Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Person of Interest 3.14: "Provenance"

“I think we only have one option here, Ms. Shaw. We need to get the Bible ourselves.”
- Finch

Mr. Reese is back in New York and on Team Machine just in time to get a new number. Kelly Lin is an event planner who grew up all over the world and she hosting an event at a swanky museum. Shaw’s been put on the platinum list and since Finch is a donor (no surprise there) he’s taking Reese as his plus one. Awkward. There’s an amusing scene where Reese is trying to tie a bowtie and Shaw comes in with a hot little dress on and the guys just stare at her before they head out. In addition to any potential harm to Kelly, the gang has to contend with a group of protestors who think the items on display for the gala should be housed with the cultures they came from. They split up and Shaw approaches Kelly (after Shaw saves some rich guy from choking on a shrimp puff. Before Finch can do more than ogle a one thousand year old codex, the lights go out and someone sets off dry ice bombs and makes off with a priceless painting. Shaw runs after the thief and it turns out to be Kelly but she gets away. Interesting.

Shaw worms her way back into the venue and snags Kelly’s purse and computer and overhears an Interpol agent warning the cops about Kelly (though he doesn’t know her name). The gang heads out to follow Kelly once they figure out where she’s been. They overhear her conversation with a man named Cyril. He calls her by a different name and we learn that she was actually an Olympic medal gymnast for China as a young girl and then mysteriously cut from the roster. Cyril tells her she’s got one last big job and then heads home. Reese swings by with Bear in toe and suggests that they get a look inside the place. Shaw runs into her after sneaking into her apartment and discovering the job is stealing the Gutenberg Bible. And it seems our team’s perception of Kelly is all wrong. The people she’s working for are using her daughter as leverage to get her to steal stuff. Bastards.

Finch and Shaw spend a little time with Kelly, trying to get her to open up about why she’s doing what she’s doing. They also tell Kelly that whoever she’s working with sends in people to pay off the decoys and vagrants and kill them after Kelly leaves. As Finch notes, she doesn’t seem to commit crime of her own volition but she’s not uncomfortable with it either. She apparently escaped to Europe to have her baby and stole from a pawn shop run by a Czech crime syndicate who is making her work off her debt and keeping her daughter hostage. The Bible is the last job and now she’s screwed because it is housed in the world’s most secure place. The security firm is like ten kinds of intense crazy. So our team is going to have to get creative if they’re going to pull off a heist and get Kelly’s daughter back safely. Lionel comes in with some security plans and then calls the Interpol agent (or at least we assume he’s Interpol) to give him a heads up on where Kelly is. While she feigns surprise and denies that he can prove anything leads back to her, Lionel also pulls over the head of security for the firm where the Bible is being kept. And Finch gets to play with a 3-D printer, creating a model of the guard’s hand. This part of the episode really reminded me of Ocean’s Eleven. I suppose this is more Finch’s Five, though. During her encounter with the Interpol agent he nabs a flash drive that shows she is going after the Bible so he calls the officer Lionel pulled over and the security team is going to move it to a central location within the facility. So at least our team now knows exactly where it is going to be.

And so let the heist begin. Reese schmoozes with a top level guy at the security company that gets him into the facility after hours. He knocks out the guy in the elevator and then allows himself to get caught by the security guards after setting off the alarms. They escort him down to Lionel who takes him off to JFK’s private jet terminal while Shaw and Kelly actually commit the theft. Finch increases the temperature in the room where the Bible is to fool the motion sensors. And he’s looped the camera feed for three minutes. So now it’s up to Kelly to use her gymnast background to get in. She gets the bible and she and Shaw share a smile when the Interpol guy shows up and another guard notes that the head security guy’s prints were used to open a room. They all rush there to find the bible gone and no one else in the room. Now I want to know how they managed to get out.

We don’t actually find out how they escaped but that’s okay I guess. Kelly hands off the Bible to Cyril and tells him she’s out. But he threatens to indenture her daughter and claims that she and the girl are property. What a vile man. Well, he gets what he deserves when Reese busts in and take the girl to safety. I guess he had a god reason for heading to the airport. And Shaw and Finch get the Interpol agent to listen to the conversation so he realizes he was at least partially incorrect in his assumptions about Kelly. Cyril tries to shoot Kelly but Shaw steps in. Things are looking up when the Interpol agent lets Kelly go since she’s a US citizen and he can’t extradite her anywhere. She gets reunited with her daughter and then we find our team of four sharing drinks by the fire. Lionel is suggesting other things they could steal and it’s pretty comical. I think he had a little too much fun. But he’s got a point. Even with Carter gone, they still make a good team. And in a less mopey gesture, Reese pours Carter a drink and they drink in her honor. I thought it was a nice way to end the episode. And I enjoyed that they were using the show’s them and playing it just on a piano. It was a good soundtrack to this scene. Well done soundtrack people!

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