We ’ve described Person of Interest as a superhero show , where the heroes ’ world power come from a data processor — but last night , more than ever , we got to see Finch as a superhero hacker . And he helped with the origin story of another cyber-terrorist superhero , who can achieve greatness if he just get the best his ego - destructive tendency .
It was basically double-dyed delicious hacker candy . spoiler forwards …
“ 2πR ” basically proved that the show work just as well without Mr. Reese around — although I sort of overleap reckon Reese beating up random mooks or squeeze hoi polloi into his car trunk as A ) marriage counseling B ) examination or C ) a negotiation tactics or D ) just random yuks . Mr. Finch is more than capable to carry the bulk of the show on his slim shoulder joint , and in fact last night ’s outing helped cement Finch as the real damaged Hero of Alexandria of the show .
Of course , “ 2πR ” is sort of an overstuffed mess . There ’s a kid named Caleb who ’s a ace math Einstein and brilliant computer coder — and he ’s not only developed a brand young compression algorithm that ’s going to revolutionize the Internet , he ’s also a drug kingpin in his spare meter . He ’s damage and guilt - ridden because he was horse around on the train runway with his older brother , and the brother got arrive at by a train . So Caleb is selling long ton of ecstasy to teens and reinventing on-line cyclosis video , to generate a ton of money for his alcoholic mom , so she ’s hire charge of — and then he ’s going to kill himself when he ’s the same age , to the day , that his pal go bad .
There ’s some nifty misdirection in there , like we think that the two kids who are dealing drugs for Caleb are actually the ones who pushed his pal in front of the train — but actually it was Caleb ’s break . And we conceive that Caleb ’s computer scientific discipline instructor is steal his work , when in fact he ’s play as a frontman for Caleb , at Caleb ’s asking . But it sort of falls aside in the death — like , what bump to Lorenzo , the malevolent drug bargainer who swears to kill Caleb for selling drug on his greensward ? Does Lorenzo just bear from really bad narcolepsy and accrue deceased in the centre of searching for Caleb ? Or does Fusco deal with Lorenzo somehow off screen ? The “ drug bargainer ” subplot just sort of bust , in a confusing fashion .
But on the other hand , none of that was what the episode was really about . It was about Finch get a line something of himself in this young damaged “ reckless ” portent , and touch out to him . And there was so much awe-inspiring dweeb good in the scenes where Finch becomes the substitute math teacher for Caleb ’s social class , and attempt to learn the tike how to get around their regular , stinking math instructor ’s meddling - work assigning . Also majuscule : Finch tell apart Caleb how to make his strings better by using atomic variable for multithreading . And we even get a routine of the classic “ substitute teacher inspires bored Thomas Kyd ” goodness , with Finch explaining in a passably woo - woo but still lovely fashion how pi contains every other number in the universe and thus every possible word , in every possible combination . It ’s all just in this one circle , maaaaan .
And meanwhile , there ’s an challenging new bit of backstory — the computer science instructor , who was a mediocre software engineer himself but sees greatness in Caleb , talks about how hackers test the limits of calculator systems , until some of them went too far and were send to jail . And there ’s talk of a mysterious hacker hero from the days of the ARPANET , who “ turned the whole affair inside out ” and made sure the Internet would always be overt — and who never got grab . And at the death of the installment , Finch intimation that he might in reality be that cryptical hacker , who did it all on a homemade computer . Could it be ? Did Finch actually give us the net as we know it ?
But first , the fib culminates in a large setting where Finch spill the beans Caleb out of polish off himself , by speak about how they ’ve both made terrible , costly misapprehension — and those mistakes are part of them , but they ’re also why they wo n’t think anyone who says they ca n’t change the world . Mr. Finch refers to the Machine as his biggest error , and says it brought him here to aid Caleb . He says the affair about the cosmos is it does n’t have any extra piece , it ’s like Pi — it contains everything . It ’s actually quite a moving scene , and it end with Finch saying that he once thought that leave would make it easier on everyone , too . And he learned otherwise .
I really love Finch mentoring this young mavin and facilitate him to grow up in his image . For a show where every episode is establish by a newfangled number , it ’s orderly to have an installment where numbers are at the shopping mall of it . And Finch tells Caleb , in the goal , that it ’s a raw era and thing are go to get really uncanny soon , and he should be thrifty with his computer code and choose his friends wisely .
( This sort of echo a bit from early on in the episode , when Fusco says that ten years from now , today ’s net - savvy high - schoolers will be running the world , with their sexting and their disturbed drug tweets . There ’s a hilarious routine early on where Finch force play - dyad with a crowd of pupil ’ phones and is appalled by what he reads . )
Meanwhile , we barely see Reese in this episode — but Carter is forced to do a bit of unsporting study to keep the FBI from calculate out which of their four suspects is the Man in the Suit . ( The FBI does DNA sample and fingerprints , but does n’t inconvenience to X - ray the suspect to see which one of them has break every bone in his body and hooey . ) I enjoy see Carter get all va - va - voomed up to seduce a businessman who looks enough like Reese that his DNA could believably be a reserve , then drug him and swab him . Seriously , the Sexy Carter prospect middling much made my day . And Carter ’s reward for getting Reese off the crotchet : Now she has to take charge of interrogate him and the other suspect , and try out to break him using her Iraq War - era chop .
This should be interesting .
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