead of Samaritan?
• Alright, that’s it for this review. Let us know what you think in the comments section!