Summary: Flashbacks show Reese and Stanton being sent by Beale to kill Brent Tomlinson, a traitor to the country. Reese does so in cold manner. In the present, Brent's brother Alex is looking to find what happened to him and comes up as a POI. He is targeted by Beale and arrested but Reese springs him loose. Reese helps Alex get to his answer and eventually realizes that Brent was his brother. BEale captures both of them and Alex gets closure when Reese lies to him, saying that Brent died a hero. Beale goes with the lie. Reese breaks Alex out and gets Beale to stop chasing him. Afterwards, Reese breaks up with Iris, certain that he needs to focus on the war against Samaritan.
The Good: The return to Reese's past was a pleasant surprise and it made for a pretty interesting central story. Even if it wasn't one of the show's best, I was interested by the story that was being told and we got some really good stuff about Reese in this episode. I enjoyed the flashback story a lot. It was wonderful to see Stanton again (presumably for a final time), and I thought that the flashbacks had a sort of retro feel to them as the story felt very similar to the kind of storylines we were frequently getting from Reese and Stanton back in seasons 1-3. It was very fun, and I appreciated seeing the colder side of Reese once again. The flashbacks tied nicely into the main POI case too. I love the idea of Reese being forced to come face to face with one of the people he hurt from his old life, and I think the way that he handled Alex's desires demonstrated how Reese has matured over the course of the show. It's nice to see Reese considering things empathetically now, just like Finch would, as he lies straight to Alex to give him the closure he needed instead of giving him the truth, which in this case would only have made things worse. I also get the sense that Reese's kindness to Alex is one of the reasons that Beale let him go unscathed. It reminds me of the moment in "Dead Reckoning" when I thought that Snow allowed Reese to survive because he realized that Reese had become a good man. Unfortunately, while Reese's morals changed his personality and insecurities did not. With the upcoming war against Samaritan coming up, Reese has to become a soldier once again and he ends up making the same decision he did with Jessica all those years ago. Reese breaks it off with Iris at the end of the episode in a nice scene, neatly following up on the development we saw in "Terra Incognita". Reese is still the same man and he is once again prioritizing his duty of saving the world over his own personal life. The Bad: For once, I was left a little underwhelmed by the side story with Root and Finch. It served as an easy way to upgrade The Machine's capabilities and there were fun moments, but the story felt unusually bland without anything of interest to it. The show has done more interesting things with these two characters on countless occasions, so this felt like a disappointment. The return to the POI format after the exciting start to the season was a little jarring as expected. The main story was very bland for roughly 75% of its runtime, and it's only when the flashbacks and present story become connected that something of interest happens. Even then, the plot was only saved by the interesting stuff surrounding Reese. And as good as Reese's character examination was, it wasn't anything new that we couldn't have already guessed about him. Because of that, this episode was a step down from the last two episodes, and it doesn't even hold a candle to the excellence of "Terra Incognita". I thought that the episode's attempts to build tension by threatening to have the CIA come after Reese didn't really work that well. We already know that Reese is able to hide from Samaritan, which is aware of his presence, so I can't buy into the CIA as a huge threat. Furthermore, I never really bought into the idea of Beale turning on Reese, so the tension was missing throughout the episode. The Unknown: Will Reese get back with Iris after everything is over? Will he even be alive once everything is over? Will Root's big risk pay off? Could there be positive and negative effects from her installing Samaritan's malware into The Machine? Best Moment: Reese choosing to lie to Alex. Character of the Episode: Reese. Conclusion: This was another great Reese episode, though the episode wasn't too interesting overall and it relied solely on the character examination it did. Still, I thought it was a good time. Score: 64
2 Comments
Ben
7/10/2019 01:55:05 am
I have to apologise; for some reason, I thought John and Iris' break-up was at the end of Terra Incognita, but now I remember exactly how that episode ended. I hope my comment didn't spoil anything.
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Aaronic
7/11/2019 03:26:35 pm
It's definitely alright because I was too stupid to realize it was an accidental spoiler haha. I had thought that you were referring to something from Reese's conversation with Carter which I may have missed/forgotten about on my first watch. Thankfully, I haven't gotten around to rewatching "Terra Incognita" yet, so I remained unspoiled!
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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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