Person of Interest: Deus Ex Machina
May 13, 2014 10:36 PM - Season 3, Episode 23 - Subscribe

The Machine and government surveillance are put on trial, and the judgement may fundamentally change the order of things. Season finale.
posted by homunculus (22 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I thought the trial was cheesy, but I guess the Vigilance arc was mainly a way to move the plot forward toward the rise of Samaritan. And my theory about the the origin of Vigilance was completely wrong. It seems so obvious in retrospect.

Everything that happened after the big reveal was chilling. Behold Skynet Samaritan. I'm really looking forward to the next season.
posted by homunculus at 10:43 PM on May 13, 2014


I wonder if PBS deliberately chose tonight to air it's latest episode of Frontline on domestic surveillance: United States of Secrets. The timing is absolutely perfect.
posted by homunculus at 10:46 PM on May 13, 2014


On the happy side, I think sparks are flying between Root and Shaw, but I fear they won't be free to pursue their budding romance under the secrecy requirements of their new lives.
posted by homunculus at 11:19 PM on May 13, 2014 [3 favorites]


I was not a big fan of the Vigilance stuff but this episode made the rest of it worthwhile. And I had not even considered the possibility that Vigilance was created to be used in the way it was nor do I have any idea where they are going with the story next season, which is exciting.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 1:50 AM on May 14, 2014


I think sparks are flying between Root and Shaw, but I fear they won't be free to pursue their budding romance under the secrecy requirements of their new lives.

Glad I'm not the only one watching that vibe.


Really good episode; I didn't enjoy the trial much, but the reveal of Decima's involvement with Vigilance and the final moments were fantastic. I really thought that Root was planting something that would put Samaritan under the control of the Machine (or allow the Machine to make use of Samaritan's computing resources), but this outcome is much better - the gang on the run, hidden, separated, and worried that at some point their covers will be blown.

The sequence of Samaritan coming on line was great - I loved how it showed that everyone it saw was a suspect with some level of suspicious behaviour, though not always worthy of elimination (yet).
posted by nubs at 7:10 AM on May 14, 2014


When Greer was mocking Collier's "grass roots movement" I couldn't help but think that the writers were making a dig at the Tea Party.
posted by homunculus at 11:49 AM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]






I didn't notice when I was watching it, but the io9 recap points out that Samaritan is categorizing people of interest as "deviants." That doesn't bode well.
posted by homunculus at 5:30 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


Man, that was depressing as hell. It's also a puzzling place to take the story to, what can they do with next season after that?
posted by Iosephus at 6:31 PM on May 14, 2014


the io9 recap points out that Samaritan is categorizing people of interest as "deviants." That doesn't bode well.

Yes, and there's a little counter going of how many deviants it detects which quickly ramps into the millions. Fortunately, the counter for elimination targets doesn't go up quite as fast. Yet.
posted by nubs at 7:07 PM on May 14, 2014


It's also a puzzling place to take the story to, what can they do with next season after that?

I guess they're the resistance now. They're all Winston Smith trying to hide from Big Brother. But I don't know what that means for their relationship with the Machine since they can't take numbers without blowing their covers, and the relationship between the Machine and Samaritan should be interesting. I'm very curious to see what is going to happen next season.
posted by homunculus at 8:41 PM on May 14, 2014


Was anyone else disappointed when it turned out Vigilance wasn't really broadcasting, because it meant Grace Hendricks didn't just find out that Harold was alive?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:00 PM on May 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


Yes!
posted by homunculus at 12:22 PM on May 15, 2014


True Blood is laying its last turd airing its final season this summer. So Carrie Preston is going to be plenty available, one would assume. Maybe she could join the PoI cast full-time. I'm sure her partner (Michael Emerson) would be 100% on board.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:29 PM on May 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I didn't know they're actually a couple. That's adorable.
posted by homunculus at 12:56 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]






"It's a cyberpunk procedural on CBS. It's totally bananas, but cool. And CBS has been incredibly supportive...Never got the note of, 'What's all this AI shit?'"

Thanks for finding that interview homunculus - it's a really good read.
posted by nubs at 6:42 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was reluctant to watch this episode, but it was pretty well done, and now the show is set to go in a completely different direction. That's a good thing, because it was getting too formulaic.

And yeah, I am totally seeing something percolating between Shaw and Root.
posted by orange swan at 8:25 PM on September 26, 2015


You could see Collier slowly get deeper and deeper, until he was in over his head.
Too bad, 5th amendment!

And I saw the Vigilance-Greer reveal coming. Vigilance was way too incompotent for what they were pulling off.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:48 PM on December 30, 2015


So I'm super late to the party. Only recently started binge watching on Netflix. While I've enjoyed the show immensely, I was surprised how emotional I was over this finale but more than that how the library itself has become a sort of character. It's, I guess, the most physical location of The Machine and so I kind of bonded with it as well. When they left, I was like "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo."
posted by miss-lapin at 6:29 PM on July 10, 2018


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