There are just some scenes. As you watch them, you know you’re watching the writers, actors, editors and everyone involved at their best. Michael Emerson gave us a lot of them as Ben Linus; he gave us another one as Harold Finch.
The plot from last week’s Person of Interest was too complex to summarize here, so click over to CBS for the full recap. It brushes over the scene with barely a mention, so that is where I will focus.
It is the last scene. Jason Greenfield is on his way to Cartagena, Timothy Sloan is safe, Jason Collier is still free. Much to her frustration, Root is not. Shaw clubbed her after they helped Greenfield escape the CIA and turned her over to Harold.
Everything thing about the exchange is gold. The dialogue is crisp and the footage is edited for perfect timing, showing the right reactions to the right words at the right time. Harold and Root. He wants to keep The Machine hidden, she wants to set it free. For the moment he has the upper hand. Physically, he has her trapped and cut off from any electronic communication that could connect her to The Machine. (You remember what a Faraday cage is, I hope.) Mentally, he poked a hole in her belief that she has a special communion with it. They kept the shot of her face reacting to Harold’s final line so we could see her realize he may share it, too. Perfect.
What Harold knows about The Machine’s new third category, which Jason Greenfield fell under, is unclear. He may be holding Root because The Machine needs him to or because he wants her cut off until he can figure out what is going on.
What is going on with Root and The Machine? The episode gave us a little more to add to the piece I posted last week.
The third category and what we know about it may not be any more than what Harold does. Root’s mission from The Machine was to use Shaw to help Greenfield escape CIA custody and flee to Cartagena in Columbia. There he will seek out a bar with a man named Ruiz. Why? Root does not know, she leaves big-picture questions to The Machine. It sees itself (I’m going to avoid using feminine pronouns to describe The Machine for the sake of simplicity in writing about an inanimate female character and an animate one) facing an existential threat that, apparently, Root can help it neutralize. That’s why one of its first acts after rebooting was to retask Root to the “Analog Interface” and break her out of the psychiatric hospital.
The source of the threat could be Peter Collier. Collier is revealed to be the leader of a hacker group by the name “Vigilance.” Wayne Kruger, you’ll recall, found a data mining company that made him a target for Collier in the season’s second episode. Murdering Kruger was the event that caused Jason Greenfield to report Vigilance to the government, which is how he ended up in a cell next to Root at a CIA black site. That is exactly where The Machine knew he would be, and putting Root there to break him out shows how well The Machine can predict events. It makes you wonder how far into the future it can see.
Vigilance protests government surveillance. Jason Collier, meet Edward Snowden. I said before I down want the show to incorporate that affair into its storylines, and I can’t be certain this wasn’t the direction the writers planned for season three last spring. After Harold and Reese saw the week’s number to safety — Jason Greenfield’s brother — Reese expressed his suspicion that we haven’t heard the last of Collier and his band of hackers. I guess that’s how it will be. Person of Interest is a well-done show, as evidenced by the scene I broke down at the beginning, so I trust they can do the story well.
Image credit: CBS.com
Note: I’d have the video embedded instead of linked if I knew a d*rn thing about how the Internet works.
“Love built on lies is an arduous endeavor, for wherever passion and treachery meet, dissolution begins. Still we fight to hold our ground in the emptiness, ignoring the fact that every relationship, even the ones we cherish, inevitably dies.”
Of course Nolan does morning hydrotherapy.
Emily is way out of line telling Nolan he can’t be involved with Patrick.
What does Charlotte have against Emily and Daniel get married? I forget.
Victoria lied to Charlotte about who really cut Conrad’s breaks. That is so Victoria to lie to her daughter in order to lie to their father.
Do rich people really get together for fancy breakfasts? It’s just breakfast. Have some Wheat Chex and an orange.
“Good morning kitten, it’s lovely to have you back in the litter.” Weird Conrad.
Victoria’s Pop Tart joke, hilars.
Emily is stupid going to the guest house to see Aiden. This is not how a covert evil-doer would go about her business.
Oooh, way to protect your…art gallery…from Conrad. Oh and then drop the tampered brakes bomb! Is she manipulating him by thanking him?
Daniel wears a tie clip like a sissy.
Hey the car crash girl. Not a bad return, should have seen it coming after the profile bit from a few weeks ago. He deserved that ripping.
