Yesterday’s episode continued the Dominic storyline which we hadn’t seen much of in a while. It seemed to be a set up of what’s to come in regards to Dominic and even Elias. While this episode did focus primarily on Dominic there were a few times when Samaritan was discussed, and it’s storyline continued as well.
The ‘Person of Interest’ this week was Harper Rose, a college student who’s number didn’t come up like normal but rather the Machine gave her college ID instead. John is following her and she’s not acting like a normal college student. She switched backpacks and John finds that suspicious. The reason for her switching backpacks was never really discussed in the episode but I imagine it was how Harper managed to obtain new identities so easily, by stealing from other people. Also she likes to steal so perhaps she just likes to take backpacks?
Either way this was suspicious to John so he continues to follow her, to her dorm room which happens to be on the all girls floor. Of course this leads to some awkward encounters with other female students. In my college days our all female dorm didn’t restrict male visitors (except overnight) so I’m not sure why a guy being in the dorm would be such a huge deal, he could have been someone’s parent for all the girls knew.
John continues on his tracking of Harper and follows her to her boyfriend’s dorm room. Her boyfriend, Trey, is a gamer and a pothead and they apparently work together. She’s covering his shift today because he wants to play his games rather than work.
So it’s off to work for John and Harper. John discovers that Harper works at a marijuana dispensary and Harold comes up with a Medical ID Card that will allow John to at least enter the shop. What’s interesting about this scene is that Harold is talking about Dr. Tillman (first season POI) when he says he’s going to contact a doctor to get the ID signed off on. Honestly this show referenced a lot of things from past seasons, which I loved!
John heads into the dispensary and observes for a while and overhears that the dispensary is closing so that it can move the cash it has on site. We’ll ignore that these conversations were held out in public and that you could so easily see a store clerk loading money into a bag, because this was central to the plot.
The transfer begins and it’s found out that the security involved is part of the Brotherhood. Apparently Dominic created a legit security firm to do security for his many businesses and also provide security to others who need their money kept safe. During the transfer, though, everything goes wrong. The drug cartel shows up and attempts to steal the money. Of course since John is there he easily stops everyone with a few gunshots to the knees. But the storeowner and John soon find out that the money is gone! It was never in the bag!
John immediately knows what happened and tracks down Harper who apparently took her time strolling away from the store. She argues with him about whether she’s going to return the money but gives up finally and tosses the bag behind John. John apparently lost all of his military training and forgets that you never turn your back on someone, and turns his back on Harper who promptly whips out a telescopic baton and hits John with it which knocks him to his knees. She picks up the bag and runs off.
While all this was going down, Bear made a small but funny appearance. A well-trained military dog apparently got his paws on one of Harold’s very expensive shoes (because Harold apparently keeps a few pairs just laying around the station). I get that Bear is a dog, but he’s not a normal dog at all. I don’t know that a dog as well trained, as Bear would actually eat random things. But it was fun and some comedic relief for the night. Plus it was nice to see Bear back. People had been questioning where the dog had gone all this time.
Root comes back and she’s still on her side missions helping the Machine do what it needs to do and back at Harold for helping Irrelevant numbers. For her there is a much larger issue going on and she doesn’t understand why Harold wastes time helping people who are technically irrelevant to the overall big picture.
She does mention that they need to expand their base and get more help if they want to win this war with Samaritan and Harold asks her what her plans are. She’s developing an app, which will help her find people sympathetic to their cause. This is interesting because frankly Samaritan has already done this. Obviously the Machine and Root aren’t above resorting to Samaritan’s own tactics in order to gain some ground. She’s vague on the details of course so Harold decides to follow her – as if she wouldn’t know. I’m pretty confident the Machine alerted her right away. She gives him the slip and he gains no real knowledge of what she’s doing or where she went.
Meanwhile we’ve found out that Harper is not in fact Harper. She’s a professional at what she does, stealing identities, and stealing in general. She has several people’s ID’s and her dorm room is cleared out of all personal belongings. One thing is clear, though, she apparently really likes to hang out at one nightclub so she’s easy to track down.
Dominic is not happy about the money being stolen. He’s not happy that Riley was there to “help” either. The owner of the dispensary knows nothing about Harper but he does know that Harper has a boyfriend, Trey, who they promptly kidnap and begin torturing for information.
