[Binge Guide] Person of Interest: 13 Episodes You Should Not Miss

One of TV's most innovative series has ended and I wanted to see Team Machine again.
​By J. Delano

Photo from Youtube/POIsuit - Fair Use

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     The series has ended and I just wanted to see Team Machine again.

     Genius billionaire recluse Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) built an Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) to monitor all communications to prevent the next 9-11 however that's where the story goes perilously forward.  With ex-CIA operative John Reese (Jim Caviezel), intrepid Detective Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson), questionable cop Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman), burned ISA agent Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi), psycho-assassin Root (Amy Acker) and Bear, that cuddly loyal ravenous protector of the team, providing support, tension, laughs and heartache we just need to see these guys go at it again in reruns. ​

     Amazing storytelling from showrunner Jonathan Nolan of Interstellar fame built a loyal worldwide fan base for this series which tip-toed a dystopian near-future where our society is being controlled by an ASI and the only thing that may save us is another ASI that has become like us and theoretically the best of us.

     With the popcorn or ice cream on the coffee table ready, your Netflix, Iflix, Warner TV/Warner Channel or DVD hovering on the menu, here are 13 of the episodes you really need to see again. For the POI newbie, SPOILER ALERT if you continue scrolling down but I'm telling you these are episodes you cannot bypass with your fidgety remote.

1.  Episode 1 X 01 “Pilot”

     You have to watch the pilot episide only to know how Finch and Reese met and started their unusual endeavor to help the victims deemed “irrelevant” by Finch's creation, the Machine. The opening scenes begins like a dream of life missed and life hoped for with Reese and and an unknown woman and then reality sets in with the ex-CIA operative scraggly, bearded and on the verge of losing it. He goes to jail and meets Detective Joss Carter, a former Iraq veteran turned cop, after a scuffle with some punks and there he mysteriously gets released by Finch and he offers him a job using his skills to help those in danger. In Finch's words, he's “giving him a purpose.”

2.  Episode 1 X 21 “Many Happy Returns”

     A present case echoes an old wound for Reese. Even Finch lets him sit on the sidelines but Reese eventually finds out and takes the case of Sarah Jennings into his own hands. Before he was the Man in the Suit, he was involved with Jessica Ardnt. In a flashback and after seeing her engagement ring, Reese says to Jessica, “That's one of the things you learn over there. In the end, we're all alone. And no one's coming to save you. Be happy with Peter.”

     Jessica replies, “You don't believe that. Tell me to wait for you and... say those words and I will.”

     Reese arrives much too late as Jessica was already dead because of her husband's violent tendencies.

     Soon, Carter learns more about Reese and realizes the similarities between Jessica and Sarah. In this case, Sarah's case may take Reese back to that day when he faced Jessica's husband.

3.  Episode 2 X 02 “Bad Code”

     Finch gets kidnapped by hacker-assassin Root and Reese asks the Machine to help him find them. Episode 1 Contingency gave Reese the runaround because the Machine's creator made sure that if he was gone someone like Reese continues to get the numbers and protect people. Nevertheless, Reese somewhat pressures the Machine to give him a clue to where Finch was and it leads Carter and him to Bishop, Texas to solve a cold case regarding a murdered teenager. This alliance between Reese and the Machine brings back the Machine's protectiveness towards its maker, Finch.  For Root, she tells Finch that all she wants to do is set the Machine free and introduces us why she would be a very formidable character for Team Machine.

4.  Episode 2 X 13 “Dead Reckoning”

     The past comes back to haunt Reese as he is forced under threat of a remote bomb vest to do the bidding his ex-partner in the CIA Kara Stanton. The weightier issue though has been the new player, Greer, who was pulling Stanton's strings and becomes the biggest threat to Team Machine for the next four seasons. Stanton eventually uploads a powerful virus and almost blows up a building with Carter, Fusco, Finch and Reese inside.

