Warning: Spoiler Alert
There’s always been a strong female presence on the CBS series “Person Of Interest,” even when that presence was just Taraji Henson as Detective Jocelyn Carter, in the show’s first season. However the latest episode of the series, entitled “Skip,” was jam-packed with female characters, most of them familiar faces, however a critical member of the cast, was a new character. Bounty-Hunter Frankie Wells, who traveled to New York City, from her home in Florida to bring back a criminal, who skipped the state named Ray. Frankie, also was the first number “The Machine,” assigned Harold Finch and John Reese, in the episode, but another women, who we’ve met previously, also got into danger according to Finch’s creation.
This edition, was a bit more disjointed than usual, with people coming and going throughout the hour and the action at times became a tad complicated. While not all plans by our heroes, worked out ideally, situations that verged on becoming deadly, fizzled out without anyone suffering permanent bodily harm. Friendships, however did take a beating in a couple of cases, one likely irreparably, the other likely to get smoothed over in the near future. We also saw two things, I mentioned over the last few weeks, come closer to fruition, subjects we’ll touch on, a bit later.
Our first scene’s at a very high-stakes gambling room, where admission alone costs the player’s 20 grand. Reese is sitting at one of the poker tables, with quite a lot of money in front of him, when the hostess Frankie Wells, tells John she’s glad he’s beating one of his opponents, whose supposedly mean. Frankie backs away smiling with a drink order in her hand and ends up spilling on her employer, the man running the room, whose named Ray. He tells her she’s fired, she says she really needs the job and he grabs her by the fist and drags her out of the room.
Reese follows them about a minute later, surprised to see Wells beating the stuffing out of Ray and he intercedes and Ray takes off, she then takes John on and Reese eventually takes out his gun, just as three enforcers come out, brandishing weapons. Frankie takes off, Reese tells them he’s a cop and reaches for his badge, but Frankie stole it, he however got her cellphone.
Harold’s at the subway-car, when Root shows up and says it’s been a long time since they saw each other and Finch excuses himself as he tells her he’s meeting someone for coffee. She replies judging by the color in his cheeks he’s meeting a woman and he actually is, Elizabeth Bridges the woman he met and hung with during a conference in Hong Kong earlier in the season.
At that point he put a Trojan Horse in her computer, as he knew her work would be wanted by Samaritan and they’re taking her algorithm formula to utilize in their programs. The program that Harold installed is dormant, but when she tells him the news he tells her he wants to take her out to dinner the next night to celebrate, he’ll activate it then.
John returns to the station banged up when Dr. Iris Campbell, John Reilly’s Department Psychiatrist, tells John she can no longer have him as a patient and recommends one of her colleagues. John asks what’s wrong and she dodges the questions, he asks if things he’s revealed scared her and she says she doesn’t want to discuss it. As someone, whose really not a “Shipper,” but wanted John and Iris to get together, I was rather bummed.
Reese tells Fusco that Frankie stole his shield and Lionel tells him he needs to get it back yesterday, that he’ll get a long suspension if brass finds out. John starts searching through her cell phone and he thinks he’s come up with the location, she’s heading to next.
Wells’ at a bar flashing the shield briefly, saying her name’s Detective Reilly and she wants to talk with one of the employees Athena. Reese says he wants his badge back and she tries to run, but he catches her and cuffs her, taking his shield back in the process. Suddenly Ray enters the bar and she screams at him to stop, even though she’s cuffed. He runs out to the street, with her on his tail and Reese chasing the two of them, Ray starts to try to cross the street, but a car swerves to miss him, just then a young women pulls up and tells him to get in.
Ray looks at her and smiles, says Athena and jumps in the passenger seat, when they pass John and Frankie the young woman yells Hey Reilly. It’s the con-girl known as Harper Rose that we met in the episode entitled “Blunt.” At that time I said I thought that Annie Ilonzeh, who plays Harper, looked like a great fit to become part of the cast and this episode just solidified those beliefs.
Harold calls Root and tells her he needs her help with Elizabeth Bridges as “The Machine,” made her a number shortly after his meeting with her for coffee. Harold and Root trail Bridges for a while, but then she gets into a verbal argument with her ex-husband who’s trying to get her to come back to him, Root and Finch left at that point.
The two head back to Harold’s office in his guise as college Professor Whistler and he freaks out, thinking that somehow Samaritan’s connected Finch and Whistler. Root tells him that’s ridiculous as he’d be dead if Samaritan knew where he was, she blames Elizabeth Bridges’ ex-husband, who likely saw them having coffee together.
Back to John and Frankie, as they follow Harper’s car, thinking she and Ray are inside heading somewhere, another vehicle T-Bones Harper’s car and a bunch of thugs step out of the other vehicle and start shooting up Harper’s car, only to find some teenage boy inside, nearly in tears, saying she told me I could have the car.
John and Wells start taking out the thugs, it looks like they’ve got them all, when recovers and knocks out Reese with a blow to the head from behind him. Then another guy gets up and the two hold Frankie’s arms, an older man steps out of the car wearing a fedora and says Miss Wells, I’m Mr. Worthy, how you doing? She’s then knocked out by one of the thugs.
