“Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

The POI team, for the most part, spends this episode on the outskirts of the action, never directly interacting with the case of the week subject–Jason Ritter’s Simon Lee–until the end of the episode; rather, they resort to tactics such as crashing a random car in order to get him to turn a certain way, and this all serves to highlight the necessity of keeping a cover, of avoiding Samaritan’s watchful eye. However, this is also an episode that clearly delineates the mindsets of our main characters, forcing them to confront the idea of Samaritan, of the past, the present, and the future.

We, for example, observe Reese in his therapy sessions, and we see a man who is still haunted by–yet also driven by–the death of Carter. He is a man who takes it upon himself to save those around him, who tries to grasp onto what semblance of good he can find in the world, and when Campbell remarks that he “either has a hero complex or a death wish”, we recognize that perhaps the answer is: all of the above. When the doctor says that Reese is “simulating trust and closeness”, we recognize that it ties into the pervasive idea of artificiality. Therapy sessions are staples of television dramas, but they’re so widely used because they serve as a simple outlet through which to observe a character, and that’s the case here. In an episode in which everyone’s outlooks of the world are laid bare for all to see, it makes sense that we’d spend the time we spend with Dr. Campbell.

When I say “laid bare”, I’m referring to one of my favorite dynamics on television now: Root and Finch. We clearly see how Finch’s views of the Machine developed, as the Machine is not really something that he threw everything into, leading to him experiencing the fruits of his labor, as much as it is the idea that only one out of many machines didn’t try to kill him. The Machine is the odd man out, and right from the beginning, that breeds wariness within Finch because he doesn’t know with whom its allegiances may lie. He insists that they’re “all numbers to the Machine”, that they “cannot understand these intelligences”, that he needs to “constrain and control” in order to prevent escape. He assumes the worst about the Machine and places it in chains, whereas someone like Greer allows Samaritan to ascend above him and to freely go about business; interestingly enough, Samaritan’s idea of “humanity needing to be governed” draws parallels to Finch’s efforts to control.

Yet, the true contrast in this episode is not between Finch and Greer, but rather between Finch and Root. In simplest terms, the former is a pessimist and the latter an optimist with regards to the Machine, and the conversation they have about the Machine is easily one of the best scenes this show has ever produced. Finch picks up on the fact that Root hasn’t been spoken to in a while, looking at her as lost, but that is countered with: “I’m not lost; I’m scared. We’re losing, but I know where I’m heading.” There’s a difference between ‘lost’ and ‘losing’, as the former implies that it’s all over and in the record books, while the latter implies that there’s still a chance. Here, we see two people with very different philosophies debating–essentially, this is a major discussion surrounding God, just without explicitly using religion–past and present and future fusing as they assert their varying ideas, and at the end of it all, we’re left with the following: “You are a brilliant woman, a comrade, a friend.”

It’s a beautifully played moment by Emerson and Acker, for one, and there’s something heartwarming about seeing these two people acknowledge their friendship. They’re more similar than earlier episodes may have had us believe, and like the rest of the team, Root has had to constantly shed her skin in order to avoid detection. However, she’s also still the Root we know and love, and after a pretty damn awesome shootout through the floor, she essentially taunts Samaritan, telling it to kill her if at all possible. The war is just getting started, and not everyone will make it out alive.

It’s about where you end up, not where you begin.

GRADE: A-

OTHER THOUGHTS:

-Please, though, Root. Make it out alive.

-That’s Wrenn Schmidt as Dr. Iris Campbell, and she’s previously played Kate in The Americans and Julia in Boardwalk Empire. Between her and Root’s Sarah Cook, it is a good week in the POI universe for redheads.

– “Whose car was that?” “Someone who needs a good mechanic.”

-I would definitely watch a spinoff about Root as a pastry chef.

– “I want you to give Shaw a message.” “I think she already knows.”

-I was seriously afraid for Root’s life in this episode, and that definitely exemplifies more of the humanity of her character now; beforehand, we didn’t see much of it–she was more akin to Martine and the God Mode–but now, she is also like the rest of the team.

-I didn’t even talk about the case of the week in the main review, but election rigging is definitely a nice shakeup from the first few COTWs this season. Jason Ritter is good as Simon Lee, and his character is tied in with the Machine plot through the sentence: “Sometimes, it’s better not to know.” He ends up not knowing that he was right all along, and with that in mind, Finch poses the following question to Root: “Are you comfortable not knowing the Machine’s aims?” And, in response, we get one of the biggest points the episode makes: the difference between the Machine and Samaritan is Harold Finch.

Photo credit: CBS, Person of Interest