Person of Interest 4×7 Review – “Honor Among Thieves”

Criminal Chemistry Becomes Biological Terrorism as “Irrelevant” Meets “Relevant”

It’s starting to be almost spooky the way the week after we ask for something, Person of Interest delivers it. Last week we requested more of Shaw’s edgy side.  “Honor Among Thieves” gave us that in spades and so much more. It revealed the difference between “Irrelevant” and  “Relevant” threats. It made us question how technology actually works both on the show and in the real world. It gave us hope that not everyone who works for the new regime agrees with it. And it continued to explore the fine line between fighting wrong and becoming the wrong you’re fighting.  We liked it.  We liked it a LOT.

Anyway…the devil’s in the details so let’s get on with it.

 Shaw’s Love Life is…Complicated.

A word of advice to all would-be Shaw wooers: never ever be late.  Poor Romeo was less than a minute late completing a gold bar heist and Shaw and the ensuing break up was rough. For Romeo that is. Shaw not only beat the crap out him and his gang, she threw the gold in the river. While we question she didn’t just give it to Finch we also understand.  After all, a girl’s gotta have standards and Shaw requires nothing less than precision and professionalism from her partners in crime.  Enter Tomas Karoa, The Machine’s latest “irrelevant” number.  Sexy wine expert by day and even sexier (to Shaw) smash and grab thief by night.  So precise that he and his team (dubbed “The Hole in the Wall Gang” by Interpol, because entry is usually achieved by…well..driving through a wall) were in and out of a jewelry store in 10 seconds flat. It comes as no surprise that Shaw jumped at the chance to determine whether Tomas was a victim or perpetrator by infiltrating his team.

Tomas damn near seduced Shaw by turning heist planning into foreplay.  Literally:

A perfectly planned job is…a kind of seduction.  Hours looking, wanting, turning your target around in your mind.  And then…you move closer, brushing past, making contact.  Just to see what will happen.  And when everything’s ready and when everything’s right…all that preparation pays off in one intense…crashing moment

Um…yeah.

Of course it turned out the actual heist was taking place twenty minutes later so that kind of took the blush off the romance.  The job, which involved chaining a hotel vault to a truck, and dragging it away, perfectly timed to coincide with nearby Veteran’s Day Fireworks to mask the noise, went off without a hitch.  Until they opened the safe…but before we get to that let’s check in with Root and Finch.

Nanny Thwarts Scheme to Brainwash Children

After her brush in with Samaritan’s operatives in “Prophets”, Root has been changing identities faster than Apple updates its IPhones. Six identities in two weeks is not something we think anyone but a recovering psychopath like Root could handle.   The latest identity, nanny, kind of freaked us out. Root is just not someone we associate with child care but The Machine works in mysterious ways and Root was okay with it:

French Mary Poppins Barbie is the only one that’s been any fun

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again.  Person of Interest excels at adding just the right amount of humor even to the most serious of situations, like this one, where the plan was to begin undermine the projects of the new Samaritan aided governor of New York.We’re glad to see Finch continuing to be  proactive.  At issue here was the governor’s twelve million dollar grant to a computer expert named Wilkins, who just happened to have a rather unmanageable young son.  Enter the Nanny, whose job it is to get into Wilkins’ house and find out what he’s up to.

Is this mission the result of the Machine’s direct communication with Finch?  How is that communication occurring?  Is it just numbers?  Because if it’s more, then Samaritan would know, as Root revealed in “Prophets”.  A bigger question for us is when does Samaritan hack back?  In “Nautilus” it hacked back when Finch tried to trace the email that started the “game” in New York.  In this episode it hacked back when Root and Finch got into his computer after force cloning his phone.  Why wouldn’t it hack back the moment the phone was cloned which it surely would detect.  Why would it let Finch get as far as learning about Wilkins’ project?  For that matter, later in the episode, after Samaritan has been alerted to the hack attempt, Finch is still able to listen in on Wilkins’ conversation with someone from the governor’s office?  This doesn’t seem especially consistent.  On the other hand, it could be a way of showing that Samaritan may be powerful, but it’s not perfect. Or maybe, as discussed more fully later, it’s a trap. We just don’t know.

