This episode went back to the roots of what ‘Person of Interest’ was way back when, before Samaritan became such an issue. It was another good break from the Samaritan and Brotherhood storylines, which I imagine will be picking up full force as the season comes to an end.
The episode started out with a flashback. Something we haven’t seen for a long time and it was nice to have a glimpse into Harold’s background. The flashback was in 2010 just after the bombing, which had killed Nathan. Harold is obviously very angry over what had happened and blamed their government agent who was working with them for all that happened. He calls Alicia and tells her he knows what happened and that she would pay for it. Then we see that Harold is building a bomb of his own, probably to use to kill Alicia. These are characteristics so outside what we know of Harold but I wonder if some of these flashbacks serve as duel purposed. While this flashback was important for this episode perhaps it will prove to be important for the closing episodes of the season as well?
When the timeline jumps back to 2015, we see Harold speaking with a doctor about losing his friend more recently. Of course he makes it seem like it was more recent although the doctor seems to see right through it. Harold is good at lying but sometimes being good at lying can’t mask that you’re not being completely honest.
We find out that the POI is the doctor Harold is seeing, Shane Edwards. Shane lost his wife, 8 years prior, when a delivery man, Morris, killed her.
While Harold is talking with the doctor, Fusco and Reese are listening outside in the car. Here we get some funny banter between Fusco and Reese, mainly with Fusco asking Harold if he could get appointment for all the “crazy” people in the group to which John reminds Fusco that he’s one of those crazy people now too.
John then leaves to go to his own therapy appointment with Iris. He’s not very open with her and still unwilling to talk about how he handles death. It’s a short scene and frankly I don’t trust Iris at all. I think this whole thing is going to backfire on John. If it doesn’t, though, I’ll gladly say that I was wrong. But he’s becoming close to this therapist and trusting her and frankly I think the writers will pull the rug out from under him and send him into a tailspin when they do reveal her real purpose.
After therapy, John follows that doctor around town while Harold does some B&E (breaking and entering). He comments about how good he’s getting at it although he’s confused as to why he needed to bring some Carnitas with him. John says it’s to deal with the security system which we come to find out is the doctor’s dog. I’ve always enjoyed the light humor of this show which has been hard to incorporate into some of the more serious episodes of this season. I’m glad that they were able to include some in this episode.
As Harold is breaking and entering, John is following Dr. Edwards around town. Shane goes to the gym and plants a gun in someone’s locker. Then he heads to a bank where he plants something else in the trash. After that, he sets a timer on the electrical at the bank. After all that is done, he calls someone who we find out is the promotional planner guy who was drunk driving and caused an accident which resulted in one of the doctor’s patients becoming paralyzed. The planner guy served very little time for his crime which the patient was having trouble dealing with.
That man arrives at the bank and Shane calls in and tells one of the workers there that a man is coming to rob the bank and to cooperate with him fully so that he won’t be hurt. As the planner arrives at the bank and talks to the bank employee, Shane sets off all of the items he had placed and manages to get this planner arrested for armed robbery.
It is now that Reese and Harold realize that Shane is a vigilante who is framing people that deserved to serve more time but aren’t. Harold finds evidence in his apartment that he’s done this seven other times.
John and Harold discover there is a gala hosted by Shane and they have to determine how to get in because they don’t have enough money in the reserve fund to make any large donation which would earn them a ticket. John says not to worry.
We find out that Iris, being a therapist herself, is routinely invited to this gala and has trouble finding people from the NYPD to go with her. Luckily she has the ability to get extra tickets and brings John and Fusco to the event.
It was nice seeing the guys all dressed up and also hilarious to hear Fusco complaining about the suit he had to wear.
Of course we know that nothing is ever normal with John is around and find out that Morris, who had just been released on parole, has shown up at the Gala. There is a minor scuffle and then Morris is escorted from the event. As they’re leaving, John realizes that there is a bomb in the doctor’s car and stops him from getting blown up.
