It's Too Late (Person of Interest S2E19 Trojan Horse)

Things are heating up and AUGH IT'S JOANNE HI JOANNE. From Rent. Look, these are the associations I have, okay? We can just be glad that she's not bringing Maureen into this show. Can you even imagine Finch and Reese's reaction to the entire Alphabet City group? Because I can. Am. And now my brain hurts. Our first bits of data after seeing not!Joanne as the number of the week are to tell us that she's the victim this time. Or at least, that's definitely what that phone call sounds like, one exec's death is mysterious and being covered up and she's digging into it and people want to ensure that she stops? Sounds like victim and not perp to me. Interestingly, the Machine's been giving away more and more of these tidbits in the first few seconds of the show this season, making it all about the discovery of how and why rather than the who. Which is about par for the course, now that Finch and Reese have more or less self-identified themselves.

PSA: Person of Interest posts ending

It is with regret that I have come to tell you that tomorrow's Person of Interest post - which will not be 2x18, but 2x19, as I'm not asking Kitty to blog a show about which we now have zero fucks to give - will be our last. We've been watching the current season while trying to clear the s2 backlog of eps so that we could catch up by February sweeps, at least in theory, and with the conclusion of the HR arc we find that we don't even have enough interest to watch, let alone to spend eight hours an ep blogging it. Life's too goddamn short to hateblog things, and Murderboarding has always been a labor of love, even when a show puts out a weak episode.

The creators have made it very clear that this is not intended to be a weak arc of episodes, however, but the direction they intended the show to go all along, and that they consider themselves innovative and exciting because of it. We firmly and disrespectfully disagree; we feel it's lazy, cheap writing and a complete cop-out (pardon the pun) of an ending, and we're pissed off that they felt they could do that and call it clever, innovative, shocking, and not suffer consequences. It's neither clever nor shocking. It's a sign of a want of creativity to not have anything further to be able to do with a character so they kill that character off so everyone else can grieve/go on a vengeance spree in their various ways. We did see the episode after that and with two minor exceptions, were neither surprised nor gave a damn about any of it. Characters which we previously loved did not stir us. About the only thing that pleased us was the ending, and not because this was a new and interesting place to take that character. In fact, it was so predictable it was almost inevitable. But we enjoyed it because we enjoyed the actor's performance.

In the end, I suppose it's only appropriate that we're ending our recaplyses of PoI with the episode that fridged the character that began this arc.

As this is not up for debate, and neither of us has the spare cycles for moderating comments this week, I'm turning comments on this post off.

In happier news, we're considering adding Sleepy Hollow to our rotation instead. If that happens, look for recapalypses (given the show, I think we can consider them all apocalyptic) to start up sometime in February after the season finale airs. We also intend to get back to the far more entertaining work of writing essays and profiles for Grimm and Haven; with a topic list currently standing around a double dozen, I don't think we're in danger of a lack of content anytime soon.

Excitable Boy (Person of Interest S2E17 Proteus)

Our first glimpse of this week's number is a man? probably a man by build and clothes, with a hat pulled down low and an overhead shot that obscures most of his face. And Reese opening up a barn in the pouring rain. If you know anything about the genre, then you've already guessed that we're dealing with a likely serial killer this week! Yay! No, wait. The other thing. Especially because if the Machine is kicking out the number of a serial killer, he's good enough to require Finch and Reese's attention.

