Last week gave Person of Interest viewers their first look at Samaritan, the competing surveillance system that threatens to bring down The Machine – Harold, Reese, Shaw and Root along with it. I posted my thoughts right after the episode but want to take a closer look at how the two systems differ.
This is the last we’ll see of The Machine this episode. Or is it?
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Samaritan’s white launch screen is a 180 from The Machine’s black background pictured above:
Samaritan’s beta test included surveillance networks within New York City’s five boroughs. Notice the white background.
A look at the differences and similarities in how they identify subjects. The biggest thing to note here is how Samaritan is given mandates and targets. Harold programmed The Machine to prevent using it exactly that way.
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You can see more of Samaritan’s organized vertical interface versus the way The Machine scatters information about the screen:
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A look at the differences as they appear when Samaritan and The Machine search their archives:
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The systems use opposite ways of marking targets:
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This shows that for all their differences, the two systems operate with the same fundamental technical skills:
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Here is the key difference the show has been driving home to its viewers: The Machine only identifies threats, Samaritan finds them and tells you what to do with them.
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Despite being limited to New York City during its beta test, Samaritan was able to use last known destinations and travel times to estimate a location outside the city.
Remember when I said we might see The Machine later in the episode? I think this is it at work protecting Harold. Wherever it identifies him, it shuts down the feeds so Samaritan cannot see him. Note that it doesn’t give the same protection to anyone else.
As I observed in January, the storylines in season three of Person of Interest are so different you could split it into two separate seasons.
Season 3A brought the HR story to a close and unfortunately took Detective Carter down with it. Seeing her go was a shock, but the writers felt they had to do it in order to maintain their credibility with the audience who needs to believe that Harold Finch’s team is truly in danger.
You can see why they wanted to drive that point home as season 3B enters its final three episodes. Decima, which first appeared rescuing Kara Stanton last season, stole an artificial intelligence system called Samaritan online. Developed by one of Harold’s friends at MIT, Samaratin differs in one crucial way from The Machine:
“It’s not compromised by the ethics of its creator.”
The Machine is a one-way surveillance system. That is, it only looks for what it is programed to look for – threats. The show drilled into our heads early and often that Harold took every precaution to protect The Machine from being exploited. John Greer, the head of Decima, views that as a fatal flaw. Samaritan can give the same information, but it can also listen. Greer can tell it to find Harold Finch and it will find Harold Finch.
That’s where the writers’ credibility comes in. When Harold goes white as a ghost telling Reese they will be the first two targets if Samaritan comes online, they want you to believe it. Do I think they’re going to kill of either of them? Of course not. What matters is I buy into the notion that they are in danger, and I do.
But I’m not wild about the direction the show went with Vigilance, the anti-surveillance group that disclosed Northern Lights to the public. As the Edward Snowden story grew to look more and more like the United States government has a real life Northern Lights I feared it would work its way into the show, and it has. I’m watching the Snowden story play out in real life, I don’t need them replicating it in my favorite TV show.
The final three episodes also figure to reveal what Root has been doing running in and out of the story all season. She’s taking orders from The Machine through her (The Machine’s, not Root’s) analog interface, but all they’ve given us is that it’s to prepare for what’s coming. Whether that’s a physical showdown or a technological one, it should be good.
What exactly has been up with The Machine anyway? They’ve given us some new looks lately.
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One last thing. The title for the season 3B finale is “Deus Ex Machina.” In its original Latin:
God from the machine.
UPDATE after tonight’s episode:
I didn’t think this was all that great. Everyone racing from place to place following The Machine’s orders like a game of Simon says doesn’t make for great television. They could have compressed that to half the time they gave it. The scene with Harold and Grace on the bridge was the mirror image of Desmond and Penny’s phone call in The Constant. I could barely handle.
What did this sub-par episode tell us?
It was short, but during the conversation between Gracie and John Greer they referred to Harold as God. Deus Ex Machina. God from the machine. Maybe this all ends with The Machine gone and Harold assuming control of Samaritan. He’s been adamant to say that it cannot fall into the wrong hands. What if it fell into the right hands? Wouldn’t Harold with all that power be a god to Samaritan? It would also add a new dimension to the show that needs to keep coming up with them.
Decima is fanatical. The way Greer’s techie pulled the trigger on John’s gun to shoot himself created a good contrast to what happened to the techie in the empty warehouse that used to house The Machine at the end of last season. He was shocked to be killed, Decima’s guy did it to himself out of devotion. This reinforces Harold’s assertion that these people cannot be trusted with the power Samaritan gives them.
Harold found his limit. The music on the show this season has been fantastic. Last week’s ended with a caressing melody sung by a woman with the lyric, “You can still be who you want to be, who you said you were, when you met me.” I thought that was meant to symbolize The Machine telling Harold he didn’t have to sacrifice his ethics to do it’s will. Maybe that was wrong. When Harold told John and Shaw to avoid taking any lives but to kill them all if they harmed Gracie I had a different idea. Harold never revealed himself to her before he chose to disappear. To her he is always what he said he was the day they met. Maybe the song is supposed to be a message from her, reinforcing to Harold that he doesn’t have to change. In fact, he can let it all go – The Machine, Reese, Decima, everything – and be Harold Martin, husband to Grace, for the rest of his days. Time will tell.
