Summary: Donnelly returns and has found a way to track down the man in the suit. He enlists Carter to the FBI to help him out. The next POI is a girl named Abby who is about to do a robbery. However, Finch believes she is innocent so Reese goes to help her. Reese and Finch end up doing a bank robbery alongside them. Reese is in the action and Finch is outside. They get attacked by some men working for Chapple, the guy whose safe was being robbed. Donnelly is able to track down Reese and arrests him and three other guys in suits who were present at the robbery, unsure of which one is the man in the suit he is tracking.
The Good: The Donnelly story is pretty strong. I enjoyed seeing Carter's interactions with him as she is forced to go along with his investigation despite working for Reese. Additionally, Donnelly's presence gives the episode more momentum, which was needed for a midseason finale like this. Donnelly's role in this episode reminded me of Snow back in "Number Crunch" last season. This episode was also structured very similarly to the last one where it's an ordinary episode for a while before having an exciting conclusion. The ending was pretty tense since Reese felt exposed for once due to him being right in Donnelly's grasp. The cliffhanger ending with four people getting arrested is very intriguing and it sets up a fresh story where Reese will seemingly be jailed while Finch will be forced to get him out. I thought the main storyline started pretty well. The sequence where Finch had to fake being a criminal was pretty fun and I got some good laughs out of it. The ensuing double confrontation with Abby/Reese and Shane/Finch was fairly entertaining and did a solid job of getting us acquainted with Abby and Shane to prepare for the episode's final act. The Beecher twist with him being a part of HR is a pretty strong twist. It makes HR seem more important by having one of them closely acquainted to Carter and it allows them to be taken more seriously as a threat. The Bad: Finch was out of character in this episode. I found his insistence that Abby was innocent to be awkward and pretty stupid. The explanation he gives about the Machine not giving her number for a serious situation to be unsatisfying since it hadn't been brought up in over 30 episodes. Furthermore, Finch looks dumb for assuming Abby to be innocent based on trivial information, especially after so many cases in previous episodes have seen an apparently innocent person becoming the perpetrator. Finch looks even worse because Root was like this too and him not considering that Abby could be "bad code" shows that he learned nothing from his time with Root, contrary to what the show had been establishing with Finch's character development in recent episodes. Once again, the POI story becomes pretty tame after the mystery is dispersed. Without Donnelly, the final act of the episode would have fallen extremely flat. I was finding it tough to care about the gunfight that was happening and I had no reason to believe that Reese was in any danger from these mercenaries. The only threat was Donnelly, and that made every other factor in the climax of the episode, including Abby and Shane, tough to care about. The nature of the Abby storyline didn't help either. The story was needlessly complex and I found it hard to understand exactly what was happening and for what reason. This story really needed an edit to make it more understandable for the general public (like me). The HR plot hasn't been very interesting so far. Quinn as a bad guy is really lacking since we know next to nothing about him. Every other recurring character is more interesting because we have more of an idea of who they are. We desperately need an episode focused around Quinn so I can start to care about the HR storyline a little more. This episode didn't really work as a midseason finale. A short action sequence at the end of an episode worked for the midseason finale in season 1 since we hadn't seen anything like those final few minutes before. But after the raw intensity of "Firewall", we know that the show can do much more than what was shown here. It ended up making this episode feel disappointing and almost dull. Hopefully the midseason premiere delivers more than this did. The Unknown: What is Simmons up to? Is he eavesdropping because he is planning to turn on HR? Or does he want to take control and become the new head of HR? What will become of Reese now? Will Donnelly be able to identify that he is the man in the suit? How is Finch going to get him out? Will he use Carter? Perhaps Elias? Will somebody else be framed to prove Reese as innocent? Or will they simply do a jailbreak? What happened with Snow and Stanton? I thought we would be seeing them in this midseason finale but strangely we didn't. Perhaps we will see them again in the season finale. And Root too. Best Moment: The ending scene. The show has to move in a different direction now which can only be a good thing. Character of the Episode: Donnelly. His contributions saved this episode. Conclusion: This episode copied the format from "Number Crunch" to deliver an exciting midseason finale but it didn't accomplish what that episode did. Without Donnelly's storyline, this would have been a total dud. Score: 54
2 Comments
Ben
2/21/2019 03:29:38 am
I think this is quite a good episode. While definitely not as good as Number Crunch last season and there is some murkiness like over why Finch is so sure of Abbie's innocence, I thought it was more exciting than some other episodes and certainly enjoyed it a lot more than Til Death. I think it felt quite fitting for Reese to go rogue at the end of the episode due to his sympathy for veterans and that his thanks to Harold gave some emotion to it. I also liked his discussion with Carter about boundaries, and I think there's a lot of stories this episode that set up exciting possibilities, like Carter potentially joining the FBI and HR potentially joining with the Russians. More than anything though, I think the ending is really effective. Person of Interest's choice of song is something that is always on point, and I think it helps that the background of the show's runner, Johnathan Nolan is primarily more in movies than it is in television; other than the show generally feeling like a parody of The Dark Knight at times, it also manages to create a very cinematic feel when necessary with the use of its music in mirroring transitions within the characters. In this instance, Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones is generally associated with something bad happening to the main character due to Scorsese's influence so it sets the tone for what's happening early on (plus the song is about the end of the world), and it's also very catchy. The mix of bewilderment and frustration on Donnelly's face at the end is also just gold.
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Aaron
2/21/2019 09:09:32 am
It's always great to hear your thoughts on Person of Interest. One thing I would like to clarify is that I generally rate midseason finales and season finales a little differently from the usual episodes. I feel that as a finale episode, there needs to be more drama, and sometimes closure, present in the episode than there is in the episodes leading up to it. I felt that this episode didn't quite accomplish that outside of the final few minutes. I like your analysis of the show's use of music. The fact that songs are used so sparingly in the show makes these moments feel special and more cinematic, as you said. Great connection with the usage of "Gimme Shelter". It's been a while, but I remember hearing it in "Goodfellas".
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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