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TV MILESTONES

Person of Interest's episodes 99 + 100

Sotto Voce and The Day The World Went Away are the titles of 5x09 and 5x10 (episodes 99 and 100) of Person of Interest, and their plots were nothing short of astounding. In Sotto Voce, the mysterious villain known as "The Voice" (and last seen in 3x15's Last Call) returns and traps Reese and Fusco inside the precinct; in The Day The World Went Away - most appropriately - Finch's number came up. So let's dive into both episodes and see what happened.

SOTTO VOCE

SHAW

We'll start here because it's a relatively short sideplot which we can address quickly: Shaw, following her escape from Samaritan facilities in Johannesburg, makes it back to New York and begins killing Samaritan agents. Root is tasked by the Machine to protect a new number targeted by Samaritan agents, which throws her into Shaw's path. Shaw takes some convincing that she has returned to reality, but Root eventually talks her down from committing what would really have been suicide this time, and Root brings her to the team at the end of the episode.

It's nice to see Shaw back with the team now, although that crazy thing time constraints meant we didn't see what would have been (given another episode or two), her intense escape from Johannesburg on board a flight which Samaritan would have attempted to stop. However, I can't keep saying time constraints every episode no matter how evident it has affected the show's final run. Shaw's return is perfectly timed given what is coming up, and Team Machine are going to need all hands on deck.

THE VOICE

The Voice first became known to Team Machine in 3x15's Last Call, where he forced a 911 operator to delete a 911 call to cover up a murder he had been contracted to bury. He was never identified, until now.

Today's POI is Terry Easton, a locksmith who is under threat from The Voice, who has kidnapped his wife to make him do his bidding. Reese protects Easton by hiding him in the interrogation room, and takes a group of officers to a building they traced in which he suspects Easton's wife is being held. She's not - and it's a trap: the building is blown up. So now Reese has to go back to the precinct empty-handed, where he catches Easton roaming about, having received new instructions from The Voice to open the holding cell and release a flood of Los Templarios gang members who intend to murder Amir Siddiq, the man Fusco has been investigating for four murders. Meanwhile, The Voice has strategically placed bombs around New York within the 8th Precinct's jurisdiction to draw all the police out of the precinct.

It's then revealed Amir is a contract killer who did work for The Voice, and Reese, Fusco and Easton are trapped inside the precinct with a cop named Chin (another of The Voice's pawns), and Los Templarios trying to kill them and Amir. They fight back, but are running out of bullets.

Meanwhile, Finch has resorted to desperate measures to ID The Voice, going so far as to bring Elias out of the safehouse to a contact of his who has supplied bombs to The Voice before. Together, they discover that the kidnapped wife is actually an actor, and that Easton himself is The Voice. They relay this info to Reese barely in time, and Fusco saves Reese by taking a bullet to the shoulder. Easton, having killed Amir himself (and the only blot on his plan being that his identity was now known) takes his chance to escape.

Except he doesn't, because Finch catches up to him - as does Elias. Finch wants Easton stopped, but is uneasy with the method Elias employs: a car bomb, reminiscent of the way Elias killed his mafioso father in season 1. But either way, Easton is dead and The Voice is no more.

I'm not disappointed with the way this was handled, but I think if The Voice had been utilised better he could have had a cross-season arc similar to that of the Triple Killer on Castle, where there was a 3XK episode every season for four seasons until the conclusion in season 7. I think The Voice would have done better to have been introduced in season 3 (as he was), have this episode in season 4 (with an alternate ending where he escaped, in place of one of the shitty non-Samaritan POIs season 4 produced), and then this episode could have concluded with his revenge and Team Machine plus Elias taking him down. But then I don't write the show, and either way this was a stonking episode.

FUSCO

A screenshot of Team Machine staring out over New York
at the end of Sotto Voce,.

Everybody breathe a sigh of relief because finally, Fusco knows about the Machine and Samaritan. It was time for him to be looped into the reality of what he had been involved in for four and a half seasons, and it was done very, very well. After Fusco saves Reese's life from Easton, Reese takes him to the precinct roof and disposes of their phones. Finch tackles Reese on the subject of being honest to Fusco, but Reese finally stands solid and as the shot pans out and the music heightens he begins to tell Fusco everything: 'There is a system, listening through every microphone, watching through every camera ...'

