Shaw’s day job of being a thief works to her advantage for her real job as she goes undercover as, you guessed it – a thief.
*****SPOILERS BELOW******
Shaw is heavily featured in this episode with ever expanding overlapping storylines. It’s not clear if she is still working at the cosmetic counter any longer, but she is definitely moonlighting as a smash and grab get away driver. “Romeo” and his crew went past her time limit so she quite literally dumped him with a fist to the face. Shaw bounces from that job to her Team Machine duties where she and Reese are staking out the new Number, Tomas. Reese’s reaction to Shaw’s enthusiasm about Tomas’ good looks was pure comedy gold. They are like siblings that thoroughly enjoy teasing each other. After a bit of stalking they discover Tomas is part of a highly trained robbery crew. Now they just have to figure out a way to insinuate Shaw on the team.
Meanwhile, back at HQ Finch is working on the Number, grading papers and dealing with crazy French nanny Root (or Mary Poppins as she calls herself). Root and Finch work to undermine the first order of business of Samaritan’s illegally elected Governor. Root infiltrates the home the of the guy running the project which ends up being tablets for kids. This seems like a great goal, but they are sure it’s just a method for Samaritan to influence young minds. So 3D tablet machines go up in flames with a bit of help from Harold. After the fact Harold wonders how wrong an act has to be before it doesn’t matter that its for good. Basically, where is the line for them in their pursuit to stop Samaritan? What an interesting moral dilemma for our team.
Back to Shaw’s undercover mission. While she tries to charm Tomas into letting her join the team, Root’s voice pops up in her ear with commentary. It seems Root is a tad jealous about Shaw’s blatant interest in Tomas. Root and Shaw’s relationship is about as complex as Root and Harold’s. Hmm, maybe its just Root.
The heist turns out to be a very bad virus instead of the jewels as Tomas was told. Also, the reason his number came up was because to the rest of the crew was paid to kill Tomas at the end of the job. Shaw saves the day, but now the bad guys have a lot of deadly virus in the city. Team Machine has to figure out a way to steal it back from a vault.
This episode seemed like a stand alone with slight Samaritan overtones, but the great thing about this show is without warning it can be a bigger story. Case in point, once the virus gets out it goes from being an irrelevant number to relevant. Two agents sent by Control show up to steal the virus, and plot twist, Shaw trained one of them. A shoot out ensues between all the interested parties, and the Reese-Fusco masked duo appears to distract the agents/assassins. Fusco does not appreciate being dragged into the fight without full knowledge of who he’s fighting. Fusco makes a valid point, and surely he would have brought a bigger gun to fight those guys. Like a rocket launcher. Shaw’s student actually lets her go when he suspects his new bosses might use the virus instead of destroying it. He even attempts to erase footage of Shaw from the surveillance tape. No good though, since Samaritan rebuilds the erased sectors and tries to identify Shaw’s image. Uh, oh.
Coming at the image from a new angle, will Samaritan be able to figure out who Shaw is or will the fake program to make her seem irrelevent override it?