Charlotte, this is what I was talking about when I urged you to not turn into your mother. Your brother is right about Sarah, reporting her for being rude is not nice.
“Guess what we have? Foundation issues.” – Emily to Daniel. No kidding.
I continue to believe Emily is far too sloppy with her proximity to Aiden. They shouldn’t be talking at the Grayson’s or at her house.
A beach in the Maldives. Why would they mention that?
“I think he’s the one.” – Really, Nolan? I mean, really? AND THEN STUPID JACK OPENS HIS STUPID JACK MOUTH. Major LMAO at Nolan thinking he was dropping a bomb on Jack about Emily’s identity.
The lighting on this construction scene is exceptionally bad. It’s an interior set and they usually do an okay job but that was bad.
Is there a such thing as a forensic realtor? Because if Conrad had one I have to think you’d be able to tell that a house isn’t really sinking.
Smart play by smart Jack to pretend he didn’t know about Emily. Then trying to turn Nolan against Patrick. Is Emily putting him up to this? I can’t imagine Jack would come up with it on his own. He flipped him from “the one” to an ex in one conversation.
So why bring Sarah back? Charlotte gets her a job, then what? Will she try to put her between Daniel and Emily?
“What do you know Conrad, we’re slipping into the sea!” – Victoria’s second great line.
“This pile hasn’t been a home for years.” – Not as good as the other two, but good. This is a divorce bomb?
There they go holding hands on the beach. How has Victoria, who never trusts anyone, not put a PI on Aiden and caught this yet?
“You know if we can’t sell this place perhaps we’ll just turn it into a home for wayward boys. She’s got her bastard, her Brit…and you.” – Conrad. Sharp stuff tonight.
Charlotte getting Sarah fired was for a good reason? Nice.
Now Emily is mad that Nolan let Jack go to Conrad about Patrick. “circling planet Emily.” Awesome. Nolan and Jack are doing a great job contrasting with Emily to bring out all of her faults this season.
Conrad put the fortune in gold? Didn’t figure him for a Glenn Beck fan.
When you ask how someone learned of damning information, you are confirming it.
Looks like Aiden spooked Emily with this begone and never see them again talk. She won’t want to leave Jack and Nolan behind.
Patrick is too confused by this to stay away.
“In this last bit of time we have…” – Emily to Jack and Nolan.
Every few years I pull out my old comic book collection from the early 90s and re-realize I outgrew them. It took the first half of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D pilot for me to re-re-realize it. I didn’t think it was bad. It just wasn’t for me.
After hearing good things about it on social media I gave it a second look. It is actually not too bad. Yes, it’s very comic book-ie, but it seems to do it well. I have even less familiarity with the Marvel universe than I do the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow so most of the mythology goes over my head. Otherwise it’s clean, simple fun.
American Horror Story – FX Wednesdays
The yearly telenovela from FX normally gets its own treatment but until it proves it can match its first season it will stay here with crap like Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Season one was a fantastic mix of acting and demented storytelling. Dylan McDermot and Connie Britton left for other projects (Nashville and, now, Hostages, respectively). Jessica Lange and Evan Peters stayed to be joined by Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe and James Cromwell in season two but they couldn’t rekindle the magic. The scene in season one when Britton and McDermit’s daugther, played by Taissa Farmiga, tried running away but only ended up running in circles into and out of the house because she was dead remains one of my favorite scenes in any show. AHS didn’t come close to that level in season two.
Nor has it so far in season three. Lange and Paulson continue to star as witches at a coven in New Orleans. Farmiga is the latest young witch to be taken in by the group. Peters takes on the role of a frat boy killed in a bus accident and sewn back together in a scene so amateur hour that it felt like an after school special on the Hallmark Channel.
None of the new story is interesting. Jessica Lange was gold in season one but seems to have only played diluted versions of the same character since then. The Harmon’s haunted house featured a dead maid trying to seduce Dylan McDermot; the coven in season three was stormed by zombies.
Maybe it’s time we all admit season one was as good as it’s going to get.
The most unbelievable thing I will probably ever write here…
I’m liking some sitcoms.
Falling for Criminal Minds forced me to question everything about my post-Lost television snobbery. Falling for a couple of sitcoms this fall is personally shocking but I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it. You’re always allowed to enjoy funny.
