What I’m Watching: Person of Interest

Person of Interest: Season 5, Episode 10 “The Day the World Went Away” (B+)

This was a darker episode than usual, starting with the one character we’ve never seen indulge in any violent behavior talking like he was suicidal, ready to give up on his principles to ensure that Samaritan didn’t win – or even that the machine wouldn’t survive since it too was too dangerous. Finch being identified as the new number because he went back to the coffee shop where he first took Grace ten years earlier put this team on edge, and even if Finch was the perpetrator rather than the victim, the fact that the machine let loose six hundred inmates so that he could escape is extremely worrisome. We’re at that point where irreversible things happen with just three episodes left in this show’s run, and some of them are truly devastating. Elias getting shot in the head in front of Finch was a shock simply because he seemed so in control of things and then went down with just one bullet. Finch being too valuable to be killed also made the death of those around him all the more resounding since anyone he knows is expendable. Root made a terrific point to Shaw at an inappropriate time about how they’re technically all simulations, and that kind of talk should have been a warning that something bad was going to happen to her. The machine calling Finch and choosing her voice was the most heartbreaking way to find out that she was dead, and even though it’s just for a few episodes, I’m really going to miss her. Over the course of the whole series, Root transformed from a fearsome villain to the most dynamic hero, and Amy Acker’s performance was truly fantastic. Now that she’s gone and Finch has gone rogue, I’m sure the final three episodes – now airing just once a week – are going to be incomparably intense.