What I’m Watching: Person of Interest (Penultimate Episode)

Person of Interest: Season 5, Episode 12 “.Exe” (B+)

It saddens me greatly that this is the second-to-last episode of this show, and it’s even worse that it’s ending while I’ve been very busy with work and haven’t had a chance to properly give it the attention it deserves. Rest assured – I will watch the finale undisturbed and give it my all, but I’ll admit that this review is being written at least a full week after I watched the episode. What I do remember is that it’s most powerful to see Finch embracing the machine as an all-seeing ally in the way that Root used to, working alongside it to move through impossible situations with ease and grace and even show up to save the day for Reese and Shaw, two heavyweights who tend to do that more often than the bespectacled engineer. Though they weren’t nearly as awesome as the simulations that the machine went through when Shaw got caught by Samaritan operatives last season, it was definitely compelling and eye-opening to see how each of the team members could have ended up, particularly Shaw as a conscienceless assassin and Root as a willing Samaritan proponent. Greer sacrificing his own life so that he could kill Finch was his downfall, as the machine was able to save Finch and help him to take that final step to bring down the system. I’m so excited to see where the final episode goes and how it ties up this show’s threads, and I’m definitely going to miss this show for a number of reasons.