Person of Interest: Search and Destroy Recap

Synopsis for 4×19: Team Machine has to try to save the life of the CEO of an antivirus company who becomes Samaritan’s next target. Root puts herself at risk in an attempt to retrieve a briefcase that has some sort of relevance to the Machine. Team Samaritan continues to make advances toward world domination. Wait, what?

Rating: ★★★★☆

On this episode of Person of Interest, Team Machine struggled hard against Samaritan’s people to protect a CEO who ended up knowing too much. The CEO, Saul, found out that all of his records had been released to the public. He was the owner of an anti-virus company that somehow got hacked. The documents leaked insinuated that he had been embezzling from his own company. It started out as a race to try and save his career, which didn’t work out too well for him.

He busted into the board meeting only to find out that he was being fired. Even when he tried to defend himself, it all fell flat. His fellow board members brought up his mental illness and decided he was not fit to run the company. As he was told the bad news, Team Machine had an ear on the conversation through Zoey, who had been brought in by the board to try and clean up the mess that had been made.

Meanwhile, as this is happening, Root is on her own mission. She stole a mysterious suitcase after gassing everyone in a restaurant and now has the owners of the case coming after her.

As Team Machine followed Saul, they found him sitting at a bar waiting to meet with one of the other board members to try and sway him. During their conversation, it was revealed that Saul, in a roundabout way, knew about Samaritan. He wanted to get back into the company to try and find proof of this artificial intelligence that was out to get him, but his co-worker wanted nothing to do with it. He refused to help, leaving Saul stuck breaking into his own company to try and get to the bottom of it.

We got another peek inside Samaritan as Martine is eager to go after Root. Greer said something rather profound as a commentary on Root’s behavior. He almost seemed disappointed that she had to be their adversary because of her intelligence, but she was “honoring the wrong God.” She had her Machine, but Greer seemed certain that Samaritan would be more powerful.

They’re also set on making sure Saul doesn’t get out alive. Breaking into his company becomes dangerous and Reese has to save the day. As he rushed Saul into a car and sped off, they ended up getting in a wreck during the chase. Right as everything seemed like it was going to go poorly and Reese was going to be arrested, Root showed up and saved the day. With Saul ushered into her car and Reese battered but not defeated, Team Machine rushed to safety.

With Saul safely in their custody, the team began to try to figure out why exactly Samaritan wanted him dead. Their search led them to an underground hideout, assumed to be one of Samaritan’s facilities. After they disabled the cameras they stepped into the belly of the beast and made their way in. They easily subdued the staff and began to do a search to try and ascertain what exactly it was Samaritan’s people were doing.

The answer wasn’t good. All of Saul’s servers had been hacked and redirected. All of that power was being used to conduct a global search. “Of what?” you might ask, and I certainly did too. The big reveal chilled me. Samaritan is using the servers to try and locate where the Machine’s servers are being kept. If you’ll remember back a few seasons, the Machine did a nice job of transporting itself to a safe location somewhere unknown.

Now Samaritan is close to finding it, and if they do, then the Machine might very well be sunk.

Of course this brought up all sorts of questions for the ever inquisitive Saul. Unfortunately, Team Machine didn’t have time to explain as Samaritan’s people closed in on them. Nearly trapped in an underground hideout, the team had to make a quick getaway that ended in a fire fight. Plus, for Root and Martine, it ended in a fist fight fueled by lingering hard feelings regarding Shaw’s disappearance.

After Reese managed to pull Root off of Martine before she killed the other woman, Team Machine escaped. Their number, however, disappeared into the night and the team had to leave without him.

As the case came to a rather unknown conclusion, the inside of the case was finally revealed to Root. In it was a simple Faberge egg which she promptly smashed. Apparently the Machine didn’t want the egg, or at the very least didn’t want someone else to have it. However, my assumption is that the real prize was the heavy duty briefcase that could be dropped from an airplane and survive the fall without a crack. We’ll probably be seeing that again.

Samaritan managed to snag Saul and they brought him to their headquarters. He was finally given the answers he had so desperately sought out from Team Machine. It was also revealed that Samaritan couldn’t find the Machine, at least not yet. The Machine wasn’t on any known network, so even Saul’s program couldn’t be used to locate her. Saul asked to see Samaritan. He wanted to look God in the eyes.

They shot him. He got to see God, but not in the way he had probably hoped for.