Hello, fellow Irrelevants! Are you recovered from the season finale yet?
Yeah, me neither.
I’m terribly sorry for the delay in the post about the season finale, but there were several factors prohibiting me from blogging.
The biggest reason was that our Internet AND TV went down.
On the day of the finale.
WORST.
DAY.
EVER.
So then I had to wait a few days for us to figure out the Internet issue and then I was able to watch it online.
It actually turned out to be a really good thing that I waited an extra week to watch the finale. You see, there were two major finales going on that week. Once Upon a Time had its finale the Sunday before AND IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST SEASON FINALES IN EXISTENCE!!! ASDFGHJKL!!!
And then there was Person of Interest. That ended up being one of the most heartbreaking season finales in existence.
So if I had watched Person of Interest finale the day it aired, I would have had one of the craziest roller coasters of emotion ever. It would have utterly slaughtered all the excitement for Once Upon a Time and it would have just been too much.
But now it’s time to talk about the heartbreak. I’m so sorry in advance for the resurrection of the pain I’m about to inflict on you all.
So Locke and Boone have found a strange hatch in the middle of the jungle on the Island, and they’re trying to think of a way to open it and…
Whoops. Sorry. Wrong “Deus Ex Machina”.
LOST CROSSOVER!!
Sorry…I couldn’t resist. :p
So anyway, Collier is holding a “trial” of sorts, in an undisclosed location, and he’s got everyone who has been involved with Samaritan/Northern Lights/the Machine–basically anything that has to do with public surveillance. The mission? TO RESCUE FINCH!! He can’t give anything away about what he’s done! It would jeopardize everything that he, Reese and Shaw have been doing.
This “trial” was very fishy from the very beginning. Collier obviously put great effort into not revealing the location of the trial, but then he arranged for all the appropriate people to be there: a judge, a jury and the media. AND he claimed that the trial was being broadcast all over the world.
That was where a red flag went up for me. What gave Collier the right to broadcast a trial all over the world–a trial that only had to do with American affairs?
Take note of that last statement. It’ll be important later.
Then Collier started shooting people! He actually killed the first guy who didn’t answer his questions!
Fair trial, Mr. Collier? I think not!
This episode’s flashback was focused on him again, and this time, it was about how Collier got involved with Vigilance in the first place. A curious process it was, and there was a feeling of dread as to who this person was who was recruiting Collier. Or I guess he wasn’t even Collier to begin with. Peter Collier was actually the name assigned to him when he decided to join. Very strange. And after he’s been part of the group for some time, Collier finds out that one of the men in his team was involved in the murder of his brother. That spurred Collier on to take a more aggressive approach to the process of justice, and he just pulled out the surveillance system at random, if memory serves, as Vigilance’s first target. Hence, this was how his whole crusade began. He had been working up to this “trial” all this time.
The Crash the Trial movement wasn’t going well at all in the beginning. How do you find the location of an unknown building in the middle of a blacked out city? The solution was simple but quite brilliant, I think. Hersh (who was temporarily on the good side) and Reese posed as the “SWAT team” that was really with Vigilance, and they got to talking with a person in Vigilance to get the location of the court house. Once they got the location, they made a beeline there.
And let us not forget, in the midst of saving Finch and stopping the trial, the still impending doom of Samaritan being activated. Samaritan was not going to stay shut down forever, after what happened the first time it was turned on, and it would only be a matter of time before it would come back online–this time, with the same surveillance skills as the Machine. This was the task that Root took upon herself to deal with, apparently, and Shaw ditched Reese and Hersh to assist her. It was hard to tell what exactly Root was doing, but it was evidently something big, hopefully helpful and extremely dangerous. Root wasn’t expecting to make it out alive. But she and Shaw are boss. They can get out of anything. I hope.
The “trial” is still going on at this point, and more and more people are being called up. It was beginning to get extremely uncomfortable. I was not liking it at all. Any information disclosed could potentially be dangerous for the Machine. Greer said that Finch’s secret was safe with him and Control told Finch that she wouldn’t say anything either. I wanted to believe both of them, but I had some difficulty trusting Greer. I gotta say that this was the first time I actually liked Control. Up to this point, I really despised them for the programs they were trying to get approved, but with the information they had, again, it could destroy the Machine. But Control handled the trial beautifully! I loved her responses and she absolutely refused to give anything away.
