Person of Interest, AKA "Jim Caviezel Whispering A Lot While Grimacing"

I was pretty sure a red square meant threat to The Machine, and white square with red borders meant knowledge of and threat to The Machine. Yellow is simply knowledge of The Machine, with no calculated threat.

So what are the odds that whatshername makes a comeback in two seasons? We didn't actually see her die!

I really enjoyed the scene with Finch and Reese, I really like the way the writing sells their friendship.

I'm pretty sure they reason they knew in the end that her and Snow were in the car was because of the nice skeletons and dental records they left.

That's the most likely scenario. Nonetheless, in TV I generally think that if the viewer isn't shown a body, there may not be a body. :)

Other interesting stuff: do Finch and Reese have a lead on what'shername's employer? Or are they pretty much dead ended for now? Also: apparently Finch was the one who stole the computer Reese and whatshername were tasked with discovering? I assume that was necessary for him to get back into the Machine?

This is, at heart, a comic book show. No corpse means not officially dead. The whole video thing at the end is pretty goddamn conclusive, though. Either way, she wasn't going to be available for the rest of the season because she's a regular on The Following. If that gets canceled while Person of Interest is still on the air, I could see her coming back, but probably not before then. Networks are a little sensitive about you working for their competitors.

Agreed, but the Semtex vest blew up half a city block. Where did she have time to find cover in just under a few seconds? Well, whatever. Anything goes, I guess.

Why would FBI agent dude identify Snow and her as the culprits? I guess I wasn't paying attention, because the jist I got was that he could identify her (a person who I'm assuming the government had previously listed as dead) was based on forensic evidence at the scene of the explosion.

I'd sort of assumed that was gratuitous wrap-up more than anything else.

Good point, this season has seen two fairly awesome overarching plot type sequences (Root, and then whatshername).

I guess maybe the season finale will loop back on the fact that Harold was the one who stole the laptop that got Reese in trouble way back when?

The fallout from the laptop is one of the things that the show has to deal with at this point. I was assuming that the name was going to be his before it was shown, but if that scrap of paper hadn't ended up on camera, we could have left it be, but now that it's out there, something has to come of it (well, I don't guess it has to, but it'll be kind of confusing why that shot was included if it doesn't). I'm also pretty sure that Michael-Douglas-Looking-Guy and that whole wing of the government is still kind of up in the air at this point, though I could be forgetting something about them. Mostly, though, I expect the near future to be almost entirely concerned with figuring out what the bomb virus thing does and stopping it, in addition to the of-the-week stuff.

SHE DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COCKADOODIE CAR!

Elias triumphant!

Jimmi Simpson's just never going to get his own show, is he? He's too weird. I mean, the second season of Breakout Kings was nothing special, but I'll still miss it because I like that funny-shaped little guy.

Also, LW++.

Yeah, it was too quick to read, but I may go back and freeze-frame it. FOR SCIENCE!

I did not. I eagerly await your findings!

Goddamnit this show keeps getting better.

Did anybody else squeeeeee when Harold bought the hotel and employed Supermaid as the manager?

"I stopped the blade short of your BLAH BLAH BLAH artery." JOHN YOU ARE A FUCKING BADASS.

Don't forget the final bit with John and Zoey.

ROOOOOOOOOT!

And... here... we... GO!

Also, did I possibly miss an episode (or maybe drank a bit too much watching the last one) but why is Zoey in the picture now? I think I might have been drunk. It's also that one romantic holiday of the year, so my wife asked me "WHAT THE FUCK IS HIS EX WIFE DOING IN THE HOTEL?!" That's pretty much how I heard it, and she may or may not have as much to drink as me, and she got so annoyed that she couldn't use the google to find out if she missed something from the last episode. I also failed at the googling. She just said 'fuck it' and watched The Big Bang Theory instead. Holy crap, I'll never buy champagne again. Two glasses and she was like "I HAVE TO GET SKILL POINTS IN GUILD WARS (2)" and passed right the fuck out afterwards. I gifted her with a unique bow and hopefully she wakes up tomorrow and gives me a huge hug. I want hugs :(

And fuck that champagne was expensive.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
HOLY FUCKING SHIT

BLUE BOXES OMG WTF AM I TRIPPING

That was kind of a fun episode, not much John and Harold but it was a neat way to expand the mythology around the Machine.

So what's a blue box signify? I assume it's from the Machine's POV, which makes me wonder what the difference between the blue boxers and, say, Fusco is.

Blue boxers are likely operatives who work for the machine who don't know about the machine.

Also, I think I'm in love.

The episode started and I was like awesome, it's Damian Lewis' partner from LIFE! I hope she sticks around! And then she got to be awesome all episode long, and I hope she sticks around longer.

(I also still think of Damian Lewis as the guy that played Damian Lewis on LIFE, because I greatly enjoyed that show.)

Holy shit man, that was some classic Nolan right there with just enough Abrams mixed in (not too much, now). First thing I thought was HOLY FUCK BLUE BOXES?! BLUE?!

They're direct operatives of The Machine, and as RyanMM said above, don't know that they are. "Research" is The Machine. Control are the people in charge of protecting the machine (corrupt, from what I can tell). And then we had Root. Oh, Root. It's the only story path I couldn't figure out.

Shaw is going to be the anti-Reese. Root will use any means to get to The Machine. Harold and Reese will have a save/death of the week while weaving the direct story around it all. You know, it's working.

You know, I just now remembered that Shahi's character on LIFE was named Reese.

I also thought it was pretty clear the awesome blue boxes were government sanctioned operatives the machine gave its numbers to. Part of the government's Machine project is obviously killing everyone who might know something relevant to the machine, kind of like the stories about how old school kings and emperors would kill everyone that built their secret tunnels and stuff to keep them secret.

It's just weird that the Machine sees them as somehow special, but Fusco and Carter are totally unremarkable. I mean I agree that's what the blue boxes mean (works for the Machine, doesn't know about it), but it's a little inconsistent.

I'm totally nitpicking btw, I'm just used to the show being a bit more consistent than this. It speaks to Person of Interest's awesomeness that this is the only nit I can find!

Fusco and Carter are assets of people who work for the machine. They may work for the machine tangentially, but they don't know about 'numbres' and they are at least 1 level detached. I can't remember what their boxes look like, are they the normal boxes or are they yellow?

I can totally see Shaw as being either an anti-Reese or simply a recurring wildcard character/deus ex machina (ha!) that comes out of nowhere to save Reese/Finch from some otherwise inescapable predicament. Also, I am consistently distracted by Sarah Shahi's hotness, in pretty much any role she plays.

Normal. Finch and Reese are yellow. Root started out as yellow but went red and then red/grey after kidnapping Finch.

I'm just really glad we got this episode. I've always wondered what was happening on the government side with The Machine. I think it's interesting that the way it works for them is the same way it works for Finch: you get a social security number and that's it. No context. I would have expected them to have more access to the information The Machine has gathered.

What are these code flashes you guys are talking about? Am I blinking and missing stuff? Are these documented somewhere?

They're there, but they're too brief for me to pick up on my DVR.

Ha, nice. I was trying to cap them but I couldn't time the pause right on my DVR. So, the Machine is learning? Decoding old ciphers? There's definitely a pattern of learning, here, especially with the latest episode and the blue boxers. The Machine sent Finch their numbers, because it wanted them protected. It doesn't care about whatever the government is doing, it cares about the people. Seriously, this thing is like a benevolent Skynet.