So what we end up with are two things: firstly, Team Machine (minus Carter, whose death in season 3 brought to an end two storylines that couldn't have fit in with the Samaritan plot and were rightly ended when they were [more on that in a future roundup]) together again. Complete. That includes Detective Lionel Fusco. 

This whole scene was reminiscent of the way Reese was brought to Finch in the pilot: then, two men in suits took Reese from the police precinct to the bridge where he met Finch; today, one man in a suit took Fusco from the police precinct to the bridge where he joined the team. No other character got this treatment besides Reese, but no other character earned it quite like Fusco. It was fitting, poetic and above all a perfect ending to the episode - and, just like in the pilot, a perfect way to lead into what is coming.

A screenshot from Sotto Voce, where we see Fusco identified
with a yellow box by the Machine for the first time.

The second thing we got was the boxes. The Machine identifies people with three coloured boxes: yellow for those who know about its existence, white for those who don't and red for threats. Fusco had spent 99 episodes with a white box attached to him. Today, for the first time, we see him with a yellow box. It's another poetic moment in this poetic ending, and it's a great moment for all the fans who have supported Fusco's character for five seasons. He's been underutilised at points - sometimes for plot, sometimes unnecessarily - and there's been times when it was as if the writers didn't know how to bring him into the storyline at all. But now he fits like a glove, and his inclusion brings together all the components to make a compelling final four episodes.

(Again, I wrote the roundup for episode 99 before seeing episode 100, so all of what you've read is me with no notion of what happened afterwards. Let's wait and see tomorrow!)

THE DAY THE WORLD WENT AWAY (EPISODE 100)

FINCH'S NUMBER COMES UP

Well, is there really anything more appropriate for the 100th episode than for Harold Finch's number to come up? He created the Machine, he's the architect of this world in which we live, in which he, Reese and their wayward recruits protect people from harm. To let this show go out without having had Finch's number called up would have been a tragedy, and thankfully it wasn't ignored. But more on that later.

Finch made a critical error that led to his discovery by Samaritan when he returned to the cafe at which he and Grace had their first date. Samaritan worked out who he was and hey presto, Finch's number's up.

So it's kind of a race to protect him. Everyone gathers at the safehouse (with bonus points for the humour of everyone pointing multiple guns at Fusco when he enters), where Root explains to Finch she has taken action herself to equip the Machine with the capabilities to fight Samaritan - but only if Finch asks it to, and through a voice of its own. Then Samaritan agents arrive and they split up: Root and Shaw stay and tackle the bad guys at the safehouse; Reese and Fusco investigate the Samaritan agents' cover identities; and Elias takes Finch to a safehouse of his own, the very block where we first met and saved Elias as Charlie Burton in 1x07.

Elias and Finch are discovered because of the anomalous gang activity due to a truce Elias has formed: with no gang activity whatsoever, Samaritan recognises this is where Elias has taken Finch. They fight to escape, but Elias is killed (for realsies this time) and Finch kidnapped.

Finch is taken to Greer, who has about his third line of speech this season to explain Samaritan doesn't want Finch dead, but on his transport away from the garage Root and Shaw come to Finch's aid. Root begins another of her long-ass speech things about everything being a simulation (which got boring very quickly, but was no less characteristic of her given her belief that everyone is merely "bad code"), including some ill-timed flirting with Shaw, before Root drives Finch away and Shaw fights off the agents.

Root and Finch are followed by a Samaritan vehicle, and Root eventually, while driving the car with her boot, hangs out of the sunroof and takes out the baddies. Bad-ass - and while unrealistic it's also very believable. Root has a Machine in her ear telling her what directions to drive the car, so why should she have any problem with it just because she's facing the other way and firing a big-ass gun?

Then Root gets shot by a sniper, Samaritan's newest recruit Jeff Blackwell, and Finch is remanded into custody. Later, Reese, Shaw and Fusco all realise Root really has died from her wounds, and Finch has fled from police custody with intentions to kill Samaritan after the Machine talks to him using the voice it chose - Root's.

