Saturday, March 2, 2013

Person of Interest 2.16: "Relevance"

“One of the things they left out of my file. I kind of enjoy this sort of thing.”
- Shaw

This week’s episode is a break from our usual formula. We follow the Machine as it identifies a relevant bit of information and leads to a guy getting shot in 2011. We jump to the present in Germany and meet Sam Shaw. At first she seems like just a regular American on foreign soil until she caps a couple of Germans trying to warn her target. She and her tech guy find the man they’re looking for and use some nerve gas to take out him and his two buddies when they see through the scope camera that they’re building a dirty bomb. Shaw goes in just to make sure they’re all dead and to take the part of the bomb that makes it dirty. Unfortunately, one of the guys cracked a window and a scuffle ensues. Shaw manages to take him out with the help of her tech guy and after digging out her bullets (they’re not supposed to be there) she blows the apartment. She heads off down the street telling her guy she’ll see him when she sees him and he replies he’s going to see her tomorrow in New York because Control gave them another number. It would seem we finally figured out what the government has been doing with the Machine all these years.

Shaw gets to New York and meets with her handler, Wilson. He gives her the new number and they part ways. The next morning, she’s got eyes on their next target. She also sees Reese watching her. So I’m guessing she’s their number for the week. Shaw overhears a conversation that leads her to believe they need to check the guy’s computer that night. So she and her buddy break into the guy’s apartment. Unfortunately, during the prep for breaking in, her buddy says he went to Wilson because he did some digging and found out one of the guys Shaw killed was getting money from the US government for the covert work he was doing. Obviously, things aren’t going to turn out well for either he or Shaw. Wilson’s burned them and Shaw manages to escape alive. Reese does show up and try to get her to let him help her but she’s in overdrive and shoots him. We hear over the walkie talkies that there’s a guy taking out the attack teams. So I guess Reese wasn’t too shot up with bullet holes to do his job. After a brief shootout with Wilson, Shaw gets away and he calls our annoying government guy in DC to report in.

Shaw steals a car and ends up holing up some thug’s apartment. Wilson is busy trying to cover his ass with the guy in DC. They think she’s going to seek revenge for killing her partner and she may go after the files that started the whole mess in the first place. Root obviously overhears everything because she’s scary tech lady and once Shaw recovers a little from the sock and trauma of removing a bullet from her gut, she makes contact with her partner’s source in the CIA that gave him the info in the first place. Shaw sets a meet time and place and calls Wilson to do the same. She says she’ll turn herself in to his boss only and she wants to meet Control (little does she know it’s a giant mess of computer servers somewhere in the desert). Shaw arrives at her first meet and Root answers the door, pretending to be Veronica, the CIA contact.

Root starts off by running a good line. She obviously had some information on the real Veronica. She says that Shaw’s partner used to talk about her and that she did some digging into a project called Northern Lights. Apparently the guy Shaw killed (the one that the internal investigation got start for) was building a facility for something. But they don’t know what. Root tells Shaw that Shaw’s partner said the guy told her the name of one of the other people involved. That’s where things start to get a little iffy. She wants to know the name of the contact but Shaw’s distracted by a knocking sound. Turns out Root has the real Veronica tied up in the bathtub. She electrocutes Shaw and zip-ties her to a chair. She’s about to start torturing the name out of Shaw with an iron when her phone alerts her to the fact Wilson’s men have arrived. They’re about to take Shaw out with some kind of serum in a syringe when she gets one hand free and shoots two of the three guys. Reese takes care of the last guy and after he cuts her free, he takes her for a little chat with Finch. This should be good. I have to say that even though most of this episode was from Shaw’s point of view, it really gave us more insight into what the Machine is used for. I like that.

Without spilling all of his secrets, Finch explains that he and Shaw technically work for the same entity. He tries to get her to at least let them keep her safe but she’s not interested. She doesn’t want his number either. She heads off to her meeting with Wilson’s boss. It turns out to be a swanky black tie event. At first it seems like she’s there just to kill him. They go to a more secluded place and she hands over the files that her partner dug up. So in a way she’s trying to protect the program she used to work. Of course then she shoots one of his body guards. She’s allowed to leave and she ditches the gun and purse in a trash can on the sidewalk before heading off into New York’s bustling evening. As she’ waiting at a crosswalk, Mr. DC’s main thug drugs her and she collapses. It seems like Shaw’s story is over. We see her getting zipped into a body bag by EMTs and then Lionel and Carter show up. They’ll take the body from here. They tell the EMT to drive the ambulance not to the morgue but to a cemetery. The next thing we see is Shaw being licked conscious by Bear. I love Bear. He’s so much fun and just adds a whole different dynamic to the show. And Root wasn’t our only familiar face this week. Leon is back playing EMT. Shaw apparently came around during the ride and tried to kill him so he’s not happy about that. He takes off as she gets out of the ambulance. She doesn’t want to trust Reese and Finch still and she takes their phones. But at least this time she also takes Finch’s number. She drives off with the ambulance, leaving our heroes to find a way home on their own.

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