Root tells Harold she needs to leave as she’s on a mission of her own, she needs to take care of, when Finch asks if he can help she kisses him and says he’s a dear friend, but she has to do this on her own. Harold tails Root and a little while later he enters an office she’s in and asks if Elizabeth Bridges became a number because Root’s going to kill her and she admits that’s the case.
Reese and Wells find themselves handcuffed together in a butcher shop when they come to, Worthy asks Frankie where Ray’s at and she says she doesn’t know. Worthy then tells Detective Reilly that unless he convinces her to tell him where Ray’s hiding when they return they’re both dead.
Root tells Harold that she must kill Bridges to keep Harold safe, if he activates the Trojan Horse, Samaritan will detect it, find him and eliminate him. She says Finch’s too Hell-Bent on doing this to allow Elizabeth to live as it’s a death sentence for Harold. She shows Harold the vial of poison she’s going to inject Bridges with, completely undetectable, all will think she died of a heart-attack. Finch grabs the vial and drinks the poison, saying now there’s no reason to kill Elizabeth.
Frankie’s able to grab a paperclip just before Worthy’s two goons come back and she frees one of each of hers and Reese’s hands and they overpower the goons. She then kisses Reese passionately and handcuffs him to a refrigerator door handle, leaving him behind to find Harper and Ray on her own.
Root starts to call 911, but Harold pulls the phone socket out of the wall, he says he refuses to let another friend die. Root tells Harold that if Shaw died it’s not his fault, if anything it’s her fault as she called Shaw and asked her to help. Harold starts shaking from the poison and says neither of them want friends to die.
Reese gets back to the station and Fusco’s done a lot of detective work on Ray while John’s been away. He believes that Ray murdered his accountant down in Florida, the cause of death was ruled a mugging, but he says the two argued the night before and the next day, the accountant gets his throat slit. He also found out that Ray grew up in New York City and worked for a relative at some building that the relative owned but the business went bust. He bets Ray’s hiding out there.
That’s exactly where Ray’s at as we see Harper enter the building with all the forged documents he needs to skip the country, he tells her to come upstairs. Harper shows him the documents and Ray practically salivates, she tells him he owes her 50-grand and he gives her the evidence he has that could convict Worthy. She tells him she doesn’t want that and he says take it or leave it, she starts to take the documents back and Ray puts a knife dangerously close to his fingers.
Harold has about five minutes left when Root says he wins, she promises she won’t kill Bridges and she’s going to take him to the hospital to get the toxin for the poison that he swallowed. He looks at Root and manages a weak smile and tells her to hurry.
Wells, followed by Reese enter the building and aim their guns at Ray, Harper grabs the documents and gets ready to split when Worthy and his goons enter the building and tell them all he’s going to kill Ray first and then kill all of them. However Harper has an idea that she think all can live with, she offers Worthy the evidence that Ray has that could convict the criminal, in exchange for letting Ray go and leaving the building and he agrees. She asks Detective Reilly if he’s willing to allow Worthy and his associates to leave and he says they can but Ray can’t. Worthy says nice doing business with you and leaves the building.
Harper then says to Ray he’s not leaving the building a free man, so he can either die or get arrested, and he agrees that getting arrested is the better option. But it turns out that Frankie’s brother was the accountant that Ray killed and she doesn’t want him to live, but John convinces her to settle for him getting put away for most of the rest of his life. Ray grabs a gun and John shoots him in the leg, he then looks at Wells and says I said don’t kill him.
Harold has his activator with him when he knocks on Elizabeth’s hotel door and asks why she cancelled dinner, she shows him the e-mail reporting her to some organization from his e-mail address trying to damage her credibility. She says she knew they disagreed on theory, but she never expected something like this from him. She asks if it was all a lie and Harold weakly responds, it wasn’t all a lie. She says she never wants to see him again and shuts the door on him, of course Root sent the e-mail to thwart Harold activating the Trojan Horse.
He talks to Harper who says she’s been blowing up with somebody she thought he and Harold set her up with and she’s made all sorts of money from Thornhill. John says he’s got an associate that uses the alias Thornhill and she says then you do know him, he responds that some people think Thornhill’s a she. After she leaves Reese calls Harold and leaves a message that “The Machine’s,” been giving assignments to Harper. That sounds like a future team member to this viewer.
John returns to the station and Frankie thanks him for everything, then gives him a hug, she looks him in the eye and says call me when you’re a free man. As soon as she leaves, Iris Campbell asks Detective Reilly if they can talk in her office and follows her in there.
She apologizes for not telling John the reason she has to stop treating him, because she’s developed feelings for him. She tries explaining herself, then finally says to heck with it and kisses him. She then starts to walk away when John grabs her hand, looks into her eyes and tells her he keeps secrets really well, then kisses her passionately, looks like JOHRIS are now a couple.
The Story Continues on Tuesday April 14, at 10:00 pm on CBS.
