Person of Interest: Control-Alt-Delete Recap

Synopsis for 4×12: Team Machine will go to whatever means necessary to track down Shaw. While that’s happening, things are heating up in the United States government as officials try to piece together what exactly is going on in the world. The worst part? Samaritan is requesting a meeting with the President and doesn’t seem interested in taking no for an answer.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Person of Interest gave us a little bit of an emotional break this week as it wrapped up its three episode trilogy. In terms of the three episode arc, we’ve definitely entered into the falling action. Shaw is missing after a shootout in the basement of the New York Stock Exchange and the team is determined to find her. While they’re on their quest to find Shaw, the point of view switched to the American government and took a look at a day in the life of our old friend Control. Not only is she dealing with Samaritan and the antics regarding her job as a “janitor” but her superiors are dealing with a smart young man who is the voice of a very dangerous intelligence.

While the news blew up about a mysterious man and woman raising hell all over the map, Control struggled to do her job. It started with a new relevant number. New numbers, a new mission, except Samaritan refused to give Control all of the facts. When her team busted in to take down what they believed to be a terrorist cell, data came up missing. There were things she was not allowed to see because they were determined to be “too dangerous.” She pushed back but was merely scolded in return and told to trust Samaritan. They always get their guys, after all.

Speaking of Samaritan, the artificial intelligence’s child mouthpiece showed up at the White House determined to talk with the Chief of Staff. Due to being a child, the Chief didn’t take him seriously. Certainly the child was nothing more than a weird kid who stepped away from the tour! I really do love the representation and that a child was the one chosen to be Samaritan’s representative. That kid was downright creepy, and left after making a prediction and a thinly veiled threat when his request to meet with the President was shot down.

Control’s obedience began to waver this week as she questioned the intel that was being hidden. What this week’s episode did was remind viewers, through the eyes of Control and her team, that Samaritan is working on a much bigger level than just New York City. The entire scheme is much more than Reese, Root, Finch, and irrelevant numbers. It is more than New York City itself. What Samaritan is doing, it is doing on a national level and no one is safe from its influence. The worst part? Greer is in the middle of it all, meddling where he shouldn’t be meddling and flexing his muscles to show that Samaritan is truly the one in control.

That’s right folks, our baby artificial intelligence is moving up in the world.

Team Machine showed up halfway through the episode and took out Control and some of her men. They captured her in Detroit while she was after the one terrorist from earlier that hadn’t been killed and locked her up. Reese and Root were ready to torture her and it really demonstrated just how raw the team is after the loss of Shaw in last week’s episode. I feel like this week was a recovery for everyone, viewers and characters alike.

It also showed just how clueless and blind Control was to what was happening around her. Even when Finch told her about the shootout in the basement of the stock exchange, she didn’t believe him. She looked at them like they were crazy for going to the lengths they were going just to find Shaw. Little did she know that there has been something much bigger than her and the relevant numbers at play.

Control’s people show up; Reese and Root did their best to hold them off. Finch hopped in a van and installed a worm in the government agent’s phones to try and find information on Shaw. The whole thing had been planned for that very reason. They didn’t want Control, they wanted to draw in government agents, one of them being Samaritan’s eyes and ears within Control’s team, in order to hack into the encrypted frequencies Samaritan’s people use to communicate. Once they had the information they needed, they booked it on out of there and left Control to do whatever it was she was going to do.

In this case, it was track down the terrorist. This was the biggest reveal and revisited an episode from the beginning of the season. When Control confronted the young man who was suspected of being a terrorist he insisted he was not. All he’d done was won a game: nautilus. That’s right, the same game that had an entire episode dedicated to it. For some reason Samaritan built a team of people to create some sort of code, only to murder them when they became a liability. A part of me really wants to know if Greer even knows what Samaritan is doing, because I have a sinking suspicious that Samaritan is going off the reservation.

Nonetheless, even faced with another dose of truth Control pulled the trigger. She’s a soldier to the bones and completed her mission. She shot a young man caught up in the plan of a sick artificial intelligence.

She returned home to deliver the news of her success and continued on as usual. Except she certainly couldn’t un-hear what she’d been told. So, being the agent she is she went and checked out the basement of the New York Stock Exchange. Lo and behold, there was fresh paint. Maybe Finch wasn’t lying after all.