Sunday, February 10, 2013

Person of Interest 2.13: "Dead Reckoning"

“This is my past catching up with me. It doesn’t concern you.”
- Reese

We pick up right where last episode ended. Kara shows up and shoots Donnelly in the head and drags Reese off. A short while later Carter finally comes to and fishes the handcuff key from Donnelly’s pocket. She’s hesitant to leave the scene of a crime but Finch makes the point that things will get far more complicated if she says. With Kara in play now (and it seems she is the new number for the week), no one is safe. We next find Reese waking up on a city bus next to Agent Snow and Kara. She’s strapped cellphone bombs to both of them and threatens to hit speed dial if either of them act up. She’s got a few errands for the boys to run to achieve whatever her big bad plan is.

Carter’s gotten home and is changing clothes when Lionel calls her from the crime scene. She feigns ignorance about what happened but says she’s on the way. She manages to lie to the FBI too but she’s still pretty shaken up. Lionel picks up on it and they end up meeting with Finch by the river to share intelligence. They need to figure out what Kara is after and what she’s planning so they can save Reese. Speaking of Reese, he and Snow are picking something up for Kara. It turns out to be the hard drive Snow stole from the tech company the last time he saw Carter. The thugs want $50,000 more and Kara tells Reese to kill them instead. Reese refuses and his bomb vest starts to power up. But it was only a warning. Kara takes the guys out with a sniper rifle from a nearby rooftop. She’s not going to tolerate Reese being obstinate going forward.

We jump back to 2011 and start off with a familiar flashback. Agent Snow is giving Reese the order to take out Kara after their mission in China. We see him give the same order to Kara and then we see her get blown up. Except this time, we get more. She winds up in a hospital with a Brit telling her that they’re going to be working together. He knows everything about her. In the present, Kara, Snow and Reese are at a diner. Reese is still being stubborn and refusing to eat. It’s short-lived since Kara sends him and Snow to follow two suits. They turn out to be ATF and they’re about to be posers. Meanwhile, Carter has tracked down the hard drive and learned it is military grade. Finch has also received a mystery text from an unknown number. He and Carter decipher the text’s meaning and Carter is going to track the number since they believe it is Reese who sent it.

Reese and Snow get to the building where the real ATF agents have been called and realize there is a bomb threat. Working together, they get to the elevators and up to the 21st floor. Turns out it is a level 5 DOD facility. Carter and Lionel aren’t too far behind them. After the guys take out the guards (non-lethal since Reese is being a stickler about civilians not getting hurt), Kara gives them an incentive to get moving. She arms the bomb vests to go off in fifteen minutes. We find Kara back in the hospital and her British visitor offers her the chance to know who was behind the laptop in the first place, as long as she agrees to work with his organization. While not actually jumping at the chance, Kara is eager to know the answer.

Once Reese and Snow are inside the 21st floor, Kara orders them to erase the last two hours of security footage and then locate someone with high level clearance to get them into the server room. Kara warns there may be some signal interference once they are inside the room. Reese of course tries to talk Snow out of completing the mission since Kara can’t hear them or blow them up but Snow isn’t having it. He still thinks she’ll find a way to kill them. Plus he’s not been able to find a way to disarm the vest yet. Carter and Lionel make it to the building and end up hiking up 21 flights of stairs to try and get to Reese. Carter also has a little freak out that Finch is hacking the DoD. Come on, he does that sort of thing all the time. Just as Finch realizes that Kara is trying to steal a super virus, Reese is trying to figure out a way to kill all the servers. The tech he and Snow strong armed into letting them into the room says that the drives would all shut down if there was an emergency. So of course, Reese starts to wipe the drives. Snow tries to stop him and they literally start throwing punches. It’s pretty clear Reese is in better shape than Snow because he handily beats the crap out of him. Kara shows up and smugly announces that she knew Reese wouldn’t follow orders and she wasn’t concerned with taking anything from the drives. She wanted to upload something to where the DoD monitors for cyber-attacks. She plugs in the drive, primes both bomb vests for 5 minutes and locks them in the room by blowing out the handprint scanner outside the door.

Reese and Snow manage to blow the lock and get out but Snow double crosses Reese and leaves him there. Snow thinks he can get to a CIA safe house with enough time to get the bomb off. Reese doesn’t think the Agency will take him back (and he’s right). Just as Snow leaves in the elevator, Carter and Lionel show up. Reese tells them to get clear of the floor but Carter wants to try and deactivate the vest. There’s a sort of weirdly touching moment between her and Reese where he tells her that he has no choice and she understands that because if she was in his place, she’d do the same thing. Lionel finally convinces her to let Reese do what he needs to do. Reese makes it to the roof where Finch is waiting despite Reese’s prior order to stay clear of the building. After a little bickering, Finch manages to hack the phone’s lock code and stop the bomb from going off. Unfortunately for Kara, just as she learns the name of the person who sold the laptop, Snow climbs into her car and his bomb goes off. The Machine plays the footage back and we catch a glimpse of the name written on a scrap of paper that reads ‘Finch’. That was pretty obvious. I have to say I’m kind of glad the FBI thinks the Man in the Suit case is closed (they attributed everything to Snow). It means Reese can be free of them to do his work. Speaking of Reese, he gets back to the library and Bear pretty much tackles him like in the IAMS commercial. That pooch was very depressed without his daddy.

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