Person of Interest – “return 0” contemplates life and death, and brings us back to the root of the series one last time.

Much has probably been written about the finale since it aired (and I’ve read some of it too); I’m writing this almost two weeks after it has aired, mostly because real life has gotten in the way though I did find time to watch it the day the finale aired. And I must say, it was an exquisite finale, possibly one of the finest ones I’ve had the pleasure of watching.

Person of Interest ends somewhat expectedly in some fashion and unexpectedly in other aspects. Taken as a whole, “.exe” and “return 0” are very introspective episodes that make up the two-part series finale. There’s not much bombast; you can possibly blame that on what seems to be a fairly reduced budget for a fifth season show that had the rug pulled out from under it, but it does bring the series to a fantastic end. And a possible strength lies in the open-ended ending. The story you’ve watched is over, but as the last line in the show tells us, “... and maybe, this isn’t the end at all.”

But I’m here to argue that Person of Interest didn’t need to rely on the bombast for a finale, a trap so often fallen into by other genre shows (the other being constant and possibly exponential escalation of stakes to make anything matter). Instead, the show brings some closure to its characters. “.exe” told the story of how one man might regret the decisions he’s made but is shown that because of him, he’s made the world and ultimately the people around him better. “return 0” has the show remind us what it’s really been all about from the start: the value of human life. This theme and thesis has encompassed the whole show from start to finish, and is ever present even in its moments where you forget it is even there – because it is fundamental to the show, emotionally, thematically, and mechanically. It’s important enough the show decides to repeat it aloud throughout with the speech the Machine says she has learned and teaches to her copy via tape recording.

So in some ways I’m particularly glad that the show decided to wholly embrace its overall thesis as it came to a close. And don’t get me wrong, there is some bombast. We have moments where Samaritan chooses to fire a cruise missile at an antenna dish to make sure no one can follow it into space, and there are still rolling gun fights. But in the end a lot of it was about the characters making their peace with the journey they embarked on. The story of the very final episode is simple: Samaritan is crippled and about to be knocked out by the virus; but so is the Machine. The team - and the Machine by extension - embarks on a final, dangerous mission to ensure Samaritan cannot return by destroying its last copy.

The Machine and Finch contemplate death, as Finch sends himself to the sacrificial altar to upload a copy of the Machine to do battle with Samaritan in a satellite coming up overhead with the threat of a missile headed for that exact location looms over the proceedings, making it a final mission. Finch has been shot and has hidden it from Reese, thinking locking him up in the Federal Reserve will keep him safe; no one but him has to die if necessary. The Machine, understandably, contemplates death too. She tells Finch that it though he designed her to prevent death, she had to understand it in a way he probably didn’t teach her. In her words, to predict people you have to understand them. And it is through two unknown cops that she learns the fundamental value of human life. When she recalls part of the saying, “everyone dies alone”, it immediately harkens back to Reese’s line in early of season one: “In the end, we’re all alone and no one’s coming to save you.” But the show chooses at that moment to take a more optimistic approach to the message of life and death, deciding instead that, “if even a single person remembers you, then maybe you never really die.” The fact that this fundamental lesson is taught through two cops who never have their names spoken or ever contributed to the plot of the show speaks volumes; because by their nature, they are irrelevant, and that the Machine learns through people who are treated as irrelevant says a lot about what the show wants to tell us. The show has always striven on the one line, "everyone is relevant to someone"

The episode is also split into two pairings – Reese and Finch, and Shaw and Fusco. The former take on the final mission to end Samaritan and brings the original two characters to a close in the finale as they work together and are set against each other in self-sacrifice. Reese appears after Finch realizes he’s been sent to the wrong rooftop. For Reese, he’s where he’s supposed to be. He sees that maybe where he is, to be the one to upload the Machine up to space to finish off Samaritan and to save Finch, maybe that’s finally when his goal to save the world and the job given by Finch to save a life at a time, finally coincide.

Shaw and Fusco on the other hand, survive (if we count Finch disappearing to reunite with Grace ‘dying’) and presumably will carry on the mission. Fusco gets a smaller sendoff, mostly tying away his plotline with FBI Agent LaRoux. Meanwhile Shaw is given one last true reprise as she comes face-to-face with Root’s killer, Jeff Blackwell, during their escape from the subway base of operations. Shaw has never been one to show much emotion and even learning of Root’s death did not make her flinch, much less trying to say her goodbyes at the start of the episode. But it’s when the Machine (and by some extension, Root) tells Shaw that Root embraced everything Shaw was, flaws and differences and all, is one the time that makes Shaw tear up and feel something. Root was someone that understood Shaw more than she realized, and finally the reality of it sinks in for her, in some respects and Shaw is allowed to grieve.

On the subject of Blackwell again, it’s likely he was the casualty of the shortened season, but his character was given some measure of closure. It is still a bit jarring to see someone who had misgivings about his new job to become a violent gun-for-hire with no regard for life, especially when the show does a good job of crafting sympathetic villains. Blackwell in some respects feels like a dark reflection of Reese – a man trying to do good after doing bad, but takes a job that asks him to do more bad than good (from a certain point of view). He also acts as a reflection of Samaritan as a whole – even in his final moments, he is not concerned with the personal nature of what he’s done when Shaw confronts him. In a sense, like the ASI he served, he also begs for his life at the end. There are interesting parallels to draw, but he also just feels like a somewhat poor look into Samaritan’s agents who have been either faceless or unnervingly unflinching as they carry out orders, and we are never shown the proper transition from one to the other in Blackwell's case.

But ultimately I think the final confrontation between the Machine and Samaritan was a philosophical one much more than anything that goes to the root of the show. Lots of theories abound about just exactly how mechanically the Machine was able to defeat Samaritan despite showing us that the Machine would constantly fail Finch’s simulations. But at the end of it, the show strived on its one major theme and had both the ASIs represent different philosophical points of view on human life. And in the end the show argued that the stronger, more compassionate one was the superior to a cold utilitarian outlook. And perhaps the biggest lesson we can take from Person of Interest. Even amidst the science-fiction (become reality) aspects of the show to tackling interesting subject matter like artificial super intelligences shepherding mankind, or even the surveillance state, it knew that people were the most important part of it all, and that human life is important, valuable, and not to be wasted.

 

Miscellaneous observations:

• Only noticed it on a third rewatch but it's likely that because of the Ice-9 virus, Samaritan was able to briefly see again its targets in the form of Reese, Finch, Shaw, and Fusco, and likely how it was able to find Root’s body to pinpoint where to search for everyone, call out Reese as the Man in the Suit (blowing his cover, likely making Reese even more suicidal than usual) and finding the subway base.
• You can see that Reese swaps the contents of the briefcase – at least the movements for it – as Finch talks to the Machine on the phone.
• I immediately recognized the very final scene of the series was calling back to the final scene in the pilot and had to just cheer.
• I’ve heard that Jonathan Nolan had planned to use “Heroes” by David Bowie to close out the show, but I’m glad that as soon as he heard Ramin Djawadi’s score for the last scene, he immediately caved. Not that it wouldn’t be appropriate (I would love to see a cut to it) but the original score to the show – and during the finale especially – were absolutely fantastic.