And here we come to some of the key things about this episode.

"If you can hear this, you're alone.
The only thing left of us is the sound of my voice.
I don't know if any of us made it.
Did we win? Did we lose? I don't know.
I'm not even sure I know what victory would mean
anymore.
Either way, it's over.
So let me tell you who we were.
Let me tell you who YOU are.
And how we fought back..."
- Root's voice, the season 5 opening

ROOT

In the image to the right, we see Root and the quote of her speech at the beginning of season 5. Very eerie, but it predicts that at least SHE will survive the coming shitstorm.

She does not.

But what's clever is that at just the right time she's taken action of her own to do what Finch wouldn't and arm the Machine so that, when Finch inevitably makes the choice to order it to fight back, it can. And the Machine does so using Root's voice. So the twist here: Root's opening speech is actually the Machine. Stunning - and it's a very organic way to transcend Root's character after her death.

But why kill off Root at all? She had just got Shaw back and they had all hands on deck to fight Samaritan.

Well, the thing is she had to go. Root has never been a "save-the-number-of-the-week" character like Reese, Finch, Carter, Fusco and Shaw. In season 1, she kidnapped Finch to try and find the Machine, but Reese saved him in season 2's second episode.

At the end of s2 she kidnapped Finch again, to try and find the Machine properly and set it free. But the Machine already was free. 

So when she became a regular in season 3, she wilfully stayed locked up in the Library, where Finch knew he was safe from her. She kept issuing warnings that she was needed, given the HR war that was about to burst, but Finch relented.

Then Carter died. Finch was forced to admit Root was right and when Samaritan's rise became a possibility, he had to get her involved. Root became a conduit to the Machine when she had a cochlear implant in her right ear - she could finally speak to her God. And then, for the rest of season 3 she did whatever she could to stop Samaritan's rise, but when it became apparent they couldn't she created cover identities to protect them when it came online.

In season 4, she did what she could to survive in a Samaritan world, fluctuating between identities while trying to think of ways to combat the evil ASI, until Shaw was kidnapped, at which point her sole character arc was trying to convince Finch that Shaw was still alive and fight back against Samaritan. He didn't - and they almost lost the Machine because of it. (You REALLY ought to start listening to Root.)

So now in season 5 her character had two purposes. One: bring Shaw back. Which she did. Hooray! Two: convince Finch that he needed to arm the Machine to battle Samaritan. He kept resisting, so how best to persuade him otherwise? Firstly, have her go out of her way to arm the Machine herself, and then bump her right off. Harold Finch's emotional anchor, his foil, the voice of reason that collaborates and clashes with his own - bump her off.

So they do, and Root dies. It was necessary because Finch, as usual, wouldn't listen - and this time the consequence of his ignorance had to be higher. You're just not learning, are you, Harold?

Finch then goes AWOL. But not only does Root die, but the Machine chooses to take on her voice. In essence, Root becomes the God whose word she has nearly blindly followed for two seasons. That completes Root's story arc so poetically that, while I'll miss her character and the lovely Amy Acker who portrays her, there was nought else left to be done with Root.

Thus, I'd like to say in my final words here to anyone who feels Root's death adds to the growing pile of pointlessly discarded lesbian TV characters, learn to watch TV beyond your own personal agenda. While I'm not disputing there is a problem, not every lesbian character death can be reasonably added to your argument, and not everything is a middle finger to your beliefs.

THE PROBLEM WITH ROOT'S DEATH (BECAUSE YES, THERE WAS A PROBLEM)

In two words: Jeff Blackwell.

Samaritan's newest recruit Jeff Blackwell fires the sniper rifle that delivers the fatal shot to Root's character. And it was a poor death scene because of this. Since Root came upon Blackwell earlier in the season, he has been questioning his involvement with Samaritan. Now all of a sudden he's a fucking Terminator? What happened to his ethical reservations?