Our first shot is a Machine murderboard! Aw, I do love it when the Machine coughs up data for us. Major US cities all across the country, SF, Albuquerque, Denver, Chicago, St Louis, New York, and one name associated with each: Henri Musset, Roland Danvers (someone on staff is a Stephen King fan, I see), Edwin Pylar, George Leary, Nathan Kramer, and Jack Rollins. All of this brings us down to New York, where undoubtedly Jack Rollins or whoever's pretending to be him is about to be trapped by a massive fuckoff storm that's hitting some portion of the Hamptons. Oh yay! Because this won't lead to Reese and Finch engaging in dumbass heroics or anything. The boys are coming out of a movie theatre after watching what I will assume is Rashomon (the other choice being Rain People, and that not having subtitles), and let's all just facepalm now, because the basic premise of the movie is a tale told by four separate unreliable witnesses, one of whom comes closest to the truth of what happened. Don't mind me, I'll just be smashing the desk with my face. Sigh, you guys. Snark over Bear's vest and seeing a spaghetti Western (with a semi-related plot to that of Rashomon) aside, this is pure shipbait for the two of them, and really adorable shipbait at that. On the other hand, who the hell else are they going to go see old movies with? Shaw is beside the point right now, because the Machine hasn't spat out a number in three days: drink. What Finch is worried about is Stanton, and Reese really doesn't want to hear that, thinks of it as a failure, and generally would prefer not to be talking about this. Except that they have to, so after a single hopeful gesture toward maybe we're cleaning up the streets he shuts up and offers genuine thoughts. Namely, check under the Machine's hood! I'm all for that. Finch is not. Finch wants it to stay sealed up for a reason, and I take his point, that once opened that's a Pandora's box that can't be closed again and can indeed be accessed by people with less pure motives. Assuming Finch's motives would be or remain all that pure in the first place, which is just another of those things on the long list of Shit They Don't Talk About.

The Future Starts So Slow (Person of Interest S2E16 Relevance)

Well. This is different.

Return of Behind the Scenes at Murderboarding

We're coming up on the holiday season, which means assorted show hiatuses. We're also coming up on the end of s2 of Person of Interest, which means we should probably use our words and tell you upcoming plans in that regard!

These next two weeks are going to be a bit odd. Haven airs Friday 11/22, but Grimm's taking a week off to air on Black Friday. No, we don't know why either. Yes, we find it a bit odd. A is going to be in LA for Thanksgiving (not smacking network execs with dead fish or trying to shake down writers for answers, family vacation), which means the next ep of Grimm will be aaaall Kitty. Just in time for another childhood legend of hers! (K: Yaaaaay.) And after that we're back to the usual doubleheader for the last two weeks of Haven, as far as we know.

Haven: season 2 has not yet been done. We intend for that to start going out in May or June of 2014, after network shows finish airing for the season.
Grimm: we still haven't decided if or when we're going to go back through the rest of season 1 and fill out all the non-Renard bits. Mainly because we don't yet have a TARDIS to write in. It seems probable that this is a thing we'll do sometime, but we can't make you any promises as yet. What we can promise is that sometime during late winter/early spring we intend to take a fangirls' working vacation to Portland. Because we're nerds, because the last vacation A took involved six to ten hours of music every day and then a week of recovery, and because Kitty hasn't had a vacation in approximately ever. We don't promise anything other than Twitter silliness from this, but we definitely promise a lot of Twitter silliness.
Person of Interest: we're scheduled to post the s2 finale on New Year's Day. Yeah, I know, what's the holidays, again? But we're working ahead as much as we can, with the intent being to free up some time during December and January, maybe. What we'd really love is if the networks released more than a couple weeks of scheduling at a time, but right now it seems likely that we'll pick up s3 during the midseason hiatus and start working through that backlog. No promises on when we'll be caught up to doing this show in realtime, but we'll tentatively guess by the middle of the back half of the season, depending on hiatuses, sweeps, etc.

All of this is with an eye toward making room for doing extras again, because we love doing essays and profiles for you guys and we miss it rather a lot. We have a list. It's 20+ potential topics long, spanning all three shows and sometimes involving two of them in a compare-contrast sort of way. I don't think we're going to run out of material anytime soon. So it's safe to say that at least part of our work over the holidays will be doing some of the essays and profiles and ensuring that the show pages are up to date! Just call us gluttons for punishment, it's as accurate as anything else.

And now the show you've all been waiting for... the quoteboard. This, folks, is why we don't livetweet.

Bring Your Alibis (Person of Interest S2E15 Booked Solid)

We've only been wanting to use the Eagles for awhile in a post title! I'm just saying. Our first look at the number of the week is a hotel maid, oh THAT'S a miserable job. She looks Eastern European, and Reese is apparently undercover as a bellhop. No indications one way or the other aside from the statistical probabilities as to whether she's victim, perp, or both. The phone conversation we get is a little more enlightening, a someone Harris talking to someone, yup, that's a Balkans-area name. I don't know enough about my Slavic languages to say offhand which ethnicity, but it's safe to say the unnamed woman being talked about as a witness saw some form of horrendous war crime. Oh goodie. I guess we know which one she is!

