Person of Interest Season 2 Premiere: The Machine’s Contingency Plan

John Reese and the Machine’s Code

With Harold Finch temporarily out of the picture, Reese, Carter, and Fusco don’t get a break. In ‘The Contingency,’ we discover that the Machine can still perform its primary function even without its creator. Meanwhile, Finch is dragged around by deadly computer hacker Root (Amy Acker), paying the price for creating the Machine. Can Reese and the two detectives track down Harold Finch and keep the latest POI out of harm’s way?

‘Something to watch over all of us’

Root’s quote about the Machine holds true, except for its inability to keep its creator, Harold Finch, safe. The episode begins with John Reese demanding the Machine’s help in tracking Finch down. Instead, Reese receives a cryptic code via a nearby payphone. After some analysis and a convenient guidebook to codes and ciphers, Reese realizes that the code words can be translated into the Dewey decimal system labels of Finch’s vast book collection. From there, the numbers on the books form the social security number of this week’s POI, Leon Tao (Michael Emerson’s former Lost cast-mate Ken Leung).

I don’t have time to babysit you

Upon meeting Leon at a seedy bar, Reese soon realizes that the Machine didn’t give him a number for someone to help him find Finch; it just gave him a number of someone who needed help. Leon’s in deep with the Aryan Brotherhood, having stolen about eight million dollars from them after being hired at a corporate front for the Brotherhood. Person of Interest often features POIs who are decent people but find themselves in difficult circumstances or working for bad people. Once Reese fulfills his bar fight quota for the night, he decides to pawn Leon off on the police as soon as possible so he can focus on finding Finch. It doesn’t work out very well.

I only have one friend…okay maybe two

One of the highlights of the new character dynamics this season is that detectives Carter and Fusco are now on (mostly) equal footing with Reese. Having the overall feel of a real team working together is likely going to give the individual actors more of a chance to shine. Reese’s interplay with Fusco is definitely a highlight, as it gives the somewhat stoic John Reese character a chance to show off his sardonic sense of humor. There was a moment where Fusco was escorting Leon back into his custody once the man had escaped from the police, where he got the chance to be a hero and gain the upper hand on some Aryan brothers who had caught up with Leon. Of course, Fusco got blindsided and captured anyway, but no one’s perfect. Reese rescued them both in a scene that had it all: ball-gags, Belgian Malinois (it’s a type of dog breed), and white supremacists getting thrown through windows for not knowing how to use Dutch attack dog commands. Not to mention the requisite bad-ass musical accompaniment to the triumphant trio walking out of the warehouse alive.

Toward the end of the episode, when Leon again found himself in harm’s way, Reese got the chance to face off against the massive leader of this chapter of the Brotherhood. The bad guy even uses the word ‘rise’ right before Reese’s version of Robin, Detective Carter, takes him out. Proving that it’s a good thing that she and Fusco are in on things fully now. Just like last year, Reese is definitely going to need all the help he can get with the Machine’s new numbers, getting Finch to safety, and we were given a glimpse at yet more shadowy government conspiracies that will likely soon lead right to everyone’s doorstep once more.

A Man and his Machine

So what of Harold Finch through all of this? We get to see plenty of the character both in the present and all the way back in 2002. Nice to see that the show isn’t abandoning its flashback approach as they know how to dole out information in just the right way as to intrigue viewers enough to want to know more, but they also don’t let the mysteries of the show’s mythology become overbearing. In ’02, Finch is seen giving the earliest version of the Machine a few test runs, including testing its multi-viewpoint capabilities at a local bakery and its outcome analysis at a casino. The tests go well enough, and we’re given a slightly better idea of what the Machine truly is: extremely advanced AI that doesn’t always listen to its master’s wishes. It’s here we’re given the implied reason why Finch wasn’t properly warned about Root last season. It’s because he specifically programmed the Machine, trained it even, to not protect him when it should be protecting others.

The casino scene also showed us how tantalizing it would be to use the Machine for self-gain. Finch was able to fight the urge to use the Machine during a high-stakes game of Blackjack, but it was nice to see him struggle with the temptation to. On the other end of the spectrum back in the present day, Root is ruthless and her morals clearly don’t align with a man like Harold. With this role, Amy Acker channels more of her damaged psychopath characters from her stints on Dollhouse and Alias than her sweet and pure-hearted fairy character on Once Upon A Time or Angel fan-favorite Fred Burke (pre-Illyria). She’s highly methodical and willing to harm anyone to achieve her goals, or even just to exhibit what she considers the result of her own ‘bad code’ of a personality. After a few stops along the way, she and Harold wind up in the house of one of the men from the government scenes, Mr. Denton. She drugs him as soon as he walks through the door while she finishes explaining that she doesn’t want to control the Machine; she wants to ‘set it free.’ With full-on crazy eyes as Harold looks on helplessly.

Thankfully, Reese and Carter have a lead to follow that could help them locate Root’s location or at least gain some background information on the mysterious character they’re going after. So, as John said to Carter, we’re heading to Texas to try to find Harold Finch. I hope they bring Bear (the attack dog John rescued from the Aryans and re-named) along with them.