Person of Interest – “Synecdoche”, rounding off the numbers by threatening the POTUS

I guess “Synecdoche” is it. This episode is the last proper number-of-the-week the show will ever have. So it makes sense to go all out and threaten someone with the stature and gravitas of the President of the United States. Like similar episodes that find their place in the flow of a season of Person of Interest, this does quite a bit of work as the show rounds into the final two episodes that will end the show forever. It is an episode that concentrates equally outward and inward, as it unfolds more about our characters – because in the final two episodes, it is inevitable the show will be as such – and presents to us almost a consolation prize. A could have been – a spinoff show, or a look into the Person of Interest Expanded Universe™.

Looking inward, the episode plays off similar motifs in the series. Finch is in the periphery as he continues on his measured, but violent, warpath to end Samaritan once and for all. Much of his time is spent pondering and speaking at length to the Machine about whether or not his intentions when creating the Machine ever really produced anything truly positive, or if everything only ever resulted in a drastic net negative. And so with that he puts his plan into motion – something that will stop Samaritan, but will also do a good amount of collateral damage. But what that means is left unclear, and worrying.

Meanwhile the rest of the team spend what little time they can to mourn Root before moving on to D.C. to help prevent the POTUS from being assassinated. One of the strengths of the procedural format is that it can be used as a way to bring forth character development and exploration, and is one of the strengths of the show. Each team member mourns their own way. Shaw takes a lot much more to convince she’s back in the real world but ultimately the way she is forced into this mission helps her to work through her feelings that she might otherwise suppress. All-in-all though, the threat against the President worked more as a concept than anything else, as very little actually featured the President himself as he would normally exist in a typical episode of Person of Interest. And that is a fair assessment considering all other aspects of the show that such a figure would always been at arm’s length (or sniper scope) from the team.

Lastly, the episode sets up an interesting wrinkle in the larger world of the show by showing us that there are in fact, other “Team Machine” groups out there, working irrelevant numbers, and that one of them we bump into are comprised of former irrelevant numbers, putting their skills to similar use as we’ve grown accustomed. Having familiar faces return and then reveal that they were in the background the whole time keeping an eye on the main characters makes for an interesting dynamic in the episode; as the audience knows full well that our main characters always take up a similar role when protecting the numbers. Overall, it is a fine way to send off the format of the show that it has relied on for the majority of its past five years, and a creative one at that. Now comes the turn for the show to turn towards showing us what it has left to round out the show’s characters and mythology.