Finch has clever tidbits of information about hotels, probably because he's stayed in so many of them he started learning about their history and assorted secrets out of a sense of self preservation. Or sanity. Reese has snark and a look about him that says he's not really recovered yet from his ordeal with Stanton and Snow and that whole clusterfuck. And they go in the employees entrance to the hotel in question! Alright then, apparently Finch is doing fieldwork too. We don't have to wait on an explanation for why; Finch thinks that based on what little data he has on Dobrica anything that's going down will happen here because she's single, no family, no going out and socializing, puts in 60 hour work weeks. Probably just trying to make ends meet, yeah, those are some fairly significant stats that lean toward her being threatened at work. Plus maids are both in a position to acquire a great deal of knowledge while having absolutely zero power, as Finch points out. I will take a moment to appreciate (sure, with trollfaces, why not) the fanservice of the boys getting dressed for work in the locker room. Om nom suits. And Reese takes a dig at Finch in a way he hasn't in a long fucking time, and I'm not sure how Doylist that's supposed to be, trying to pry further information out of Finch about his aliases and the ways in which he uses them. On account of Finch has a request into Immigration Services for Dobrica's records from '99… yeah, that puts it at Kosovo time. FUN. Not. There's a lot to do with identity this ep, as ever on this show, but for now we'll let the boys walk out into public.

Better Make Up Something Quick (Person of Interest S2E14 One Percent)

Yes, yes, we're being watched. (Fun fact: Whenever A and I sit down to simulwatch an episode of this we generally signal that we've got the TV/computer cued up with "Are you being watched?" "Yep, you?") All we get of this week's number is a guy in a rather nice suit looking back at Reese, who is also dressed in a rather nice suit. We can guess, though we don't get an explicit meeting of the eyes or minds, that this week's number has made Reese at some point in the initial surveillance, and that he's either rich or works as a con artist among rich people, but that's about it.

All The Sinners Saints (Person of Interest S2E13 Dead Reckoning)

Kara Stanton is watching you this episode. And I don't think we need to ask whether she's victim or perpetrator: as with most people from Reese's past, she's both. Interesting that we're given her as the number of the day when the ep picks up from about the last minute of Prisoner's Dilemma, where Donnelly was the number of the hour. Either that's a number that Finch has been holding in reserve, or the Machine has once again acted deliberately to try and bring its people the most useful data available. Also, we don't get given this as a previously-on, though we get about 45 seconds of the accident, Donnelly's murder, and Reese's drugging from almost exactly the same angles and timing as last ep. I actually kind of approve of that, because they've never done previouslies before and they do need to indicate somehow that they're picking up from exactly where they left off last episode; this is as good a way as any. And serialized! I maintain the Nolans have ridiculous influence over network execs to get them to let a show as serialized as this one sometimes gets on network TV. Hopefully they can pave the way for more of it.

Number 47 Said To Number 3 (Person of Interest S02E12 Prisoner's Dilemma)

No great mystery about what the overall plot is here. Apart from the fact that Reese is still a prisoner, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a well-known and very much analyzed example in game theory that shows up incredibly often both in crime drama and in larger fields in real life. The situation is presented as follows: two participants in one or multiple crimes are arrested and imprisoned. The detectives admit in a solitary investigation with each prisoner that they don't have enough evidence to try them on the main charge and they're intending to try them on a lesser charge, with a lesser sentence. The choice for the prisoner to make then, is this:

1. Confess, assuming that the cohort will also confess, and serve a medium sentence.

2. Confess, assuming the cohort will deny the crime, and serve no time under plea agreement immunity while the cohort serves the full wrath of the justice system. Keeping in mind, the same could happen to you if you don't confess.

3. Don't confess, assuming the cohort will also refuse to confess, and serve the minimum.

There are a number of interesting things that can be extrapolated about human nature by what is observed in this situation, and large numbers of papers have been written on the subject. Feel free to chase them down! The point of all this blather is, we know from the title alone that the situation will involve most likely Reese and the other prisoners being given a choice to finger somebody else for the crime and get one sentence, confess and get another sentence, or get hung out to dry when someone else fingers them for being the Man in the Suit. Which way everyone jumps depends, of course, on who knows what.