This was a weak-ass cop-out. Now, if Zachary hadn't been held up earlier on in the episode by fighting Shaw, he could've done it and I wouldn't have had a problem. But he didn't. So while Root's death gets a thumbs up from me, the way they wrote it does not.

ELIAS

The next most creative problem with this episode is Elias's death. Now, this death I called coming, if only for the fact that anyone from Team Machine would have been obvious and no one was predicting Elias - although they did kill a member of Team Machine, too. But let's think about Elias for a minute.

He survived a Samaritan sniper at the end of season 4, to be rescued by Fusco and brought to the safehouse to keep him alive. But for what purpose did he survive? Only one.

To push Fusco's story forward.

With Elias alive, Bruce Moran could come out of the woodwork for a short while and add fuel to the fire of Fusco's investigation. With Elias alive, he could provide an extra body just until the end got too near. Because really, what use was Elias going to be in the overall scheme of things? He wasn't going to fight Samaritan - he'd already given up. He'd made that clear to - you guessed it - Bruce Moran.

But he would protect Team Machine out of loyalty for as long as he could, which he did. And then he was killed. At the very place he was first introduced into the show. Very poetic. And there you have it, an underwhelming but true ending for Elias. I have no problems with that logic.

My only problem was that the way it was done didn't feel poetic. Having Elias shot by Samaritan at the end of season 4 felt right. He'd won the larger battles for four seasons, toiled and tussled at every turn and emerged victorious even when he lost the little fights. To be killed by the one entity that could truly beat him - at the same time that entity took out everyone else who threatened it (Control, Dominic, Grice) - was just right.

I suppose in the end he was still killed by Samaritan - and as I say, in the same place he was introduced in the show - but it just lacked the shock value that the ending to season 4 had had, and therefore it lost its poignancy and memorableness.

That's not to say Elias's season 4 death was big - it just seemed that way because it was one of the finale's shock twists. Whereas his death in the 100th episode just wasn't big at all, and I felt it didn't really ring true to his character. He died before Root, which gave everyone a chance to think - oh, maybe he's the death they advertised - when in reality he wasn't, and his death was therefore overshadowed by Root's. I can't think of any dead POI character whose death scene hasn't been perfect besides Elias's just now, and if you ask me, to lose such a vital character like Elias so casually was a massive disservice to him and the fans.

He should have stayed dead the first time.

VICTIM OR PERPETRATOR?

As we know, the Machine spits out a number because someone is going to be the victim or perpetrator of a crime. And we also know Samaritan is the big bad, so when Finch's number comes out we presume Samaritan is trying to kill him, even missing it when Greer tells Finch Samaritan isn't trying to kill him.

Well, if Samaritan doesn't want him dead, why did Finch's number come up?

Finch is the perpetrator.

Honestly, we've not had enough perpetrators throughout the show's run, but for Finch himself to be one I realise now is the most perfect thing ever. Hats off to the writers. That was incredible.

Final words

Given the likelihood of TV that 95% of shows will never make it past a script stage, 95% of those that do won't get past the pilots, and 95% of those will be lucky to get past one season (25 episodes tops), it's a milestone for any show that does make it past all of those hurdles to reach the 100-episode mark that makes it viable for syndication. That means that other networks can purchase the rights to broadcast the show - and the typical 100-episode mark is there because it allows, apparently, for 20 weeks of weekday runs. Of course, not every show viable for syndication needs to hit 100 episodes - there have been plenty who haven't made 100 episodes who have done well in syndication and some who've made more than 100 who haven't - but that nice figure makes a show more attractive to any network looking to add shows to their syndicated broadcasts. So well done POI for hitting that mark!

Now, the 100 episode mark itself is often a very special occasion. POI has marked its 100th episode with some insane twists, so to what has been the single best show on network TV for the last five years, I applaud and praise everyone involved with it that has helped it get to this stage. I might lose a little something inside of myself when the show finally ends, but it'll always be there to rewatch and, as they say "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened".

Also, the final 3 episodes of the show are now being aired weekly, so I'll only be doing one POI roundup until its conclusion. Which is set to be amazing. But in next week's episode, probably the show's final real actual POI: the President of the United States.

Thank you everyone for reading, see you next time!

Sam