Since Harper is so fond of this nightclub she goes to, not only is John able to easily track her down but so is Dominic. We find out though that Harper owed money to the cartel that is where the money she stole went to. Dominic’s guys show up to take her and John does some of his butt kicking and Harper tries to leave but Fusco is there with his Taser ready to take her in.
John and Fusco take her to a diner, handcuffed to Fusco, and discuss what it is she’s done. She proves herself a know it all, easily identifying that John isn’t a police officer. Frankly I know this is TV, but I refuse to believe that criminals are this smart. Everyone they meet is insanely smart and can easily spot John for not being a police officer. How he’s kept his cover in all of this is beyond me? But she’s full of herself and figures why does it matter if she steals from criminals? They deserve it. Then she finds out that Dominic has kidnapped Trey and she realizes that her activities are not as victimless as she thought.
John devises a plan where they clear out most of the money in their accounts to cover the money Harper stole in an effort to get Dominic to back off. First John heads to the warehouse where the pot is grown and shows the two minions just how serious he is about needing to talk to Dominic. Then he meets up with Dominic at a diner. According to Winston Duke on Twitter, this scene was inspired by the movie Heat between Dinero and Pacino. I’ve never seen the movie so I’m not sure exactly how much this scene mirrored that one but I’m going to imagine there was some sort of ultimatum laid down in the movie in that scene, the same as was done here.
Frankly there have been a ton of opportunities to kill Dominic and I know that Team Machine isn’t like that, but this guy frankly deserves it and I’m depressed every time they lose out on a chance to kill this guy.
Dominic isn’t so much into John’s ultimatum so they have to come up with another plan. Harper believes she can create a distraction while John saves Trey and also make it so that she’s safe. She goes to the cartel and says she can get them their money and more if they work with her, which of course they can’t resist.
They head to the trade with Dominic and the police show up. The cartel guys are all carrying weapons that aren’t registered while all of Dominic’s guys are legally registered under his security company. We find out Harper tipped them off that the police would be coming.
While that’s all going down John comes in to save Trey, who finds all the “spy” like things that are happening to be cool. He’s safe and so is Harper because she’s taken out the cartel and opened up the door for Dominic to monopolize things. We also find out that Dominic wants her to work for him. It’s up in the air if she will though.
Jumping back in the episode we find out that Dominic launders his money through video games. Gamer’s buy large quantities of gold within the video games and they’re able to clean the money up that way. If you remember this is how Leon got himself into trouble with the Russians the second time around, because he was stealing the laundered money.
In the end though Harper goes on her way, without first stealing Harold’s watch. It’s okay though because he stole a ring she was wearing which was obviously very important to her, even if she said it wasn’t.
Meanwhile Harold follows Root again, this time I think she allowed him to follow her, to a building where she is meeting with the founder of the company about her app she’s building. I’m not sure if Harold recognized the building or understood it’s significance, there was nothing implied that he did. But he may figure it out later on.
Root meets with the founder which is revealed to be Caleb Phipps who was a POI in season 2. If you remember the episode, 2PiR, it was about Caleb who’s brother had been killed by a train and his mother was a drunk. He was in Harold’s math class (which oddly enough many have been thinking so was Dominic but Dominic is far too old to have been in that class). Harold had given one of the best quotes of the series ever I believe in this episode (no not his description of Pi although that was good too).
“But… sometimes your mistakes can surprise you. My biggest mistake, for instance… brought me here.”
Caleb was going to kill himself over the guilt of his brother’s death and just everything that was going on. Harold convinced him to not do it and it’s nice to see that he managed to be very productive in the past two years.
It should be interesting to see where they go with that, if Caleb will ever find out that Root is working with Harold? I really hope that he does.
But once again I enjoy seeing this show use people from the past to help the cause and often I wonder if the Machine had an idea of what was to come and was setting up the team to have help for the fight.
Another great episode has come to a close and we won’t have a new episode until March 10th. You can watch the reruns they will be playing if you like, March 3rd they will be rerunning Panopticon. March 17th they’ll be rerunning Nautilus (which means there will be a break after the March 10th episode). These episodes will begin to be spread out. The finale is in May and there are only really 7 to 8 more episodes (depending on how many episodes were ordered this season). But there is significance in each rerun. What is the importance of Panopticon to the March 10th episode of Karma? What is Nautilus’s significance to episode named Skip? For now all we can do is wait and see.