Faces Are So Cold (Person of Interest S2E11 2 Pi R)

Papa Finch is watching you. You, in this instance, being a teenage boy looking kind of shady, kind of sad, and flashing to Finch looking horrified. Well, this can't end badly! The Machine will give us some initial data on the case of the week, a kid who died on the subway tracks, the operator thinks he might've been pushed, cue ominous noises.

Oh, those ominous noises are also because we're visiting Rikers, where Reese and his bevy of patsies in suits are getting DNA cheek swabs done. The only reason I can think of for the prolonged nature of this opening is to demonstrate on camera that yes, all four had cheek swabs done and yes, all four were identically done, there's nobody random on the inside that we don't know about. Elias isn't getting in this game right now. Etc. Which I have to admit, would be a very valid concern. They go into lineup for mug shots, I question why they're all four being lined up side by side since Donnelly is saying right now that he wants them all held in isolation, but maybe that's Rikers protocol? Also I guess isolation is a nicer word than solitary. We know what you mean, Donnelly, and we know those tactics, and we know what happens to people held for prolonged periods in solitary, particularly those without the training to withstand it. (Nothing. Good. See also those experiments with the cloth mama monkey. People need people to survive and be sane, for relative definitions thereof. See also: Reese and Finch.) Anyway, Donnelly intends to make full use of his 72 hours grace period, the warden has snark about how they look like investment bankers (no, dude, you're bad at your job, Reese still looks like a fed), and Carter has a worried expression on. Which is probably less because of Donnelly's obsessive behavior and more because of Reese being in jail, but I will use my worried face over the obsessive behavior. Even before we saw this arc to the end, we were pretty sure Donnelly was gonna get dead, on account of monofocus benefits nobody. I also severely question the assessment of Reese as the most dangerous criminal he's ever chased; no matter if he thinks Reese is working for some Chinese organization, he should maybe be after whoever's pulling Reese's strings? Yes? No. The warden delivers another gripe about how this isn't Guantanamo, which probably has more to do by far with jurisdictional dick-measuring than with any concerns about the well-being of the prisoners. Without getting into long diatribes about this country's prison system, let's just say that the focus is pretty nearly never on rehabilitation or acceptance of ex-cons into society, and at worst it breeds smarter criminals. Anyway. Carter wants to know if they're going to interrogate the prisoners, but no! Donnelly has no intention of bothering with that because they have DNA from the burned out car (remember, with the NSA guy and the assassins, 1x22) and fingerprints from Carter's skills waaaay back in the pilot. Which is a very, very nice bit of continuity for them to have kept in mind.

Lawman's Put An End To My Running (Person of Interest S2E10 Shadow Box)

You are, as usual, being watched.

This week's number appears to be a young and frightened woman, but the initial photo gives us nothing more than that. The initial recording gives us a little more; the young woman is talking to her parents, so we know they're still alive and they're important to her. She talks about how she always tried to be good and keep to the rules, and the order of these tells us that while she conflates the two, she does make a distinction between lawful and good and puts good above lawful. As do most characters we're supposed to root for in shows like this. And now, she says, she's going to break them in a big way. The whole tenor of this recording indicates that she doesn't believe she's going to be coming back from this bout of rule-breaking, or at least that she's obviously not going to have an opportunity to explain herself to her parents, whose opinion she values. While we're listening to this, a man walks into a motorcycle shop, smashes the glass top of the case, takes the keys to the one he wants, and drives off. The whole thing takes less than thirty seconds, but it's still a brazen robbery. We don't know who this man is (though it's most likely a man going by the movement and shape of the body) or how this connects to the young woman who's in trouble. Or even if it does.

Fight to be Free (Person of Interest S2E09 C.O.D)

Our number this week is a man working a blue-collar looking job of some kind, and we see him leaning on a car only through a telephoto lens, and then Reese looking over his shoulder. That is singularly uninformative. The tough-guy look could be for any number of reasons, and frankly it mostly resembles a "fuck off and don't bother me" attitude rather than an "I'm going to rip your throat out" attitude. So! The Machine has something to show us. When does the Machine not have something to show us. A stereotypical Russian accent asking his cabbie to pull over and wait for him at the park, no questions asked, he tears a short stack of $100s in half and this is his security against the cabbie taking off. Sure, okay, we'll go with that. Only we never see the Russian come back, we barely can tell from the glimpse we get of him that the cabbie is the number shown in the credits (though we can safely extrapolate that), and now it's the next morning.

