Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Well, first things first. Before I get to my actual preview of the episode, I first want to announce that with tomorrow’s episode, we get a brand new theme for Person of Interest! And, to be honest, when I screened the episode this past weekend, the new opening sequence was one of the top things that excited me the most. With both the Machine and Samaritan now sharing the throne as top ASI, the new theme incorporates both Finch and Greer’s voice, with each describing the mission of his own respective artificial intelligence. Check it out:

We are being watched. The government has a secret system — Finch

A system you asked for to keep you safe — Greer

A Machine that spies on you, every hour of every day — Finch

You granted it the power to see everything, to index, order and control the lives of ordinary people — Greedr

The government considers these people irrelevant. We don’t — Finch

But, to it, you are all irrelevant. Victim or perpetrator, you stand in its way, we’ll find you — Greer

How cool is that! Love it, love it, love it. Just another example of the brilliance in writing we are seeing so far in this final season.

Now, back to the episode. After the Machine’s big bug parade in tonight’s episode, it appears that Finch (Michael Emerson) and Root (Amy Acker) have worked out most of the kinks, and things are about back to normal. Well, as close to “normal” as you’ll get in the world of 2 feuding ASI super-powers. The big thing is they’re getting numbers once again, and these appear to be the real deal — not D-list actors pretending to kill someone, or people who had killed somebody 2 decades ago, or an idiot kid who had called in a bomb threat to his school to get out of a math test (my personal favorite :-)). Basically, we’re very close to being back to the old Person of Interest but with the looming threat of Samaritan still hanging over our heroes’ heads.

In tomorrow’s installment, we continue the pattern from tonight’s fantastic “SNAFU” and get yet another Reese-centric episode. The POI is an Alex Duncan, a brilliant computer scientist who works for a technological consulting firm. Reese (Jim Caviezel) is assigned to work the case, and so, off he goes to his new job in Security Systems Management. Almost immediately Reese can see that this guy is involved in something shady. He’s jumpy, agitated, and then, after everyone has left for the day, he breaks into his supervisor’s office and accesses classified documents. But, for what purpose? Is he some kind of spy who’s selling sensitive information to the highest bidder?

No, not even close. As it turns out, he’s just trying to find out what happened to his brother, Paul, who had been killed in action while in Afghanistan several years ago. Sounds pretty innocent to me, doesn’t it you? But, if that’s the case, why did the Machine flag his number, and even more importantly, why has his actions gotten the attention of the CIA. It doesn’t take long for the CIA to snatch Duncan up, and to make matters worse, the guy in charge of the operation is Reese’s old boss, Terence Beal (guest star Keith David). With the CIA presuming that Reese is dead, this puts Reese in a dangerous position and one that could potentially blow his cover. How will Reese maneuver this delicate situation, and what about this Beal guy? Friend, foe or something in between?

As part of this, we also get another wonderful series of flashbacks but this time highlighting Reese’s time while in the CIA circa 2010. As I had mentioned in my review of the premiere, one of the great things I see the writers doing this final season is bringing back some of the most notable and memorable characters from earlier seasons. Given the timeframe, you might guess we’ll be seeing Kara Stanton (Annie Parisse), and if you did, you would be correct! For me, Stanton was always a character I loved to hate, but even still, it was great to see her back alongside Reese. More nostalgia and a great trip down memory lane.

In the meantime, Root is given her first undercover assignment by the Machine since being holed up in the subway while her rotating identities were being restored. This time she is to work for a shipment company, which she’s not exactly thrilled with. However, as we know, the Machine knows what she’s doing, and puts Root exactly where she needs to be. After noticing that a large number of shipments were being diverted to a single address before making it to their final destinations, Root suspects that this may be part of Samaritan’s scheme to disseminate its malware. After asking for Finch’s help, he is able to confirm this, and so, now, it’s a race to figure out what the malware does and how to stop it.

Episode 5.03 of Person of Interest  is titled “Truth Be Told” and airs tomorrow at 10/9c on CBS.