Root is going to do something big. Okay, like, duh. But she now has a freight of massive computer power she stole from Decima. What The Machine tells her to do with it will be pivotal, I think. Her little missions have taken her to Alaska, Miami and El Paso, I can’t see them mentioning that without it tying in some how. We still have the guy she shipped to South America to be heard from.
Person of Interest drew out its first two season finales into the beginnings of their following seasons. I expect the same to happen here. Trying to think where the break point might be for what they resolve now and what they spill over. Hmm.
The season finale of HBO’s True Detective is in less than an hour, and I thought I would share my thoughts.
I heard the show get rave reviews but didn’t know until Friday night that I have a three-month HBO preview so I caught up with its seven episodes in short order. Its first three episodes put me to sleep more than once, but in the show’s defense I was also very tired. It picked up in episodes four and five then finally kicked it in gear for six and seven.
Really, the show hasn’t done very much for me. I like the Rusty Cohle character a lot and enjoy his odd interpretation of human existence. But I’m not buying that he’s some sort of savant detective. I’m not buying that Marty Hart is much of a detective either, especially not if it proves out that his daughter was victimized by The Yellow King and he had no idea. Arranging five male dolls around a naked female doll, drawing lewd cartoons in her notebook with flying things and a giant wearing a mask yeah that didn’t spark a thought in his mind.
Maybe I missed out not having to wait a week between each episode reading all the theories on who or what The Yellow King is. Frankly, if I didn’t know it was a big deal I might not have caught onto it until they were sitting in Rusty’s storage shed.
And a note on theories. I spent six years studying freeze frames from Lost like many others did and in the end had nothing to show for it. True Detective is much tighter than Lost on account of about 116 fewer episodes but the larger lesson is this: Forget about them once the finale begins.
Chances are the first seven episodes didn’t give you enough information to make the right guess. Sure, it could be the lawnmower man who was mowing in spirals at the end of episode seven and it could be Marty’s father-in-law (which would probably grind my gears) but really we don’t know. I spent so much time of The End waiting for the answer to unfold for some big theory that by the time it was over and no answer came I missed out on what the show really wanted me to experience.
So when the finale starts in about 20 minutes, forget about screen caps and what letter was obscured behind Marty’s head in episode seven and all of that. Just enjoy it whatever it turns out to be.
UPDATE
I’m going to talk about the finale. But first I’m going to issue a SPOILER ALERT because HBO had major problems with its streaming service and many viewers weren’t able to watch it live. Do not consider this precedent.
Click away now.
Really lackluster finale, I thought. I like to view them through this frame: What the finale showed matters and what it didn’t show doesn’t matter. So what did it show?
That the yellow king was the lawnmower guy. Okay. Why was he a serial killer? Well we don’t really get that. Because he was messed up, I guess is what we’re to go with. It’s hard to explain a character when he’s not introduced until the last episode. I can’t explain why what they did choose to show us was him with a bunch of different accents. The yellow king was basically the bad guy who was there because there had to be a bad guy. Shallow character building, in my opinion.
I always believe that any shows final scene represents the most important story the writer(s) want to tell. In True Detective that scene belong to Rusty.
It showed Rusty having a brush with death and a brief emotional breakdown for the love he felt toward his daughter. It changed him as evidenced by what he said to Marty as they walked away from the hospital. If you want to reflect on what True Detective was ultimately about, look no further.
Forget what wasn’t shown. Marty’s daughter and what drove her to draw those disturbing pictures didn’t matter and wasn’t addressed at all in the finale. Black stars and “kin” and all that wasn’t either. The yellow king was but that’s because it had to be; it was done with 20 minutes left.
True Detective was about Rusty Cohle’s journey from pessimism to optimism. I just don’t think it was told very well.
Person of Interest’s final 2013 effort, Lethe, gave viewers plenty to consider that I’ll be gathering my thoughts on for the next several days. In the meantime, here are some interesting screencaps to study before it returns in 2014.
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The Machine assigns squares when Finch is trapped.
Take note of the squares The Machine assigns. It views Ma’am as a threat and Claypool gets a white square.
The Machine assigns threat levels.
The Machine scans its database of alternate machines, some active, some not. Note Samaritan is labeled DEACTIVATED.The Machine changes Samaritan’s status to unknown and considers the potential for system conflict.
Last week gave Person of Interest viewers their first look at Samaritan, the competing surveillance system that threatens to bring down The Machine – Harold, Reese, Shaw and Root along with it. I posted my thoughts right after the episode but want to take a closer look at how the two systems differ.
The Wandering Lostie 