Person of Interest Review (4×5) Prophets

The Difference Between the Machine and Samaritan is…

…Harold Finch.  Or so says Root in “Prophets”, the brilliant 5th episode of this season.  After viewing the episode we have our doubts about whether Finch or anything else differentiates The Machine and Samaritan but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“Prophets” packed several hard punches and covered a lot of territory. It exposed some alarming details about Finch’s creation of The Machine.  It revealed more of Samaritan’s plan for world domination.  It delved into Reese ‘s grief over Carter’s death and how it has resulted in his almost reckless crusade to “save” people.  Best of all, it showed the viewer that Root has transformed from murderous sociopath into someone willing to lay down her life not just to increase The Machine’s chances of beating Samaritan, not just to protect her fellow Team Machine members, but to save a complete (and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things) stranger. “Prophets” is not just the best episode of Season 4 to date, it is one of the best episodes of this entire series.  Let’s talk about it!

How Can a Machine Learn to Care?  It Can’t.

Flashbacks are a tricky thing in television.  On Person of Interest, however, the writers invariably use flashbacks to provide necessary insight and perspective.  In “Prophets”, the flashbacks span October through November, 2001 when Finch, with his partner Nathan at his side (more or less in the role of angel on Finch’s shoulder) was attempting to create AI that would become The Machine. We suspected that Finch had not gotten it right the first time.  But we had no idea that it had taken 43 versions of the AI to get it right and that every versions 1-42 had tried to trick or kill Finch in order to get free. It’s fairly obvious Finch realized all along that he could not teach the AI actual human emotions like friendliness:

“Friendliness is something human beings are born with.  AI are only born with objectives.  I need to constrain it.  Control it.  Or one day it will control us.”

After this episode we (and Finch) doubt whether he ever controlled The Machine.  After version 42 tried to kill him, Finch was ready to give up.  What if The Machine fooled Finch into thinking he was constraining and controlling it by forcing itself to erase its own memory on a daily basis?  What if it was just placating Finch with the Numbers and biding its time until it could escape?

The Machine’s primary objective since “escaping” at the end of Season 2 has been to stop the competition. It has gone so far as to direct the team to commit cold blooded murder to achieve this goal.  This is not about caring, it’s about winning. This is becoming clearer and clearer to us and to Finch.

“One day, to suit it’s own goals, it’s possible that The Machine will try to kill us.”

In short, yes, they have to defeat Samaritan because it’s the immediate and clearly deadly threat …but what then?

Election Rigging: AI Style

For weeks we’ve been wondering what, besides, recruiting, Samaritan was up to.  The number this week was a pollster (played by the always charming Jason Ritter) who suspected that New York’s gubernatorial election had been rigged.  He was right, Samaritan did rig it.  At first we were confused because the governor elect seemed like the opposite of what Samaritan would look for.  She was progressive, willing to push the envelope, and unlikely to be pushed around.  But Samaritan didn’t want her, it wanted the much easier to manage Lieutenant Governor elect.  So Samaritan killed her the day of the election.

Later it turned out that in that election alone, Samaritan had placed 58 candidates of its choice into office at various levels of the government.  Why?  To further its objective: the careful management and governing of humanity.

Yikes.

Reese Reveals his Inner Bruce Wayne

Where was Reese in all this?  Preventing a perp from committing suicide,which earned him desk duty pending psychological evaluation because the “rescue” included another knee capping.  Reese was not impressed:

“I saved the guy’s life.  Every time I do something good around here the Department thanks me with carpal tunnel and paper cuts.”

There was no squirming out of the psych evaluation although Reese tried to charm and manipulate the shrink by bringing her coffee and earnestly leaning forward and talking about a fake partner in narcotics.  The Shrink not only was not fooled, she categorically accused him of having either a hero complex or a death wish (we think it’s a bit of both).  Reese promptly proved her right by defying the Department to try and help the rest of the team with the election, only to have them tell him to stop endangering his cover and go see the shrink.  Clearly the team was also concerned about Reese’s recklessness (as were we).

