While I wasn't crazy about the idea of keeping Fusco out of the mix for this final showdown with Samaritan, so soon after he finally landed a sweet spot on Team Machine, it still fit that the trio who dove headlong into the belly of the beast this week was Finch, Reese, and Shaw.

And while separate from the massive endgame going on inside the NSA, Fusco's story still managed to not only wrap up the missing persons mystery (as in, who was the Samaritan agent behind all the tunnel killings?) but it also nicely circled back to Fusco's own pilot episode origins as he was now the one in the back of the car, being driven out to the bog to take a bullet from Agent LeRoux (who we met back in the season premiere).Okay, so Fusco's side story wasn't the best, considering how close we are to the absolute end, but the rest of the episode was tremendously strong. Because intercut with Finch's dark crusade to end Samaritan by any means, even at the cost of his own creation, were little outtakes depicting what life would have been like had the Machine never been built. Which mean more awesome cyber-profiling and imaginings from the Machine that showed us, and Finch, that things wouldn't have been better or worse, just different. Though Samaritan was an inevitability regardless and both Root and Shaw would have wound up as its agents - Root knowingly (a brief, emotional "bad code" return by Amy Acker here) and Shaw unknowingly. Carter (and Jessica) would have lived, but Reese would have taken his own life, so I loved the push and pull here.Also, how about those returning faces? Not just the recently deceased Root, but also Nathan, Cole, Szymanski, and Henry Peck (if not just to get murdered by Shaw). No actual glimpse of Carter, unfortunately, but it was enough to see that she'd prospered and managed to take down HR without getting killed. Perversely, it was the fact that Fusco didn't become a better man that helped her do it.Ambiguity loomed large in ".exe," co-written and directed by showrunner Greg Plageman, as Finch had to make some big judgement calls. He basically targeted Samaritan for destruction not just because of all the people he'd lost personally, but because Samaritan could never be trusted to look after humanity, even from its already hardline/lethal "needs of the many" stance. There's a chance that it could solve world hunger, cure various diseases, and lead to a better quality of life for most people - but then things could also go the other way, and that's what Finch couldn't abide. He wouldn't allow something non-human to take over for humanity even if humanity was meant to ultimately destroy itself.This episode had a ton of Finch and a lot of Greer, which was a very good thing. Plus, their standoff at the end, when Greer sacrificed himself in order to eliminate Finch, was a superb end for the character as he was a true believer right to the finish. Also, after already witnessing Greer's death in a simulation, his real demise had to be totally different than just getting killed by someone else. It needed something more, an extra layer. So "Queen Sacrifice" it was. He would gladly fall if it meant Samaritan would survive.I have to admit, the "Dashwood" password threw me a bit. At first, I thought it might have been Finch's real last name. To my shame, it took me a while before I landed on the Sense and Sensibility book that he used to propose to Grace - despite Shaw reading it earlier in the episode even. Still, that was a great moment because it meant that, in retrospect, Greer killed himself for nothing as the Machine could have activated the virus anyhow.