The team is split up and directionless until Root shows up to lead the way. What? No, really.
****SPOILERS BELOW*****
It’s not surprising that Root would arrive and start issuing orders to the team, what is surprising is how willing Reese follows them. All season long Root has mainly interacted with Finch and Shaw, having nothing but snide comments for Reese. The feeling was mutual. Last week they worked together in an emergency since she could hear the Machine while Samaritan hunted them so Reese grudgingly followed. Actively obeying her without question is different. As long as her orders would lead him to Finch, Reese will play the obedient soldier. Its nice that the Machine called him directly instead of going through Root so he knew the Numbers this week were legitimate.
Five numbers come up including major government officials and Control herself. It irks Shaw that they have to protect (maybe kill if Control is the perpetrator) the woman that gave the order to kill her. When the danger comes Shaw has to convince Control she is there to rescue her. When asked why, Shaw takes the best line with “It’s part of the plan or the greater good or something…” Hah! Shaw is awesome. Root and Reese track down a Vigilance agent to discover that the “revolution” is coming soon. Even though she is cuckoo for coco puffs, Root does know how to show a guy a good time which turned out to be an automatic gunfire battle. Reese was a happy camper. By the way, the revolution turned out to be a blackout engineered by Vigilance. Instant chaos on the streets of New York City.
Meanwhile, Finch is engaged in a philosophical discussion about the nature of artificial intelligence with Greer. Finch managed to learn quite a bit about Greer by simply listening to him expound about his childhood in merry old War War II England. Greer was a survivor of that war, joined MI-6 and was disillusioned by global politics. Up to this point it appeared that Greer was in the all-seeing machine game for the power of controlling such a system. It’s chilling to hear Greer speak about how he does not want to control Samaritan. He wants to give all control over to the machine so it will rule man justly. Machines are logical and incorruptible so are perfect judges. You heard that right, say hello to our Machine overlords. It doesn’t seem like Greer would share a padded cell with Root for being crazy, since he seems sane in every other aspect. However, Finch has no idea how to argue with this point of view.
Vigilance uses the distraction of the blackout to kidnap politicians, Control, Greer, and Harold as a bonus. Now they will put them on trial for their crimes against the American people. Reese, Shaw, and Hersh (George if you’re feeling mean) have to team up to save their respective people. The idea of those three wreaking havoc is very exciting. Also, has to be worth some comedy gold. Who gets to drive? Really guys, you are professionals.
Amidst all these storylines, we get a flashback on the Vigilance leader Peter Collier aka Peter Brandt. Back in 2010 he was getting started as a lawyer and had a recovering alcoholic brother. Big Bad Government drops in and arrests his brother for being seen with a known terrorist. Actually, his brother was sponsoring a guy in his AA meeting, who had a distant cousin that was a terrorist. Wow, did they get that wrong. Peter’s brother ends up killing himself, and Peter now blames government surveillance for this tragedy. As he rants about government creating criminals instead of stopping them he gets a mysterious text from someone about his brother’s death. Who do you think sent the text? Some people think Nathan since he’s still alive at this time, but the way the words are constructed in the text speak of Greer. It makes no sense that Greer would be interested in giving Peter any information, but it was just the tone of the text.
The team is still divided at the end of the episode with Finch on trial, Reese and Shaw trying to find him, and Root doing something indecipherable with some computer servers. How will our team come together and save the day?