Wilkins’ idea was to use 3D printers to manufacture tablets to be put in the hands of every school child.  A noble goal, if Samaritan weren’t behind it. The two succeed in destroying the printers as well as all plans and research connected to the project but Finch questions the morality of it afterward.  Root and we are disturbed that Finch would defend one of Samaritan’s plans…especially one related to computers, but that is indeed what he appeared to be doing.

As an aside, while watching the episode we were skeptical about the idea of creating a computer with a 3D printer so we asked writer David Slack about it.  He told us that it had already been done.  See?  Person of Interest isn’t fiction.

…It’s a Trap!

What does it take to turn an “irrelevant” heist into a “relevant” threat?  Biological warfare definitely qualifies.  Tomas had unwittingly stolen ten vials of Marburg virus illegally shipped to the by then Ebola wary US by a well-meaning (but in our opinion, really stupid) CDC scientist for the CDC who apparently hadn’t considered the possibility of it being stolen. Two of Tomas team mates tried to kill him and took the virus.  And then they ended up dead.

Finch tracked the virus to an almost impenetrable storage facility and Shaw and Markos “planned” another heist. That’s when Shaw someone saw someone she recognized: Devon Grice, an agent she’d trained when she was working for the government and realized that this was now a “relevant threat”.  Here’s the problem: Team Machine knew what had been stolen.  It also knew that the CDC scientist had turned herself in.  So, why did it take Shaw’s recognizing an operative from her past to realize that the whole thing had gone relevant?  Shouldn’t that have been obvious the second the virus turned up?

We also wondered why, if things had turned ” relevant” and Samaritan knew where the virus was being stored, Finch able to circumvent the building’s firewall and access security?  Then we realized it was probably a trap. Samaritan didn’t just want the virus, it wanted to eliminate everyone involved in stealing it so why not let them think they had hacked into security?  What better way to round them up?

Unfortunately that wasn’t the only trap.  Tomas’ old partner turned out to have hired his team.  And his buyer wanted the virus immediately delivered (released) in New York…by injecting two people with it.

This was our favorite scene. The Samaritan agents hadn’t yet reached the storage locker.  Tomas was about to get injected and it was looking very grim.  Then Finch shouted “Now John!”, gunfire erupted outside the storage unit as Reese and Fusco took on Samaritan’s agents, and Shaw had time to knee cap the distracted bad guys and recover the virus.

The truly amazing thing is somehow the show had so drawn us into what was happening with Shaw, Tomas and Samaritan’s operatives, that we weren’t even thinking about the possibility of Reese’s involvement.  So when John showed up, we got goosebumps.  Seriously.  Goosebumps.  It was literally like the cavalry unexpectedly coming to the rescue.  Wow.

To Think or not to Think. That is the Question.

The last showdown between Samaritan’s and The Machine’s operatives (“Prophets”) was straightforward.  Samaritan’s operative killed without compunction, mercy, or thought,behaving almost like a Terminator.  Things got a lot grayer in “Honor Among Thieves”.

When The Machine was in charge, government operatives like Shaw (and Reese) got their assignments from a “department” they knew as “Research”.  This was actually The Machine but the operatives carrying out the missions didn’t know this.  In season two, Shaw’s partner, a technical guy, started digging into and questioning the existence of  “Research”.  So the government killed him and tried to kill Shaw, who eventually became part of Team Machine.

With Samaritan in charge the operatives get their assignments from “Research 2.0”.  But, as is revealed when Brice and his partner Brooks, now ordered to recover rather than destroy the virus are preparing to act, not all of them think it’s an improvement.

Brice: Back then, we did the targeting, had to scrutinize our own intel, think for ourselves.  When we lit up a target? We knew why.  Now instead of numbers to investigate we just get numbers to kill.

The upshot of Brice questioning the new regime is that when Shaw and Tomas are leaving with the virus and come face to face with him, he only hesitates for a moment before letting them go.  Not only that, he attempts to erase the surveillance feeds in order to prevent Shaw from being recognized.

