Ricky Church reviews the seventh and eighth episodes of Person of Interest season 5…
Since Tuesday’s Person of Interest block was actually two episodes together, I’d thought it’d be better to review them as one since they both shared similar themes and focused heavily on Fusco’s investigation and Shaw’s escape from Samaritan’s clutches. ‘QSO’ and ‘Reassortment’ were both good hours that elevated Samaritan’s threat level while revealing a bit more about its ultimate plan.
While these episodes dealt with Samaritan, both had a cases-of-the-week that were quite interesting. In ‘QSO’ Root and Reese had to save the life of a conspiracy theorist radio host who was actually closer to the truth regarding Samaritan than he actually knew. ‘Reassortment’, meanwile, had the team coming together to prevent a viral outbreak which Samaritan caused. If I had to say which one was the better episode, it might be ‘QSO’ for me because it brought up some interesting ideas and having an outside character like a radio host (played by 30 Rock’s Scott Adsit) be a mouthpiece for those ideas was a good choice. There was also a very compelling argument made at the episode’s conclusion as The Machine basically allowed the host to die since he was committed to getting the truth out, declaring he had exerted free will. While Finch was understandably angry, it seems like he wants to have it both ways by ensuring The Machine is powerful enough to fight Samaritan, but not too powerful to make life and death decisions on its own.
Shaw’s escape was one of the primary focuses of both episodes and held a lot of good material (I suppose you could say Shaw Shawshanked her way out of jail *ba-dap-doom-dssh*). Samaritan is still intent on recruiting her either through her own free will or outright manipulating her, but the mind games clearly are not done. While we know for a fact Shaw has escaped, we don’t know how real some of the other events were, such as her possible murder of that doctor. While I’m of the belief it was real and she was manipulated into that situation, Samaritan’s attempts to alter her mind have had a profound affect on her. It will be very interesting to see her return to the POI team and how she comes to terms with her reality.
Fusco’s development continued in a really strong way as well, going so far as to gain Elias’ support in his investigation. It’s funny how even Elias believes Finch and the team should let Fusco in on the full truth before he gets himself into a dangerous situation he can’t handle on his own. The former dirty cop has more than proven he’s capable of handling really bad scenarios. His frustration at Reese and Finch is very believable at this point and it was no surprise he decided to walk out on their operations to pursue his investigation without them. Time will tell when they finally let him in or Samaritan directly targets him, but hopefully he’ll find his way back to the team sooner than later.
It was also interesting for Blackwell to reappear in ‘Reassortment’ and be forced to comply with Samaritan’s objectives. At this time he’s an adversary to The Machine, but, unlike many of Samaritan’s other agents, he’s a much more reluctant cog than anything else. Overall ‘QSO’ and ‘Reassortment’ brought two enjoyable stories that tied into the main threat of the series. The calm really has broken and with Shaw’s imminent return to New York, the floodgates should break wide open soon.
Ricky Church
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published May 26, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