First Kiss Goodbye (Person of Interest S2E08 Til Death)

The number shot (which is sort of like a money shot but not from that industry) of the week gives us Reese in an elevator bisecting two people, which is interesting. Firstly that we have two numbers this week instead of one, not the first time but usually when there's multiple numbers it's bad shit going down, and they lose at least one of them. Usually. Secondly, the positioning of Reese as bisecting them indicates that there's something going on with these two people, some sort of balance that needs to be addressed, since everyone's been so neatly framed. Thirdly, the title of the episode itself gives us a big honking clue as to what's going to happen here. So, um. Let's begin the hijinks? And why wasn't this the one where Reese and Zoe were going undercover as married?

Battle Come Down (Person of Interest S2E07 Critical)

Hey, you remember that theme I was talking about with people being used as pawns to commit murder? It's ba-ack. And Finch is in the field in a serious way this time! Usually he doesn't get in on the soon-to-come clip, but here he is in scrubs near what looks like a woman in full surgical getup. Oh goodie. Because there's not an infinity of ways to kill someone as a doctor, or an infinity of ways for a doctor to be threatened! That's nice and unhelpful, as these things go.

We also won't start cracking that one open just yet! First we have Reese batmanning down a street at night. Alone. Because where Reese walks in New York, he is always alone. (This is what happens when I spend awhile in a proper sized city at all hours of the day and night; I'm reminded that the streets are never as empty as filming would have you believe.) They have a repeat number, and by the tone of Finch's voice he's more amused than concerned. Which means that no, this is not another domestic violence situation, Reese's hackles - if they were ever up - go down, and Leon comes crashing through the window. HI LEON. We didn't exactly miss you, but watching you try to run rings around Reese and Finch is never not funny. Emphasis on try. This time Leon's gotten himself into trouble with the Russian mob, who apparently has an interest in goldfarming! If you're reading these recaplyses, I'm just going to assume you don't need the expository explanation from the episode and leave it at that. With a great deal of giggling at Reese's eyerolls while he disables the mob thugs.

You May Find Yourself (Person of Interest S2E06 The High Road)

Today's Person of Interest gives us John in short sleeves. Oooh. And otherwise appears to be a guy in a flannel shirt, so, nothing telling there. Except the polo shirt. Can we have him in short sleeves more often? Because yum.

It Never Airs Out (Person of Interest S2E05 Bury the Lede)

Also known as The Ep Where Reese Has to Flirt. But we get ahead of ourselves. Credits are the same as ever for the new season (and inquiring minds would like to know what s3 credits will bring! will the Machine do the voiceover, having been freed? because DO WANT), and our only glimpse of this week's number is of a well-dressed woman who… frankly, on first glance looks kind of like Zoe. Both in the facial structure and the kick ass and take names attitude. Well, if I'm right, then Reese will totally have at least a bit of a crush on her. Because Reese has a Type.

We open with a series of news articles and yes, if you look closely they're all written by one woman. Also one of those ubiquitous phone calls between two anonymous men who are talking about the mayoral election and how two white guys (one old and authoritarian, the other younger and presumably more charismatic) are having one hell of a race. Whee. We know what that means! Lots of money and backroom dealings being flung around, probably several of the less-than-legal variety, and therefore someone in danger. Apparently the reporter, Maxine Angelis, is on the trail of Griffin (aka old-and-authoritarian) who's supposedly cooking the books. Because nobody ever does anything stupid when money and power are BOTH involved oh wait.

Back Up Against The Wall (Person of Interest S2E04 Triggerman)

Today's opening credits give us nothing of use; Reese is tailing a young man with a determined look, and that's about it. Familiar looking kid, and if this were a whodunnit that would be enough to put him at the top of the suspect list, but it's not. It's more of a who's trying to do it to him, and why, so this gives us nothing. The opening sequence gives us marginally more. It sounds, both in the voice and in the dialogue and word choice, like a mob boss lamenting the "good old days" which likely only existed in his head. Which doesn't mean he's not going to try to impose what he feels is the old type of rule, in other words, lots of death and pain and blood. Woo! Wait, no, that other thing.