That is a good sign for Team Machine.  The bad news is that we don’t know if the erasure took and whether it will show Shaw’s’ face.

Because of that we think we’ve finally figured out how the “blind spot” Root gave Samaritan last season works.  So long as someone on Team Machine is being who they are supposed to be according to the “identities” that have been created for them things are fine.  Unless they come in direct contact (as Root did in “Prophets”) with someone who knows about Samaritan or otherwise recognizes them for who they really are (like Brice did with Shaw in this episode) they are safe.  It’s when they act outside those parameters that problems arise.  If Reese starts behaving like a vigilante and not a cop, Samaritan is going to notice it as “deviant” behavior and his cover is blown.  Same with Finch as Professor Wheeler and even Shaw as a garden variety thief.  Now we understand Finch’s reluctance to start working numbers again.  The fear of overt behavior inconsistent with their covers.  It makes sense now and we love that.

Final Verdict

Honor Among Thieves raised some questions for us.

Like, what the hell is going on with Finch?!   How could he even consider withdrawing from the mission to recover the virus just because Samaritan was on the job.  Why on earth would he trust something like that to a system operating with no morals?  Granted, he was easily dissuaded but we’re still appalled that he even considered it.  Stranger still is his upset over detecting little evidence of wrongful motives in Wilkins’ Samaritan sponsored tablet project and his questioning The Machine’s suggestion to undermine it.  Is he actually trust Samaritan to do good?  Almost approvingly referring to how Castro improved education in Cuba when he first took over?  As if that was a valid trade-off for the freedom that was lost?  He sounded more like Greer than like the Finch we’ve come to know and love.

Maybe we thought Finch had gotten over the arrogance that led him to create The Machine and then turn it over to the government.  Then again maybe this is exactly where the show intends to take Finch. It’s almost like he’s being tempted by the Dark Side and the issue is whether he will remain a Jedi or become Darth Vader.  In any case, it worries us.  A lot.

We also have no idea know why Team Machine didn’t realize that they were now in “relevant” territory the minute they realized what had been stolen instead of when Shaw recognized a former trainee.

That said, overall we really liked Honor Among Thieves.  It seamlessly segued from fun to deadly serious without compromising the story.  It demonstrated how a mission goes from irrelevant to relevant in Samaritan’s eyes.  It also showed that not everyone working under Samaritan is just blindly taking orders.  The production values were flawless and the character work mostly brilliant.

Honor Among Thieves was written by Co-executive producer David Slack, who has written some of the show’s most memorable episodes, including last season’s epic finale “Deux ex Machina”.  We love him. Even when we don’t think one of his episodes is perfect.  He’s been working on this show from the beginning and his love for it shines through in every script.  Again we go back to that “Now John” goosebumps producing scene.  David fearless story-teller.  He will take characters we love down rabbit holes-even if we don’t always like it.  He just knows how to engage an audience.  In this day and age of media overload induced short attention spans, it’s a real accomplishment when a shows makes us pay close attention while watching it and it’s because of writers like David Slack that Person of Interest has been doing just that for more than three seasons.

Director Sylvain White’s credits include Covert Affairs, Hawaii Five-0 and The Originals. He also directed last season’s heart pounding “End Game”, the POI episode where things came to a head between Carter and HR and one of my personal favorite episodes of any television show ever.  What can we say about his work on Honor Among Thieves?  Flawless.  Absolutely flawless.  One of the best directed episodes of the show to date.  From the “foreplay” between Shaw and Tomas to Shaw’s and Reese’s witty banter to Root’s transformation into Blonde Mary Poppins Barbie to Reese’s stunning rescue, it was just….flawless.  Our hat is off to you Mr. White.  Truly.

Questions/Concerns

• Are Root and Shaw headed for little friends with benefits action?
• What IS going on with Finch.
• Will Brice become a mole in the Samaritan Machine?
• Who was the “Buyer” who wanted the virus released in NY & have we seen the last of them?
• When will we be able to purchase our very own Blonde Mary Poppins Barbie action figures?
• We would also  like to give a huge shout out to both the song choice and the score for this episode.  Great great job!
• Next up:  Bear takes a bath.