5.  Episode 2 X 21 “Zero Day”

     In this flashback-ridden episode, we learn why Finch is alone and in hiding, why his business partner Nathan Ingram is not in the present and how the Machine sorts out the irrelevant list.

     The real incredible leap in this episode is in the person of Ernest Thornhil, their latest case, which turns out to be the real-world administrative avatar of the Machine. The virus implanted by Stanton was crashing the Machine forcing to it to do a hard reset, calling a particular phone booth to give admin full access and Decima Technologies under John Greer is moving the chess pieces to answer that very important call.

6.  Episode 2 X 22 “God Mode”

     That last phone call by the Machine gives Root unprecedented access and an old-school party call routes to Reese which gives him somewhat limited access to the Machine. Reese and Shaw uses this advantage to search for Finch while Root brings Finch to where the Machine's servers are. Still, Root, Team Machine and the government end up disappointed with the Machine's whereabouts. Finch though was relieved, and it only meant that the one's responsible for Nathan Ingram's death would not be able to get to his creation as well.

7.  Episode 3 X 08 “Endgame”, Episode 3 X 09 “The Crossing” and Episode 3 X 10 “The Devil's Share”

     I do consider these three episodes as one, a trilogy about Joss Carter who ended the war between Team Machine and the dirty cop syndicate HR.  Taraji P. Henson shines from beginning to end and becomes the reason why Carter lived that dignity Team Machine was willing to go over mountains for.  Detective Fusco too emerges from dodgy member to hero slowly but well deserved.  The strength that The Devil's Share beautifully depicts was how the team individually handled loss and how much of that reaction had evolved through history, through the eyes of the Machine.

8.  Episode 3 X 23 “Deus Ex Machina”

     As the title suggests, there is a looming force behind the terrifying events happening to the team and the city. The domestic terrorist group Vigilance conducts a mock trial to determine who is responsible for creating Northern Lights, the government's name for the Machine and their surveillance apparatus.

     On the docket, Finch is there together with Control, the head of Northern Lights, and Greer, Decima's menacing leader. Finch eventually gives in and tells the mock audience everything until Reese and Shaw arrive to save him.  The problem is that Vigilance is not in control and in this episode, they were not in control since the beginning, but the man who revived a more fearsome ASI, Greer.

9.  Episode 4 X 11 “If-Then-Else”

     By far, this episode is the most operative until you watch the series finale. Yet together with Return 0, both of them are the most cherished and acclaimed. You get to see how the Machine makes its decisions as it unexpectedly values its human agents and also all the other innocent people particularly during the siege of Wall Street. The Machine does not just choose on a whim but the it runs thru scenarios to determine the best outcome, and this process portrayed is what makes this episode outstanding. A choice has consequences. Multiple consequences can and will lead to varied dynamics and in the dramatized scenarios the Machine to its credit valued its own agents like how Finch would react to a Dega painting or Root's banter with Shaw.

10.  Episode 5 X 01 “B. S. O. D.”

     The fallout from the finale of Season 4 has the team running for their lives from Samaritan. Fusco was confronted by the FBI because two mob bosses ended up dead in his scene. Finch, Reese and Root escaped from Samaritan agents but the Machine's core code stocked in memory chips inside a powered briefcase may die out because they need a supercomputer to put it back together, setting up a systems crash or the dreaded blue screen of death (B. S. O. D). Now Finch wonders if his strategy to limit the Machine may have doomed humanity against Samaritan because it never grew to its potential.

11.  Episode 5 X 10 “The Day the World Went Away”

     This 100th episode has Team Machine getting Shaw back in the line up after surviving Samaritan's brainwashing. And this time, Finch is the new number. In the beginning, Finch talks to the Machine as it looks at him thru the camera waxing mortality even if Finch said it himself, it was “not much of a conversation as you can't talk back.” There's a lot of figuring out Finch's strategy and Root confronts him on how long he would keep the Machine on the defensive.

