What I’m Watching: Person of Interest

Person of Interest: Season 3, Episode 21 “Beta” (B+)

This wasn’t the most exciting episode this show has ever produced, but it still had some strong elements and set up a truly fascinating situation that is sure to have consequences in the show’s concluding episodes of the season. Seeing camera recordings from within the Samaritan system rather than our familiar machine was a subtle but wholly crucial difference, most of all illustrating the fact that the bad guys really can see everything that the good guys see. Root helping them to avoid cameras so that they could stay hidden and smuggling them in and out of New York City was entertaining, and it’s great to see how the show has now framed its protagonists, with the all-knowing Root, able to talk to the machine in ways Reese and even Finch can’t, swooping in to save the day on multiple occasions, all the way frustrating Reese and Shaw and freaking out Fusco. It was weird not to see Finch for the bulk of the episode, instead hearing about the man he once was from Grace as she talked about him to Greer. Telling Reese to kill them all if they harmed Grace in any way was monumental, but fortunately the prisoner exchange went well, complete with a convenient job offer and plane ticket from an unusually logistically-minded Reese. Greer offering tea to Grace and then sitting down to chat with his new guest was eerily peaceful, especially when contrasted with his omniscient order to Virgil to kill himself.