Review: Person of Interest 4.14- "Guilty"

Person of Interest goes old school, and Team Machine is back down to Finch and Reese. Time to save the Number of the week.

******SPOILERS BELOW******

Now that Shaw is missing, and Root has run off to sulk (no judging since Reese did the same thing this time last year) the team is down to Finch, Reese and Fusco. Considering all the loss Team Machine has suffered in the last few years the core team decides to exclude Fusco as they get back to dealing with the Numbers. It’s a great call back to season one when Reese mentions that they always expected to die for the Numbers, but what they didn’t see coming were people dying for them.

Harold has jury duty, which is a strange problem for him since he is a world-class hacker, but he doesn’t want to draw Samaritan’s attention. Once he reports to jury duty he tries a simple “dismiss juror” and suspiciously ends up on “add juror”. Methinks, the Machine is manipulating things. Also, the lovely Emma (Blair Brown from Fringe) is his juror-mate so it looks like Harold is supposed to be on the jury. Have to give credit to Harold for his jury duty dodge. “We are all being watched by an intelligent super computer!” Hit them with the truth to make yourself look insane. Scarily brilliant, Harold. Too bad it didn’t work out.

Reese confirms that the new number is indeed on the jury (Emma), so the race is on to discover if she is victim or the perpetrator. Theories come and go, but the highlight is banter between Reese and Finch. This includes the amazing morse code light conversation. Absolutely hilarious.

Let’s not forget the amazing return of Zoe to the mix. She brings flare and style to the show, plus renders Reese speechless on occasion. Reese passes on a post case hookup with her because he has a thing for his therapist? Zoe has a point that Reese cannot have a relationship with a civilian and said therapist is hiding something. Iris brings out an interesting vulnerability in Reese which is fascinating to watch, but why is she covering for him? If she is from a long line of cops, why lie about someone posing as a cop? It does not seem likely that Reese’s hotness is the reason. Well, maybe.

The case resolves as expected and has very little in the way of surprises, but the character moments make it worth it. Next week Samaritan is back to its old tricks, so back to arc storylines. This episode was a nice break from the epic storyline.