     On the other side of the battlefield, Team Samaritan ramped up its attack and sends temps as contact assassins to make sure targets become missing persons or accidental deaths. It now knew Finch's cover by studying his past, especially with Grace. Eventually both sides come to a crossing five odd seasons in the making. In their most dire of circumstance, Finch has had it and makes a brilliant threat to Samaritan while the Machine “chooses a voice”.

12.  Episode 5 X 12 “.exe”

     Finch and the Machine reminisce a lot in this episode but it does remind us viewers that all this trouble began with the two of them. There's plenty of fan service too when Nathan Ingram, Michael Cole, and Joss Carter's desk label came back for what-if cameos.

     Nevertheless, .exe is Finch's episode. He puts the poison on Samaritan via the Ice-9 super virus and in the process Greer too, which is really Samaritan's doing. The contrast is as wide as the Pacific: Samaritan wanted to end Finch with Greer as a sacrifice while the Machine saved Finch despite almost missing the chance to upload the virus into Samaritan. And Shaw and Reese, Root's mayhem twins, came to their aid under the Machine's guidance. The funny and yet most appropriate clue to this empathy of the Machine was that it knew the password "Dashwood" all along.

13.  Episode 5 X 13 "Return 0"

     “If you can hear this, you're alone.” The Machine speaks to an analog recorder, boding an episode where it's in the Machine's point-of-view and harkens the viewers, yes us, to B. S. O. D. where the team's underground hideout is a mess and no one in sight. What I like about that line is you can trace it back to what Reese said to Jessica in Many Happy Returns in Season 1.

     The Machine continues,“So let me tell you who we were and how we fought back.” The timeline went back a few hours and Shaw and Fusco hold the fort at the hideout to keep the Machine intact until Reese and Finch try to stop Samaritan making a bare bones copy of itself to survive Finch's Ice-9 virus that was supposed to end Samaritan, sadly together with the Machine.

     The Machine said, “You built me to predict people, Harry. But to predict them, you have to truly understand them.” Both Finch and the Machine talk while each were nursing their wounds. If .exe showed us how Samaritan dealt with the world around it with actuarial brute force, Return 0 showed how an ASI acts both human and more than human because of context, history (and I mean one's whole history) and empathy. Also, the Machine was courageous enough to fight with the team even if it was dying, a trait that is grounded on free will.  When it could ponder what a wise street cop said about memory and relationships and offer that anecdote as a balm when Finch and Reese faced death, one can hope that this ASI stays on.

End Notes

     In a Youtube video, Person of Interest Executive Producer Greg Plageman answered some questions from the viewers and one was if they knew how the ending would be and he said that the writers knew that these two ASI's would need to battle. Additionally, he said that if the Machine survived, this was the ending that they thought was most poetic. They even hoped that the show would turn the heads of viewers towards a more cautious approach in building an ASI that “gives a crap about humanity.”

     If learning to give a crap towards other people was the goal, the whole series was on target with a Machine that had contextualize.  It's empathy was obvious because it acted even beyond its coding sometimes bravely for the good while it's loyalty to Finch was at odd at first yet in the finale you're thinking it wanted to be loyal to him like Finch was a real parent, which then is utterly selfless and endearing.  The ending was, in my mind, the right ending.  Two loops wrapped Person of Interest like a bow giving us comfort that there may be hope. One was with the start of B. S. O. D the beginning of Season 5. presenting the smoking remnants of their hideout which then came around to the last episode of Season 5 when the Machine left its story in a recording in Return 0. The second was the last scene when all seemingly went back to normal with Shaw walking Bear.  Then a public phone rings, and that scene was eerily similar to the last scene of the pilot episode when Reese looked into a camera and knew someone or something was watching.

     For them to return may be a longshot.  Til then, Team Machine, thank you for the ride.

About the author

J. Delano is an amateur photographer and story buff.