What I’m Watching: Person of Interest

Person of Interest: Season 3, Episode 7 “The Perfect Mark” (B+)

I might say that having Reese come face-to-face with Carter for the third time in three weeks when their cases unexpectedly intersected was getting tiring, but that’s far from the case, especially since Reese didn’t seem the least bit surprised at the connection. Collier and his anti-Machine group are this season’s recurring threat, but HR continues to be a major villain, and this episode got much closer to taking them down, even if it cost a few players in the process. Ken Cosgrove, who plays Ken on “Mad Men,” got the chance to be considerably more mean-spirited than usual as con man slash hypnotherapist Hayden, who tricked his Swedish patient into selling a signed baseball worth $4.4 million to a random kid for $5. Unfortunately, his girlfriend Natalie, portrayed by dependable TV guest star Jennifer Ferrin, one-upped him and left him with a fake, getting the baseball all for herself, unconcerned with what might have happened to Hayden had Reese and company not intervened. She nearly lost her life after getting kidnapped by HR, but presumably that brush will danger will only make her more of a compelling character, and I do hope she’ll be back at some point as so many guests on this show tend to be. It did seem that Laskey was getting to be too likeable, and so it’s only reasonable that he’d have to die at just the point when Carter was starting to trust him. While Terney killed Laskey, at least his death wasn’t in vain, since Terney’s last act was to point Carter in a very helpful direction and to tip her off to the fact that the man she’s been talking to about her theories about HR is exactly the man she’s been looking for all along.