shallowness

I watched PoI season 4 on DVD between 2021-22 and should have posted this (well, it would have been an even longer, ramblier version, probably disc by disc) then, but I didn’t. That would have been about seven years after it aired (and about four years after I watched season 3.) Initially, I felt that it had been too long since I’d last watched the show, and given the state of my vision at the time, I didn’t love all the night-time scenes.

For me, the best episode was the penultimate ‘Asylum’, which juggled three strands with equally compelling conflicts and had several moments that made me gasp. Just a touch behind were the finale ‘YHWH’ and ‘The Devil You Know’, which comes halfway through the season. I was most underwhelmed by the start of the season, although you’ll see that I had quite a few quibbles about different things throughout.

The ‘new world’ they were living in was mentioned a lot in opening ep, ‘Panopticon’. The Machine seemed to have a plan to counter Samaritan, because along with protecting the core four of Finch, Reese, Root and Shaw, the Machine was clearly using them to save key people and acquire resources. Samaritan was recruiting too.

Shaw was now a perfume saleswoman (!) although by the second episode she was moonlighting as a criminal and ignoring Root’s advice to be only B+ at it. Reese’s new cover was as a cop (!!!) called Detective Riley, which I thought was a gift that kept giving. Root would be changing identities all season and was now definitely a regular. Finch was now a professor, and his new bird name alias was Whistler. In ‘Nautilus’ he’d get a gorgeous new lair (which got a featurette all to itself.)

In ‘Prophets’, we got flashbacks to the Machine’s rocky birth, when Harold started seeing and dealing with how dangerous it/she was. In the present, Root argued that the Machine needed her father figure and cared for them all. Finch diagnosed that the Machine had cut Root off, and her relationship with the Machine would be rocky all season.

Harold was in Hong Kong for the Machine in ‘Pretenders’, meeting cute with a fellow mathematician and businesswoman, who got mugged. (It was not what it seemed.) There were genuine sparks between Harold and Beth, who was a person of interest to Samaritan

The A-plot of ‘Honor among Thieves’ was Shaw centric, as the number of the week became a Relevant case and brought in her former colleagues. In turn, their involvement led to Samaritan realising Shaw was still alive. Root/Shaw was increasingly textual.

Reese’s dynamic with Riley’s Internal Affairs shrink Iris (appointed because ‘Riley’ shot too many people) changed in ‘Point of Origin’, while Shaw realised she’d been made and how much danger she was in. By ‘The Devil You Know’, Samaritan’s agents were paying more attention to our team. Shaw wanted to fight them something fierce but had to lay low. There were recurrences of characters being willing to sacrifice themselves for each other, a theme through the season.

I think ‘The Cold War’ is when the Ais got upgraded to artificial super intelligences. Samaritan was doing unusual things, bringing about a Day of Order, followed by a Day of Chaos when John, Fusco and Finch were running around the city trying to deal with secrets that were never meant to come out having done so. (I’ve barely mentioned Lionel because he wasn’t in the know about the Machine, sometimes because he just didn’t listen but he bounced off John and Shaw well.)

Root went as the Machine’s avatar to meet a creepy boy coder representing Samaritan – Acker was particularly good in this scene – where we learned Samaritan was starting a new phase, which might kill the Machine. But the spine of the episode was backstory for Greer (Samaritan’s English agent) and his last days as an MI6 agent. This bit didn’t work so well for me, sadly.

Samaritan was playing around with the stock market in ‘If-Not-Then’. There was a way of stopping that, but it was a trap. Pinned down, Finch, Reese and Root asked for help from the Machine and we saw her run various scenarios, but one or many of the team always died. Shaw came to the rescue, fatefully kissing Root after rebuffing her so long before sacrificing herself. (Emotionally, I didn’t want to deal with my favourite character being dead after being shot A LOT and clung on to what I thought I’d gleaned via fandom and her appearance in the credits.)

‘Control-Alt-Delete’ brought us up to date on what horrifying stuff Control was doing, and that Samaritan’s chosen avatar was demanding to see the President. Team Machine abducted Control, allowing Root got to repay her for their last encounter and distract herself from her worry about Shaw. I liked that the team were using Control as bait for a clue to find Shaw.

That clue led Reese and Root in ‘MIA’ to a small town called Maple that was being used as Samaritan’s very own lab, housing another lab. They stopped Samaritan’s creepy plans for Maple, but not for Shaw, of whom the audience was given a tantalising hint (not dead! Phew!)

‘Guilty’ focused on Harold and John (and their feelings as Root was off in a strop and Shaw missing, presumed dead.) John went to his much delayed therapy session, to be told by Irish that it would be the final one. Zoe (EEEE! Long time no see!) waltzed in and insisted on helping Finch and Reese with their case. She called John out on being interested in someone else, i.e. Iris. Refreshingly, despite connections with a tech/mobile phone company, the case wasn’t about Samaritan, and the episode was mainly a throwback to the original premise, with a few nods to this season’s developments.

