Photo: John Paul Filo/CBS
Warning: Spoiler Alert
Harold Finch asked a very thought-provoking question as the latest episode of the CBS series “Person Of Interest” concluded, a rhetorical question, that he didn’t expect an answer to. The creator of “The Machine,” asked his associate Root, “How much wrong, are we willing to do, in the name of right?” We’ll get to the reason for the question, a bit later, but we live in an era of shades of gray, it’s difficult to decide what’s right or wrong and how far we’re willing to attain our goals. Though, Finch, Reese and Company, are always looking out for people’s best interests, what are they’re limits of going too far?
The episode begins as Sameen Shaw’s in her cover identity of the wheel person for a gang of thieves, she’s watching her timer getting close to zero, and she’s seen no sign of the gang. Her phone rings, Finch’s on the line telling Shaw about the new number, when the sound of gunfire stops him in midsentence. Shaw tells him she needs to hang up, the gang’s involved in a shootout with the folks they’re robbing, a cruiser pulls up just as Shaw pulls away, but she loses the cops. The three guys get out of the car whooping and hollering, until Sameen beats the tar out of them, then throws their bounty and their car keys in the river. She reiterates that she told them when she first joined, you’re late and I walk, so she did.
Shaw heads over to Reese’s car and he’s scoping the new number, a wine-dealer named Tomas Koroa, an American citizen, who spends half the year in the States and the other half abroad. Shaw’s smitten at first sight and tells John to get back to the station and his cover identity. She watches him for hours work a series of bars, making sales and she starts to think he’s legit. He heads to his car and it appears two men and a woman are about to jump him, but instead they all get in the car. Not a block away Koroa, drives the car through a jewelry store’s front window and perform a smash and grab, in less than ten seconds, Shaw’s impressed.
Harold and Root are conducting a separate operation, trying to limit the damage Samaritan can cause through the man the Artificial Intelligence system put into the state of New York’s Governor’s Mansion, Nick Dawson. Root’s new cover’s a French nanny, and it will help her get a bond with a man that Dawson’s allotted $12 million to, Jared Wilkins whose running a program called “OTPS,” which nobody can figure out, is.
Harold tells Shaw and Reese that the M/O from the robbery, points to Koroa’s crew being the “Hole In The Wall Gang,” a group Interpol’s been trying to catch for seven-years, when the gang’s robbed 50-high-profile targets on four continents, during that period. The woman’s got a history of drug problems, so the plan’s for Fusco to bust her and Sameen’s taking her place. Fusco pulls out a tiny plastic packet out of her purse and she’s behind bars, now Sameen’s got to impress Tomas and she does.
Root’s now in place with Wilkins as a nanny for his son, she syncs his phone and computer, and we find out “OTPS,” stands for One Tablet Per Student, a program Wilkins designed with the greatest intentions, giving every student in the state of New York a Tablet, advancing the learning process throughout the State. Unfortunately Samaritan’s funding it and Root and Finch believe they’ll use the Tablets, to spy in each house they’re placed in. Roots phone goes loco, and Harold says it’s Samaritan, so she throws her phone in the fish tank and runs out of apartment without saying goodbye.
Shaw gets hired by the gang and the job’s in twenty-minutes. They’re robbing a hotel safe, getting paid two million each for the job, Sameen’s assignment’s to dress to kill and get the hotel manager to show her the vault, so she can store her jewelry in it. The older manager’s all too happy to give her the tour, until she knocks him out with a right to the jaw. They open the vault, put a chain on the vault and pull it out of the building the second fireworks for veteran’s day explode, covering the noise. By dragging it on the street, the safe ended up with a hole in its back, giving Tomas a starting point to break in. He opens it with the help of a blow torch, then pulls a metal tray out of the safe, containing a warning label. He opens it, but there aren’t jewels, just ten vials of some amber liquid, each labeled. At that point, the other two gang members try to shoot Koroa, but Shaw gets him out of the room, but they couldn’t recover the tray. Finch realizes the customer told the other two guys to waste Tomas.
Turns out that the vials were filled with a deadly, level-four infectious virus called MarV, highly contagious like Ebola, but more deadly. It got smuggled into the States by a Doctor Juliana Petrova, a member of the CDC, as it’s banned to bring it into the States. The client apparently wants to release it on a mass scale in the United States. Tomas and Shaw find the other two robbers, dead in a field without the virus, but Finch’s tracked the vials to Knight And Morris, an almost impenetrable establishment to store valuables. But Harold says that without knowing the client’s name they’re stuck, but then Koroa recognizes a familiar face, that everyone thought died, former gang member Marko Jeutice. Turns out the former gang member felt abandoned when imprisoned, faked his death and plotted his revenge against his former mates.
A new wrinkle develops, as two Relevant operatives, one of whom Shaw trained have arrived on the scene with the instructions to eliminate all involved, then destroy the virus. Harold thinks, that should end his team’s involvement, but Sameen realizes Government Agencies tend to make last-minute changes, such as not destroying the virus, so they remain on the case.
Getting back to Jared Wilkins and “OTPS,” Root and Finch, come up with a plan, for Root to disable the camera feeds and Harold to sabotage the machines, so that they catch fire and get destroyed. Root, knocks out the cameras and Harold dressed as a janitor, sabotages the computers, Samaritan contacted a tech-guy offering him three grand to get the cameras up in ten minutes. Harold finishes, just before Root shot the techie and they got out.
Harold directs Shaw and Koroa to the vault, Tomas opens it and grabs the metal tray, but all the virus’ gone, they then see Marko standing outside holding all the vials. They’re about to inject Sameen and Koroa, but Shaw overpowers a couple of guys then shoots Marko. They grab the virus and start to leave, but they run into Rice the Relevant agent she trained. He’s ticked off at his superiors as he and his partner got told to bring the virus in rather than destroy it, so he let them take it, as he knew Sameen would destroy it.
In another part of town Jared Wilkins dreams have literally gone up in smoke, as he’ll never get another grant. Harold says he looked at the code of the Tablets and there’s only one questionable line of code Samaritan put in the machines, which is when he uttered the line you read up top. All that good gone to waste.
The Story Continues Next Tuesday at 10:00 pm on CBS.
