It is time for the penultimate episode of Person of Interest. This week Harold is executing his plan for planting the virus, while John and Shaw are trying to track him down.
This week is all about the path not taken. What would the world be like if the Machine never existed? Would it be better? Or worse? Those are the questions Harold is pondering when trying to decide whether to go through with his plan to destroy Samaritan. The virus he wants to plant would not only destroy Samaritan, but would also destroy the Machine (and the internet, if I understood that correctly), so he has to decide whether it would be worth it in the end.
I really like this episode. I love it when shows ask the what if questions (one of the many reasons I adore Fringe) and show us alternative realities. Of course Person of Interest doesn't go that far, the Machine only shows Harold simulations of what the world would be like if the Machine never existed. And I love that there is no easy answer. The world is not better, but it is not worse either.
Sure, Nathan Ingram would be alive and Harold would have his best friend back, but at the same time he would have never met Grace, which would leave him emotionally empty. Yes, Carter would be alive (shame we don't actually get to see her) and prosperous in her career, but Fusco would be an alcoholic and disgraced. Shaw would still be working for her former employers, making her a pawn for Samaritan. John, after being rejected by Jessica, would commit suicide. Root would be alive, but her search for higher power would have led her to Samaritan, and eventually becoming Greer's second in command.
But these simulations do give Harold his answer, in a way. In this world Samaritan would exist, but there would be no-one to oppose it. The Machine's existence gave the world the chance to fight back and survive. Because the world cannot go on while Samaritan survives, but it will survive the Machine not existing. It might be better off with the Machine watching over it, but it can survive without it.
I also really like that the Machine does not try to decide this for Harold. It understands freewill and the importance of it. It might have a survival instinct, but it understands why Harold is doing this.
Of course the plan does not go without a glitch, and Greer and other Samaritan agents stop Harold before he can activate the virus. I have to say, these scenes with Greer are a bit anti-climatic. Greer is trying to find out if Harold told anyone else (mainly the Machine) the password to activate the virus to see if anyone else poses a threat. Of course Greer is right in stating that Harold does not trust the Machine enough to tell it the password, but it seems he also underestimates it. Greer keeps saying that both Samaritan and the Machine are gods, but he seems to think Samaritan is infinitely superior to the Machine. It does not occur to him that the Machine knows Harold very well and that it is able to determine his intentions as well as the password.
Greer does almost succeed in neutralising Harold, but the Machine (and Shaw and John) rescue him in the end. However Greer's willingness to die for his cause bites him in the ass as his plan to kill Harold only results in his own death.
Harold does bring up a point in his talk with Greer that I have been wondering for awhile. Samaritan was created by Arthur Claypool, who was Harold's friend in MIT, and, while he did not seem to have as high understanding of ethics and morality as Harold does, he did not seem like a morally corrupt person. So the question remains, did Arthur create something without thinking about the consequences and what it might grow into, or did Greer really corrupt it? I guess we'll never know for sure.
So the password for to activate the virus is "dashwood". Is the show finally revealing to us Harold's real last name? I mean, I took it as such, and it would be very meaningful if that was the case. When Harold proposed to Grace, he gave her the ring in a book, Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility, and the last name of the heroine of that book is Dashwood. Which would mean Harold was giving Grace a clue about who he really is.
I don't have a lot to say about Fusco. The focus of this episode is on Harold, and rightly so, and so there is not a lot time dedicated to Lionel. The police have finally caught up to the bodies Fusco found in the cellar, but the Samaritan agent responsible for the kills is an FBI agent, who suspects Fusco knows more about what is going on than he is letting on. This puts Fusco's life on the line, but after years of dealing with the stuff John and Harold bring to him, he is prepared. The episode ends with Fusco wondering what he should do with the agent. Is bringing him in going to put his family in danger, or should he just kill him to make sure he can never bother Fusco again.
Only one episode left. I don't think I'm ready.
No comments:
Post a Comment