Another Dime in the Jukebox (Person of Interest S2E03 Masquerade)

Look! We have new credits now! How exciting. Many of the graphics are the same as s1 with a different computer overlay to them, or a different order, or both. Usually both. Less with the percentages and more with the random anonymized faces in the crowd, and they've been shortened down a fair bit. Finch's voiceover still gives us all the relevant (hah) information we could want, he designed the Machine for anti-terrorism but it sees everything, he and Reese work together on the so-called irrelevant list, etc. It's also much less about helping other people, this season, and much more about the fact that Finch and Reese have a Mission. I hope you all appreciate the self-restraint it's taking me to keep from making this post nothing but Blues Brothers jokes. Ahem. At any rate, they still have to give Carter and Fusco the hunted by the authorities lines, but the images accompanying them match Finch and Reese's a lot closer, they're more static, less actively hunting or being coerced by the boys, as an indicator of their newfound status within Team Machine.

Our first look at this week's number is a young woman, wealthy, possibly some kind of debutante or other social elite from her body language and wardrobe. Okay then! This should be all kinds of fun for Reese. We begin the case proper with some Machine scans of the city skyline and a phone conversation. One of those ominous ones where someone's going to get dead. None of the voices are familiar to us, so this probably isn't Elias or HR or any of the other usual players, but I'm sure the word choice here is intended to remind us of the micro-to-macro aspects of the show. Loose ends are apparently good for defenestrating? Certainly power-hungry peons are good for defenestrating. Poor random witness. With that, we move along to the library of infinite murderboards, hey Reese, you're in Finch's chair. And remarkably comfortable with what bits of his system Reese has access to in the intervening time. In this instance, he's there because he's working on Root's case, and it's amazing how over the course of a season this has gone from a symbol of Reese fucking with Finch to a symbol of him protecting Finch. Tracing her by the money again, which is about all they ever have to go on, though now at least they have an original name even if she hasn't used it in years. Plus her friend's name. Bear's there too, on a doggie bed, aww!

No Colors Anymore (Person of Interest S2E02 Bad Code)

Rather than the traditional set of previouslies we get a Machine-drive set of video clips involving the situation thus far. It culminates in Reese and Carter going to Texas, and I may be imagining it but there seems to be a slight drawl in his voice when he tells her this. If I'm not, kudos and hilarity to Caviezel, that was actually pretty cute.

Listen to the Wind (Person of Interest S2E01 The Contingency)

We begin this season, not with the opening credits, but with the Machine's very first day of existence. January 1, 2002, staring at Papa Harold! He runs multiple tests at once, really: voice recognition and language parsing, facial recognition, and whoamI, which while it's the second question asked is an extremely common computing question. Usually done in text, obviously, but its purpose is to do exactly what the Machine spits back out: establish username and permissions. Yes, Finch is admin. No, we're not getting more of a username than that. Fuck you all very much. He looks just like a proud papa, and we zoom out and the Machine begins to acquire more and more data, pausing briefly not quite six months in on Day 161 (June 10, if my math is right) which is the day that Nathan Ingram first learned that the Machine discovers far, far more malicious intent than just terrorists. Pausing again on Day 1135, Nathan and Alicia by the harbor talking about going to prison in 2005, and a final time on Day 3546, or the day Reese and Finch met, followed by remarking on the likelihood of their ending up dead very soon. One last blip of Finch promising Reese that he has a contingency if something ever happens to him, and we finally get Days 3789-91, with the Root case and a quick summary of what happened with that, and when we finally come out of Machine view it's where we left off at the end of last season with Reese demanding the Machine's help to get Finch back. This is mostly not new knowledge - I don't think we'd had the birth of the Machine sequence before, and it frames what this season is all about - but it takes not quite a minute and a half, and it provides (assuming the new viewers have a basic grounding in spy genre and a vague clue what the show is about to start with) an excellent framework for What Came Before. I approve.