Mom – CBS Monday
You’ll always have me at Allison Janney and Anna Frris, I will say that upfront. Faris got pregnant as a teenager with her daughter who is now, you guessed it, a pregnant teenager. Janney was a terrible mother who drank, ran drugs and gave her daughter several potential stepfathers. This makes the humor quite a bit more adult than I was expecting on a primetime network, but I’ll take it. A little sanitized dirty humor never hurt anybody.
Beyond the laughs — I can’t believe I’m going to say this — I. Like. The. Story. Of. This. Sit. Com. And. I. Care. A. Bout. The. Charac. Ters. Faris wants to be a better mom for her kids than she had and gets sympathy when her pregnant daughter turns to Janney for support. Janney, in turn, sees that she can be as a grandmother what she never was as a mother. It’s all very nice and the timing between Lanney and Faris is perfect.
Despite being mostly panned before its premiere CBS picked up Mom for a full season.
Trophy Wife – ABC Tuesday
The melded family ensemble show works as well as its kids, and Trophy Wife has good kids. Two teenagers from Bradley Whitford’s first marriage are as funny and awkward as you’d expect them to be. His adopted son with his second wife is the overly-smart provocateur who tends to speak Yiddish. The wives are stereotypical and Whitford’s new wife, Malin Akerman, is trying to make herself look legitimate in everyone’s eyes after meeting him in a bar.
That isn’t the most rousing summary of a good show but the adults are good and the writers let the kids do their thing. Akerman downs a water bottle full of vodka to cover for the teenage girl in one episode and gives the adopted boy an iced coffee in another after letting him stay up all night. In one episode they learn the oldest daughter is hooking up with “Ace McBrady” and confront her about it in a party scene that had me on the floor.
ABC released the pilot online weeks before it aired and critics like it. You can jump in at anytime without missing a beat.
Every season new shows pop up that I enjoy but don’t earn enough time and thought to warrant the kind of attention I give to Revenge, Person of Interest and others. I broke these into two posts, the second will include two shows that I never, ever in my wildest imagination thought I would talk about on my blog.
Part One: Sleepy Hollow, The Blacklist, Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Part Two: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., American Horror Story, and two surprises.
Sleepy Hollow – FOX Mondays
I came into Sleepy Hollow knowing none of the background. My ignorance made the first 45 minutes of the pilot pretty difficult as a headless horseman ran around town swatting heads of unsuspecting residents. The first to go was the sheriff who Lost fans know better as Kelvin Inman. What a let down.
The last 15 minutes roped me in. Mysterious devils appeared, a man got his neck snapped completely backwards. That’s what I’m talking about! I posted a snap reaction with more thoughts if you care to read them.
Sleepy Hollow has stayed pretty good since then but it is falling under the post-Breaking Bad hangover I mentioned in my Minnesota Bloggers Conference recap. After watching the crisp seriousness of Walter White’s story arc I can’t get into a headless horseman the way I could before the binge. I still enjoy it, but I don’t take it seriously.
James Spader as Raymond Reddington on NBC’s The Blacklist.
If any show on this list elevates to more regular postings it will most likely this one. I read the pilot script from Alias right before I watched The Blacklist for the first time and couldn’t help but feel some similarities. There’s spying, a young woman, some mysterious CIA and FBI types. Okay that’s probably where the similarities end, and I must confess to never seeing an episode of Alias. Give me a break, I needed an intro.
The Blacklist is a list kept by Raymond Reddington, played wonderfully by James Spader. “Red” went off the grid 20 years ago to live a life in the information trade, before suspiciously turning himself in in the series’ opening scene. He will only work with Elizabeth Keen, a young FBI profiler played by Megan Boone. It is not a coincidence that Spader’s character re-emerged on her first day with the Bureau.
The first few episodes give us a look into Keen’s past but not a complete look. Reddington is tantalizing her with insinuations that there is more to her life than she is aware of (that’s an Alias similarity!), starting with her new husband. After he is brutally attacked in their home, Red prompts her to find a box hidden under their floor. It’s full of passports. Suddenly the man with whom she is going to adopt a child is a suspicious mystery.
Each episode features Reddington trying to take down one of the international bad guy son his list of names. Each plot gives us a little bit more of the story so we know it is clear his targets are linked for some reason and the reason likely has to do with Keen.
