Photo Credit: John Paul Filo/CBS
Oh, Person of Interest you’re killing me. One of the things I’ve really liked about this season is how nearly all of the episodes thus far have been tied together with a common thread and that being the Brotherhood. In past seasons, there have been one or two major threats with each showing its ugly head in only a handful of episodes and culminating in a massive standoff in either the mid-season or season finale. The remainder of the episodes are usually just standalone ones, each focusing on a new number for that particular week but for the most part, just “filler” until we can get back to the main arcs that everyone is interested in. But while I am enjoying this new writing approach, little did I know at the beginning of the season that this would be used to set up the possible death of one of the fan favorites of the show. Sigh. Person of Interest, I love you, but man, sometimes I really can hate you too.
The POI this week is an interesting one. She’s Dani Silva (Adria Arjona) and supposedly a student at the NYPD Police Academy. In order to get close to Silva and actually at the recommendation of his therapist, Reese (Jim Caviezel) accepts a position at the Police Academy as a weapons and tactics instructor. Almost immediately Reese begins to suspect that Silva might be the perpetrator simply because of her dubious actions. She’s secretive. She lies to her colleagues. And, to top it off, she cases her classmates after hours, taking photographs ans sifting through their trash. Not exactly normal behavior, eh?
So immediately everyone begins to suspect that Silva is a spy. However Shaw (Sarah Shahi) and Fusco (Kevin Chapman) doesn’t figure out how wrong they are until after they had broken into her apartment. It turns out Silva is already a cop and is deep undercover with Internal Affairs because they learn they have a mole in the Police Academy.
Of course, someone else had already figured this all out before Shaw and Fusco’s discovery, and immediately makes an attempt on Silva’s life with a shoot-and-run. Fortunately, Reese had been tailing Silva, and so he is able to jump in and save her just in the nick of time. However, even though Silva isn’t killed, her life is about to be turned upside down anyways. They manage to kill her handler — and also good friend — Howard, use her own gun in the shooting, and $10,000 magically appears in her bank account. Obviously, this is a frame job — and a damn good one too — with Reese being left to sort the entire thing out and determine who is behind the scheme.
Photo Credit: Giovanni Rufino/Warner Bros.
When all the chips finally fell, the person standing behind the curtain was Dominic (Winston Duke) and the Brotherhood. They had targeted one of Silva’s classmates, Ortiz, because they needed someone to steal some police files. With Ortiz having an uncle who was in prison and his being desperate to get him out, Ortiz becomes the perfect mark for the Brotherhood. And, it worked too. Ortiz fulfills his end of the deal, retrieves the files, and it’s not until the end of the episode after Finch is able to determine what was stolen that we get the mother of all shockers dropped in our laps: the files were on Elias (Enrico Colantoni) and his criminal enterprise. Almost immediately Finch gets the next number, and you can probably make a good guess who it is — Elias. Oh crap. In many ways, this makes perfect sense since Elias is the one who’s been jamming up Dominic’s operation all the way back to the season premiere. But, still — man, it just sucked seeing Elias’ picture up on Finch’s board!
In the meantime, sh*t is about to hit the fan in Shaw’s world too. While everyone had been working the Silva case, Martine (Cara Buono) had been busy at work trying to identify Shaw ever since Samaritan flagged the video footage of her being released by her former ISA colleague. Unfortunately, Martine is successful and is able to locate her at her day job at the make-up counter. And, of course this all happens at the exact same time that Finch is handed Elias’ number.
The last couple of bits went down in the final moments of the episode, and so it looks like we have been slingshot into the brown hailstorm that has no doubt been set up for the mid-season finale. Who will the team choose to help and save? Shaw, who is one of their own? Or, Elias, who while not a member of the team has helped numerous times and even saved Reese’s life once before? My guess is Shaw is probably safe because her death appears too obvious now. My only hope is they don’t take this opportunity to kill off Elias. Of all the hodge-podge of villains on the show, Elias is by far the most developed and most interesting, and it would be a terrible shame to have him go out without his story being fully told.
At this point, my money’s actually on Root (Amy Acker). With the Machine no longer talking to her, she’s starting to look more and more expendable. And, of course, she and Shaw have developed this very weird dynamic, and I have no doubt that Root would sacrifice herself for a comrade in a heartbeat.
Regardless, as we so learned the hard way last season with the Carter death shocker, be prepared to expect the unexpected from this show. If it seems too easy or too obvious, then it’s probably not going to happen. This is Person of Interest, this is what makes the series so compelling, and this is why you can bet the mid-season finale is going to be one we won’t forget anytime soon.
Person of Interest airs on Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