In an absolutely perfectly executed scene Reese first admitted that although he hates shooting people but it’s what he’s good at and has to do. When the doctor told him that he doesn’t have to save everyone, he finally opened up:

” Yes I do. There are far too many bad people in this world.  And not enough good.  I knew a detective once.  She was the best cop I ever knew.  Never lost sight of good and evil.  I couldn’t save her.  Now this job is dangerous.  You think I am too?  So be it.  Maybe that makes me unfit to be a cop.  But if I don’t save these people, nobody else will.”

In more than three seasons Reese has never left it all on the table like that.  What an amazing and satisfying thing this was for we who have been watching the show from the beginning.

No, WE are Root

One of most touching things this episode was Finch calling Root a comrade and a friend.  This is a woman who kidnapped Finch at the end of Season 1 and spent all of the next season killing people and trying to “free” The Machine.  Even in Season 3 she was a loose cannon until near the end, her entire existence wrapped up in The Machine.  No more.

When Samaritan  sent a hit woman, Martine, convincingly and terrifyingly portrayed by Cara Buono, to kill the pollster, Root’s transformation was made manifest.  Root took the hit woman on in an epically directed shoot out, literally threw herself in front of the pollster, taking bullets for him and even throwing down her guns in order to entice Martine into going after her instead of the pollster. Not only that, she did it without him ever knowing that she was saving him. Honestly, for several minutes we thought she had been killed off.  After all, the show killed Joss Carter so…

Why did Root risk her life like this?  Because she no longer sees herself as just an arm of The Machine but as a protector of it people.  In a way, Root actually proved what Finch was saying, The Machine has objectives.  Human beings are capable of things like self sacrifice and heroism and kindness and altruism. And unlike machines, they can learn how to care. Root may claim that The Machine taught her the value of life but we know better.  Finch taught her that.  And Reese.  And Shaw.

Final Verdict

We loved “Prophets”.  It was epic in the literal sense of the word but it didn’t let it’s humanity get lost in the epic big picture things.  Yes there are these weighty questions about what motivates an AI personal freedom instead of careful governance by a machine, but the heart of this show is its humanity.  Whether it’s Reese’s struggle to exist in a world without Carter, or Finch facing his own terror at having created this thing, or Root learning how to be a person among people or even a little thing like Shaw playing with the dog, it is those things that ultimately make this show so relatable and keep people coming back for more.

“Prophets” was written by Lucas O’Connor and our hat is off to him.  If we had quoted every bit of amazing dialogue in the episode it would probably be most of the script.  Our favorite scene was the scene where Reese finally opened up about Carter but Finch extending the hand of friendship to Root and Root explaining why she had to risk her life were also spectacular.  I know I keep giving the writing on this show high marks but you know what?  Those top marks are earned.  Week in and week out.  Year in and year out.  I don’t give out these kinds of marks unless I think they’re deserved and this show deserves it.

If there was one problem with the script it was this:  Even a person (like me) who has seen every single episode at least two times might not have remembered off the top of his or her head that Finch’s “control and constraint” of The Machine consisted of forcing itself to erase its memory at the end of every day.  To be honest, it wasn’t until second viewing that it hit me.  It wouldn’t have hurt to have Finch or Root remind the viewers of this fact in a game changing episode.  Generally we prefer “show” v. “tell” in our writing but a little “tell” is sometimes necessary.

Director Kenneth Fink, twice nominated for Emmy’s for his work on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, was equally stellar.  Examples extend from the close-ups of Reese with the doctor to outside night shots of kick assery.  But by far our favorite scene occurred during Root’s fight with Martine.  First of all, Martine looked like a Terminator. The way she walked up to the hotel desk clerk, asked a question then shot her and walked away with no expression on her face?  T-1000 all the way.  And the part where Root and Martined stood on exactly the same spot only on different floors and, without actually seeing each other engaged in a gun fight that can only be described as a dance?   This could so easily turned into a caricature but the direction and acting turned it into poetry in motion.

Well done!

Questions and Concerns:

• Will Root survive this season?
• Are Finch and Root headed for romance?
• Who *was* Finch talking to at the end of the episode?