I like The Blacklist because it gives the clear indication that there is a lot more to what we’ve seen in its first month. Give me a show with some depth, a few shady government types and some decent drama and I’ll give you my attention. I’m a little apprehensive about Spader’s character turning into one of the good guy/bad guy roles TV has become infatuated with (see: Ben Linus, Walter White, et al). But that’s a concern for another day.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine – FOX Tuesdays
Andre Braugher is back! I was excited for Brooklyn Nine-Nine only for this reason.
What a disappointment. It is as if you took the worst parts of The Office and gave it the most stale jokes Twitter has to offer. It is not funny or entertaining. After the pilot I proclaimed I would burn my television and move to Dubai if it got more episodes than the great Last Resort, Braugher’s 2012 fall effort. Brooklyn got picked up for a full season, so very soon I will come to you and admit I broke this promise.
Root serves a valuable role on Person of Interest. Harold Finch, The Machine’s creator, wants his baby kept hidden from the public and the government that uses it. Root is a hacker, not opposed to The Machine’s electronic dragnet but angry at Finch for keeping it locked away. POI fans crave more information about The Machine — what it looks like, where it is, how it works — information that Finch would never give us. Root is the fans’ voice for wanting those answers and the driving force behind the stories that reveal them.
Her character began with misdirection: An otherwise ordinary number-of-the-week is manipulated into killing a U.S. Congressman, but after peeling back the layers we learn the story we thought we saw was not the story we were supposed to see. The killer was set up by a mysterious hacker, Root, as part of a “honey trap” to lure Harold into a scenario of her making from which she could access his systems and get closer to The Machine.
Not content, Root tricked the team again by setting herself up as a NOTW so she could kidnap Harold at the end of season one. Season two began with her holding Harold and Denton Weeks hostage. Weeks commissioned the project that became The Machine, leading Root to believe he or Harold knew its location. She shot Weeks when he refused to give it up and Reese saved Harold after Root escaped. She later popped up as Special Counsel’s secretary before forcing Harold to take her to where The Machine was supposed to be. When it wasn’t there, she suffered a psychotic break prompting Harold to put her in a psychiatric hospital.
Last week Root reappeared after escaping the hospital, and this week’s episode will be about what she does next. Her time in the hospital and her unprecedented relationship with The Machine deserve a deeper look.
Root ended last season wandering through the halls of Stoneridge Hospital. A pay phone rings. She picks up the handset, yellow with a blue seal around the cord, and hears a familiar question, “Can-you-hear-me?” “Absolutely.” It was the same question she and Reese heard when The Machine rebooted after Kara Stanton uploaded a virus meant to take it down. The reboot triggered a 24-hour “God mode” during which Root and Reese could communicate with it directly. We saw the 24 hours end when Root couldn’t retrieve a key code to open a door in the nuclear facility where The Machine was hidden. That’s what made the call to Root in the season’s final scene so perplexing; God mode was supposed to be over but here was the same voice asking her the same question.
This season we saw the same scene through The Machine’s eyes. Root knew about The Machine when she answered the phone so it gave her the usual yellow box as it“retasked,” the asset. The moment she said, “Absolutely,” the box changed. The corners and crosshairs remained yellow but the rest of the outline turned black and she was given a new designation: ANALOG INTERFACE. Here we have to turn to Pedia of Interest:
Black box with yellow corners and crosshairs: Possibly indicates individuals who not only know about the Machine, but have the ability to communicate with it. The Machine internally designates these individuals as “Analog Interface.”
The Machine retasks Root…
…and desginates Root “ANALOG INTERFACE.”
Root can now communicate with The Machine similar to the way she did under God mode, but at a new level. Her sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr. Ronald Carmichael, detail how complete their communion is.
In the season premiere:
Root: “I have a direct line to a higher power. It speaks to me.”
Dr. Carmichael: “What are those voices telling you to do?”
R: “It’s just the one voice really. It wants me to stay here and work thru some issues.”
Dr.C: “What issues would those be?”
R: “Methodology, we’re discussing how I go about things.”
Dr.C: “Do you have feelings like you’re being watched?”
R: “Every now and then.”