I believe Iris already understands that John has some special knowledge into things, because he is superhero- like in the way he can prevent things from happening, but I wonder if she’s ever going to really confront him on that. I think this is twice now that she’s witnessed him being in the right place at the right time, and she’s proven that she’s not stupid, so she has to know something isn’t normal about John and his ability to help people.
At this point we flashback again to Harold and his plot to kill Alicia. I found this flashback interesting because I believe this is the first time we’ve seen the Machine use a payphone as a method of contact. I’m not sure why it decides to stick with this method of contact with Harold but it seems that the Machine knows that you can’t as easily ignore a payphone as you could your cell phone. During this flashback though it seems to focus on the Machine trying it’s best to prevent Harold from going through with what he’s planned. We leave the flashback with Harold ignoring the Machine and continuing with planting the bomb on Alicia’s car.
Back in the present we learn that Morris was a construction worker who specialized in explosives before he became a delivery person. We also learn that he’s using an old email to obtain a gun illegally. The team surmises that Morris is planning to kill Shane.
While John is off waiting for Morris to pick up the gun Harold uncovers that Shane has been lying about the day of the murder of his wife. He’s memorized his statement, word for word and it never varies. What was interesting about this is they never implied that Shane murdered his wife although I think it was easy to go there, so maybe they didn’t need to imply it at all.
After this revelation of the lying, we find that Shane is the one who shows up to pick up the gun and realize that perhaps he is the one who’s going to kill someone, or at least frame Morris so that he will go back in jail.
This leads into a scene with Harold is once again against two people who’d rather just let this play out because Morris in their opinion deserves to be in jail. Harold is adamant that they don’t work that way in general plus there is no concrete proof that Morris did in fact kill Shane’s wife.
I have to say I was disappointed with this scene. I expect it out of Fusco, but John, I don’t. John wavers back and forth between helping people because it’s the right thing to do, whether they’re bad people or not (like not killing Dominic when you have had many chances to do so), and just letting bad people have bad things happen to them. Why is it that Morris wasn’t deemed as worthy of protection and “life” as say, Dominic has been in John’s eyes? If he’s so willing to allow “Karma” to come to bad people, why do they stop it in other instances?
Once it’s finally agreed that they can’t allow Morris to be set up or killed, they find out that Morris is being lead to the Botanical Gardens where they suspect Shane will be there waiting for him. Since John is not close enough to make it in time Harold decides to go.
This is where all the flashback tie in, especially the last one where Harold realizes that Alicia may be a victim in all of this as much as he and Nathan were. That his rush to judgment was wrong and he almost took revenge on someone who had no control over what happened. So we can now see partly why Harold fights so hard to get his team to consider all life important, because in the end, you may be completely wrong about that person.
At the Gardens, Harold finds that Shane is going to kill himself and frame Morris for it. As much as the doctor has been helping others it seems he’s not helped himself in regards to his wife’s death. I think this shows though that Shane obviously didn’t kill his wife, someone else did, but we aren’t sure who. Morris has maintained his innocence since day one so it can be anyone for all they know. Harold manages to talk Shane out of what he’s about to do and they all live happily ever after.
It seems this incident kicks Shane back into living life and he might actually take up that young woman in the office that keeps asking him out.
Now John is back with Iris for a session and she really pushes him to open up about things and he goes on to talk a bit about Jessica but then stops. This is when I get kind of mad. I was hoping for some sort of confession of some sort. She asked him how he dealt with the loss of Jessica and I was hoping he would say something to the effect of, “I killed the bastard that killed her.” Now are we sure he did that? No. Common belief is that he didn’t, and that would be nice. But I don’t know. Part of me wants it to be true, that John killed Peter. I mean it certainly would play into this whole show well, if he had confessed he killed Peter, showing that revenge isn’t always as helpful as you might think it would be. But of course, did anything come of the conversation with Iris? Nope.
Overall though I enjoyed this episode because it was the first episode in a long time that just didn’t have a tie in to another storyline within the season. It was a stand-alone episode, not too serious with some humor. Almost a little break from all that action that we’ve been experiencing. Plus Jim Caviezel looked damn good in it most of the time.
