By John Keegan and Edmund Boys
“Person of Interest” has had a busy season. It's had to juggle many things: victims, perps, cops, feds, shadowy spooks, criminal masterminds. So, it's no surprise they might need a breather, a chance to relax and let their hair down. Courtesy of an enterprising drug dealer, that's just what they get, along with an indelible image we never knew we needed to see until now: Finch on Ecstasy.
“Person of Interest” has had a busy season. It's had to juggle many things: victims, perps, cops, feds, shadowy spooks, criminal masterminds. So, it's no surprise they might need a breather, a chance to relax and let their hair down. Courtesy of an enterprising drug dealer, that's just what they get, along with an indelible image we never knew we needed to see until now: Finch on Ecstasy.
April 03, 2012
As the penultimate episode of the season, it makes sense that this installment would deliver a few punches, while setting the stage for a killer finale. As usual, the writers exceed my expectations by dragging the characters, and by extension the audience, through the wringer. It’s a bit exhausting, but it’s also one of the best shows on television right now.
I made the case, in my reviews for the first two episodes, that this show was going to succeed or fail on the merits of the writers’ ability to avoid hand-waving in terms of the connections being made between total strangers. Internal consistency was always going to be a huge factor, and with Tim Kring at the helm, that was always going to be a struggle. And sure enough, it took all of three episodes for the show to fumble.
Not for the first time, the "Lost Girl" writers have jumped the gun on one of their core story elements and muddled what might've been an otherwise very solid episode. It takes, perfectly in keeping with a show about a succubus, a big climax to keep this episode feeling worthwhile, but nothing quite detracts from the decision to put a big character misstep front-and-centre.
Based on the few episodes that have aired after the pilot, there seems to be more interest in the events of the Rex world more than the Hannah world. I really wouldn't have noticed until this episode, when the police worked the serial killer case in the Rex world, while the primary conflict in the Hannah world was if she was going to move to Portland, Oregon. I don't want to underestimate the importance of that decision, but the amount of focus on the police cases in the Rex world may suggest that it is the correct reality and that the Hannah world is Michael's dream. His job as a police detective may also become untenable if he and Hannah move away from Los Angeles. There is just no telling what will happen to the realities when or if that big decision is made.
Lost Girl, which was recently acquired by Syfy, will be airing the season one finale next week, followed shortly by the season two premiere.
Coming on the heels of the emotionally charged previous episode, it’s perhaps understandable that the writers would want to follow it up with something a little more light-hearted. They do eventually manage to give the episode far more heft with its final moments (even if they telegraphed the reveal to the hilt), but the core of the episode is a mixture of terror and outright hilarity.
Much of this season has felt like a return to some of the concepts of the first season, now armed with the improvements and layers that were added in the interim, and this episode is a perfect example of that. It’s also another great example of how the changes between original and overlaid timelines have led to different results.
It’s telling that we’re this close to the end of the season, and yet I still feel like this series/season hasn’t figured out where it wants to go or how to wrap all the various threats and problems into one manageable package. Some attempt is made in this episode to combine a few plot threads, but it’s not particularly convincing.