Later, after Dr. Carmichael takes away her phone:
R: “I’m sorry, doctor, but it’s important we be in contact. We’re in the middle of a…disagreement.”
Dr. C: “A disagreement with the voice? I know you believe you need a phone but I am here to tell you that you don’t. I believe that by separating you from it and all other forms of technology it’s really the best course of action. So it’s time to unplug.”
R: “Please, don’t do this. It’s not good for us to be separated.”
He orders her to solitary confinement.
R: “For a psychiatrist, you’re really a terrible judge of character.”
Near the end of the episode Root shocks the doctor:
R: “The truth? The truth is a vast thing, I see that now. Just how much truth there is. Where would we even begin? The truth is you are not very smart. In fact, you’re only the 43rd smartest person in this building.”
Dr.C: “43rd? Okay, um, did your voice tell you that? That’s based on what?”
R: “Every standardized test you ever took averaged together not including your medical boards, which you cheated on. The truth is you smoke an average of 9 cigarettes a week in the parking lot when you think no one’s looking. The truth is you visit a massage parlor once or twice a month and you pay for it with crisp hundred dollar bills that you get out of the cash machine at the 7-11 across the street. The truth is that you fantasize on online forums about having sex with some of your patients. Though not me, yet. I guess I’m not your type. The truth is, God is 11 years old, that she was born on New Year’s Day 2002 in Manhattan. The truth is that she’s chosen me, and I don’t know why yet. But for the first time in my life I’m a little scared about what’s gonna happen. The truth is I’m stuck here for now and the only dialogue you need to be worried about is between me and her which is why you might want to give me my phone back. Because I’m having an argument. Would you like to know the truth, doctor? About what we’re arguing over? Whether or not I’m gonna kill you.”
Several noteworthy things pop out of her dialogue. She got all of this information despite being in solitary confinement without her phone. How? The date she mentions, January 1, 2002, is when Finch first began teaching The Machine how to recognize subjects. The most notable piece? She and The Machine are arguing, implying real-time two-way communication through the “Analog Interface.”
The analog interface then sounds like exactly what it sounds like: A way for The Machine to communicate (interface) with Root without the apparent need for a digital (analog) connection. To do this, The Machine “retasked” her, an audio term meaning it changed her function to handle a different input. What type of input? We aren’t yet sure. In episode three Root describes her (h/t Joan Osborne) as merely a voice:
Dr.C: “You seem calmer today, Robin.”
R: “I am, it’s almost time for me to leave.”
Dr.C: “Where is it that you’re going?”
R: “You know that’s a good question. I’m not certain yet.”
Dr.C: “Because the voice is going to tell you?”
R: “You’re catching on.”
“Is the voice speaking to you right now?”
Doctor Carmichael points out her phone isn’t connected to a wireless carrier.
R:“God doesn’t need AT&T. Haven’t I already proven to you just how powerful she is? It’s not a condition, it’s the future. By the time you figure out what’s really happening, I’ll have transcended this reality.”
Presumably not being connected to a carrier is no obstacle for The Machine. The opening sequence of every episode shows it connecting to the wifi card in Reese’s camera.
The Machine detects Reese’s camera.
What does her last sentence mean? It sort of feels like a message to the viewers. By the time we realize how The Machine has changed it will be too late.
Root’s next scene shows how the two interact. Through the dead cellphone she instructs The Machine to control a prescription dispenser by having it entering the password and dispense three vials of Desipramine, an anti-depressant. Her escape plan is underway.
Then The Machine appears to take on a dual personality. While it helps Root engineer an escape plan it also predicts it will turn violent, prompting it to find Harold and warn him. My guess is this is The Machine making sure Harold gets to the hospital before Hersh because Root he is a danger to Root. But who knows? Anything could be on the table at this point.
Maybe Root isn’t dealing with The Machine at all but rather a “bad twin” or offspring unintentionally created by the reboot. Maybe the relocation spread its servers across different sites and each site is developing its own intelligence. Maybe, juuuuuuust maybe, Harold cleaved its artificial psyche when it split the phone call so Root and Reese could interact with it in God mode?
There are just some scenes. As you watch them, you know you’re watching the writers, actors, editors and everyone involved at their best. Michael Emerson gave us a lot of them as Ben Linus; he gave us another one as Harold Finch.
The Wandering Lostie 