But of course, that’s not how Collier wants things to be. He wants answers. And from the look in his eyes, it was beginning to look as if he was about to shoot down Control too.
But then Finch stood up.
Finch.
Finch, what are you doing?!?
FINCH, STAHP!!!
His actions were inevitable. He would try to prevent anyone else from dying, even if it involved risking himself and his Machine. A noble move, BUT STILL!!! He shouldn’t do that! He shouldn’t risk himself and the Machine!
However, I was surprisingly pleased with Finch’s responses. He’s a very clever talker in dire situations. He said everything without saying anything. He told Collier about his motivations with creating the Machine without giving away any details, and it seemed to satisfy Collier’s curiosity somewhat.
*GIGANTIC SIGH OF RELIEF*
But no one in that trial, or the building for that matter, was out of danger. By this point, Reese and Hersh had found the court house, and they were inspecting things. Hersh found a monstrous bomb under the building that would be detonated when the power in New York City came back on. This was going to be tricky.
However, I don’t really remember how it happened, but somehow Collier found out that they had been discovered, and he hastily moved everyone to another building, I think. There, he questioned Finch further, and things were looking very grim and unpromising when a completely unexpected twist took place.
Greer suddenly came forward and said that the whole mission was over.
What?! Who is he to say something like that?
Greer eventually revealed to Collier that he had been the one who had found him and recruited him to join Vigilance.
Greer is Vigilance.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAGGGGGHHHH!!!
Okay. That’s definitely not good.
And I don’t remember everything Greer actually said, but I think it was something along the lines of he was trying to buy time to get Samaritan up and running. His plan was to blow up the court house, kill several police officers and it would look as if Collier and his gang was behind it all.
And remember the red flag about the trial being broadcast around the world? It wasn’t. The broadcast never left Greer’s office. Collier would never get the recognition he had worked so hard to achieve.
Suddenly, I felt terrible for Collier. He had been played this entire time, all the while thinking he was doing something noble for his country. And now he himself is in as just as much danger as Finch is. But there’s no time to save him, and he is shot down. Poor Collier!
But now what’s going to become of Finch?
Reese will save him, of course! And that is exactly what happened. THANK. GOODNESS. Everything is good now. The world’s back to normal.
But we as fans of many TV shows know that when there are 10 minutes left in the episode, the episode’s not over. Something is still going to happen.
*groan*
There was no stopping the inevitable, apparently. Samaritan came online. And with a lot more power than before. It now could see everything the Machine could see. And its first mission was to hunt down everyone who was involved with Northern Lights and the Machine.
BUT NO!!! THAT CAN’T HAPPEN!! None of them can die!
Oh, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the most terrible thing that could have happened in the show happened.
They found the library.
THE library! The beloved place where Finch and Reese have been meeting for the past 3 years as their headquarters. There are so many happy memories of that library. THEY FOUND IT!! AND THEY DESTROYED IT!!
With every inch of that library they ransacked, a part of me died. They crashed that glass panel where Finch and Reese would hang up pictures of the people they would investigate, and it was the most horrible thing.
My heart made the exact same sound as that glass did when it shattered. The only thing worse than seeing that library demolished was Finch’s face when he and Reese left it for the last time.
NOOOO!!! THIS IS NOT OKAY! THIS IS THE WORST!!! How can Finch and Reese save people when they don’t have access to the library….let alone when they’re being hunted down by Samaritan, which can spot them anywhere? HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN??
This is where Root came in and explained herself. There was nothing she could have done to prevent this, even with all of her computer know-how. It was never about winning, as she put it. It was about surviving. And we find out what Root was really up to, in her dealings with the building that Samaritan was in. She programmed Samaritan so that it wouldn’t recognize anyone in their team. They’re practically invisible to the system.
Okay. That’s all good, I guess. But what about the Machine???
By this time, Samaritan is all up and running, and it “asks” Greer what he wants it to do. Greer, however, responds by asking what he can do for it. And the season ends with Samaritan processing the request.
A typical cliffhanger, but still awfully effective. WHAT IS IT GOING TO SAY??
We have several long months now to theorize and try to reassemble our broken hearts. This was quite possibly the most traumatizing Person of Interest finale to date. But fear not, my fellow Irrelevants! I’m sure Finch has many, many tricks up his sleeve. He is a billionaire genius, after all. 😉