Warning: Fullfor the episode follow...

Though I was prepared to score this excellent episode even higher had it decided to go fully dark, "Death Benefit" was a still a spectacular way to take us into the final act of Season 3. Its strengths lying in its cunning ability to turn the prospect of Samaritan into something almost apocalyptic. If this were The Dead Zone (movie or TV series) Finch would have touched Congressman McCourt's hand and gotten psychic flashes of mushroom clouds.Because sometimes the tech talk on POI can get a little esoteric. And so we're always looking for the way the writers are able to drive their point(s) home a little better. And while I had gathered that Decima and their Samaritan program were going to be the main villains to take us out of the season, I didn't realize how much I needed to be sold on them as a true global threat until I watched this episode. And saw that The Machine itself had, for the first time, purposefully turned Finch and Reese into a hit squad. And that the number they'd been given (from the backdoor, not Relevance) was a target, not someone to protect. Wow. That hit like a ton of bricks.Again, it was done so well that I actually believed that Reese killed McCourt. And the episode let me think that too, for a solid three minutes or so while "Medicine" by Daughter played over the last few scenes. I was prepared to go there too. I was in. I didn't know what it would have done to the team, but the swerve worked for me. Alas, Reese didn't pull the trigger, so the biggest moment wound up being the mezzo-betrayal by The Machine. Which was still a huge piece of business. In fact, The Machine making that "sacrifice the one for the many" decision on its own almost seemed like the sort of abuse that Samaritan would supposedly leave itself, and us, open to. So there was definitely a frightening "fighting fire with fire" element going on here.And for those of you out there who've seen Cap 2, or watched the past couple episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., then you might have also gotten a kick out of the thematic parallels. With this show representing a slightly more grounded version of a "dystopian security state," of course. Especially when Greer said things to Garrison like "People want to be protected, they just don't want to know how." It's all essentially the "relinquishing of personal freedoms in exchange for safety." Hail Decima!And so the show ended with Samaritan being granted access to New York, and Greer using this beta testing ground to track down Finch. Setting us up for what's sure to be a nasty Enemy of the State-style cyber hunt. I do hope that it goes above and beyond, considering that we already went through the "everyone in the city wants to kill Reese" plot last year in "The Crossing."Meanwhile, Root was being kept super busy with all the Relevance threats - jaunting from city to city, stopping terror threats. In fact, it was sort of weird to have Root pull Shaw from the mix right at the beginning only to have her send Shaw back a few scenes later. Not only did I not get to see Root and Shaw team up for a side mission, but Shaw just seemed to get dumped back into D.C. in order to save Reese and Finch at the last second. I did however like the slow reveal of the restaurant where Root and Shaw were having drinks being filled with a dozen knocked out arms dealers.Even though we probably won't see them go head to head in a physical sense, Samaritan is kind of like The Machine's KARR - if you'll allow me to make a dumb Knight Rider/KITT reference. The evil doppelgänger version of The Machine that represents all the worst elements of technology gone wrong. With different designs and colors to help designate one system's screen from the other.