In ‘Skip’, John learned that Iris had pushed him away professionally because of her unprofessional feelings for him, which was okay, because he has feelings for her too, and kissed her back. (Whatever.) Beth from earlier in the season returned as a NotW. Root and Harold had a tussle of wills about a risky plan of Harold’s to get at Samaritan. Root found a way of stopping it that didn’t involve killing anyone, although it did end any Harold/Beth possibilities. By the end of this complicated episode full of double crosses, it was clear that Root was happier with going after Samaritan herself and sacrificing herself than Harold.

Zoe also appeared in ‘Search and Destroy’, where Harold’s unwillingness to answer the NotW’s questions led him straight to Samaritan’s people. Samaritan had wanted the NotW’s software to search for the Machine.

The ’return’ of Carter in ‘Terra Incognito’, as John took on a cold case she’d investigated and remembered/hallucinated conversations with her, didn’t quite work, great as it was to see Taraji P. Henson back. I had issues: why would Reese be remembering their conversation before he got the case, and wouldn’t the whole ‘stop pushing people away’ message have made more sense before he’d started his relationship with Iris?

In ‘Asylum’, Control and the audience learned that Samaritan was about to start ‘The Correction’, which sounded pretty dire, although we didn’t know what Control would do with that intel.

When Sameen called Root on her own phone, she realised she was still alive and recklessly rushed to help her, blackmailing the Machine into helping and dragging a worried Finch along…to an asylum where Shaw seemed to have been treated. They broke in, with Root pretending to be a doctor (hee) and Finch a patient (who babbled the truth about the secret war between AIs to get in)…and found it was really Samaritan’s HQ where they’d just missed Shaw. And it had been a trap. No-one could rescue them…other than the Machine, who told Harold he was not interchangeable, ‘speaking’ in text on a computer screen, and offered her mysterious location up to Samaritan in return for Finch and Root’s safety.

I still don’t know what the title of the season finale ‘YWHW’ means. The Machine stepped in to direct a wounded John, which was so cool. Samaritan was using power surges to destroy the Machine. In hindsight, durr, of course she was in the electricity. Root was now in near constant contact with the Machine. They, Finch and John converged in a last-ditch attempt to use untested tech to keep the Machine alive (sort of) (if it worked.) The Machine had an existential crisis, addressed Harold as ‘father’ and wondered whether he wasn’t right and she should die. ‘No!’ I howled, as Samaritan targeted potential threats on the eve of its horrible-sounding Correction.

They introduced a few young female characters this season - Claire, a maths genius, reminiscent of Root, chose Samaritan despite Finch’s advice not to in ‘Nautilus’. She turned up again in ‘Q and A’, claiming that she regretted her choice. Finch fell for it when she dangled some code at him, but she turned out to still be working for Samaritan. John was dealing with a different young woman in the same episode, the NotW, who also wasn’t who she seemed, living a double life and pushing at superhero tropes. As this was after Shaw fell, I resentfully wondered if they were being tried out as Root and Shaw replacements. The same is true of NotW Frankie in ‘Skip’. At the least, the show wanted more female characters who were handy in a fight onscreen. “Harper”, an overconfident grifter, real name unknown, with a Patrick Jane-like ability to read people, was the one who turned up the most. When she was introduced, I was indifferent. Like Bear, I missed Shaw. We and John learned she was getting numbers from the Machine later, so she kind of became an ally.

‘Brotherhood’ made clear that ‘that gang from the season premiere’ were serious players. (The first episode had also featured Elias.) Like Shaw, I misread big, lumbering ‘Mini’, who it turned out was the gang’s mysterious leader Dominic, (it was less clear upon hearing the names than it is when you write it out.) As the season went on, I was all ‘Oh, that’s Winston Duke from ‘Black Panther’. It was clear that however smart Dominic was, he didn’t have a clue about the Samaritan and Machine situation (and never did, all season.)

‘The Devil You Know’ was mainly about Elias, as Dominic felt it was time to challenge him, which led to repeated confrontations between their organisations. By the end of the season, the Machine was failing to predict flare-ups between them (for good reason), and ultimately both Dominic and Elias were killed by Samaritan’s goons as part of the Correction despite Fusco’s best efforts.

Changes to the show’s usual format included flashbacks where the Machine was the subject, plural numbers of the week (including Elias, twice.) In ‘Control-Alt-Delete’, Control delivered the spiel over the credits, because she was the focus for most of this episode. These changes didn’t always work, for instance the tricksiness around speeds and what we were seeing in ‘If-Not-Then’ rather undermined the impact of this episode’s end.

But I liked the way that they were bringing in more layers while nodding back to the past, and the ambition of the show. One of the reasons I rarely see the reveals coming is that I’m so entertained by what’s going on. It helps that the cast is ace, although I found it difficult to believe that Harold was as good an actor as Michael Emerson as he scared arms dealers and fixers in ‘Wingman’. It chimed for me that Finch, Reese and Root were all grieving for Shaw

The extras included the obligatory ComicCon panel footage and a gag real, mainly of the actors forgetting their lines. There was a feature on the music, using ‘Asylum’ as an example of the process, but also looking at the show’s themes and how they’ve developed. How cool that Samaritan’s theme is the reverse of the Machine’s!