Contributor: Edmund B.
One of my favorite catch phrases from ’80s TV is Hannibal Smith’s, “I love it when a plan comes together.” What served as self-satisfied punctuation for the A-Team’s campier antics can now sum up the latest, far more serious “Person of Interest”. The season-ending arc has begun, and if the three episodes to follow live up to this opener, an already impressive first season will rocket into the critical stratosphere.
The writers have been exploiting Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson’s chemistry in the opening briefings. Reese’s dead-pan excuse for his tardiness, “yoga class”, was an all-time classic. (I had visions of Zoe Walker suggesting he could work on his flexibility.) But that was just a cheeky prelude to the real business at hand: five numbers, which just happen to belong to the heads of the Five Families. Their assumption is Elias is ready to clean house, and, this time, they’re right from the start.
What follows continuously ramps up the tension in a beautifully balanced episode. Almost all of the elements they’ve set up come into play. Carter is brought in, not by a call from Reese or Finch, but because she has been tracking the accounts uncovered in the Wall Street episode, “Risk”. Elias has drained them to fund his operation.
Carter and Reese make independent, and unsuccessful, runs at offering protection. They are thwarted both by the dons’ instinctive hostility and Elias’ unholy alliance with HR. The seeds planted back in “Get Carter” are bearing fruit, as the corrupt elements support Elias’ bid to bring order to the criminal classes. What they don’t count on is the depths of Elias’ antipathy, and how it’ll work against both of them.
At this point, the forces of good feel distinctly out-manned, if not out-gunned. With Reese around, you’re never out-gunned. The line between Carter and Reese is getting fuzzier, as she has to take the law into her own hands, kidnapping the remaining dons. Especially when they wind up in a safe house provided by Finch. The situation soon devolves into a reversal of “The Desperate Hours”, with the cops on the inside, protecting the criminals.
It is here that the team makes their tactical misstep. While they’d figured out Elias’ money had assembled a team to stalk the major players, they realize too late that surveillance includes Carter’s son, Taylor. While Reese arrives too late to stop the snatch, his demonstration of the proper tactical use of Kevlar (i.e. it stops bullets, so you don’t have to stop) was still awesome. It was great, at the end, to hear Taylor call Reese out as a bad-ass, finally acknowledging, within the show, what the audience has been saying all along.
Again, the past episodes resonated through this development. We’ve just seen Elias put a child in mortal danger. He claims he never would have followed through with the baby, knowing that Reese would crack first anyway. Here, there’s no reason to believe he would be as lenient. Especially since Taylor is stashed with Moretti, Sr. Elias has kept him alive, just to rub his triumph in his father’s face. Leaving Taylor as an eyewitness is extremely unlikely, creating a real sense of danger and urgency. Reese’s rescue and cat-and-mouse among the wine casks is, of course, badass.
The backstory between Elias and Moretti is played out throughout the episode. The familiar Machine graphics scroll us back, all the way to 1981. It’s hard to believe camera feeds would survive the 20-25 years until the Machine came on-line, but that is the distinct impression we are given. We see the evolution of Elias’ slights and resentments as he tracked down his father and tried his hand with the Mob. His growing contempt extends to all who are venal and corrupt, and drives the hubris that provides an opening for Finch. Elias isn’t just gunning for his dad, for revenge, he’s gunning for all of them, and that allows the wedge to be driven between him and HR.
I mentioned almost all of the elements came into play. The only one missing was recruiting a former number. However, now Elias is in the system, but has already shown how little that restricts him. So, they might just need some relief from the court. Good thing there’s a prominent judge who owes them a favor, and really doesn’t like kidnapping kids. I might be wrong, but, if I am, I know they’ll come up with something even better.
Acting: 2/2
Writing: 2/2
Directing: 2/2
Style:4/4
Total: 10/10
