Person of Interest Season 2 Review “Critical”

Person of Interest has had some great guest stars, like Amy Acker and Enrico Colantoni, but this week, it brought on board Julian Sands, who once swept Helena Bonham Carter off her feet in A Room With A View. In tonight’s episode, Sands stepped into the shoes of Alistair Wesley, a possible former MI6 agent who is now engaged in shady operations in the private sector. Wesley and Reese come from similar backgrounds, but have gone down different paths. In other words, Reese finally got his very own nemesis!

Hopefully, this new dynamic will inject some life into Reese, who is starting to feel stagnant. Not having a family (or any loved ones), having to obscure his identity, and punishing himself for some yet unknown reason, are starting to drag Reese down. Wesley may give Reese a reason to snap out of it and focus on a longer term problem – in other words, what is Wesley’s real agenda.

For Finch, the episode was about relinquishing control. He left his home office behind and went to the hospital with Reese to investigate the new person of interest, a doctor named Maddie. With Bear standing watch, Finch let his unexpected house guest, Leon Sung (Ken Leung), use his computer to help them track down who may have hired Wesley. Finch was visibly uncomfortable with the idea of letting Leon into his domain, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Finch also had to face a more personal fear when he was required to assist with a patient surgery. He had to trust that Maddie could save the patient and assisted her despite the blood and guts.

The idea of Finch losing control began with his kidnapping by Root, but is developing into something more personal. Thus far, Finch has kept a tight lid on who could know his true identity and who could know about the machine. Now, his grip is loosening. It would be interesting to delve even deeper into this aspect of Finch’s psyche. If someone like him started to lose control, how would he react? Would he shut down or adapt?

Finch is much farther down the path to self-confrontation than Reese, thanks to his interactions with Root and Elias. It’s time for something big to happen to Reese that shakes him to his emotional core. Is that coming?

This episode would have been even better with less detail on the backgrounds of the bad guys and more character development. Based on the format of the show, it will never be possible to get true character development for the individual persons of interest. Accordingly, it would be more refreshing to see less of them and more of Finch and Reese working out their issues.

Some viewers have commented in recent weeks that the persons of interests are too homogenized. This week, Dr. Maddie was in a bi-racial, homosexual relationship. In a positive step towards equality, this aspect of the story line seemed rather inconsequential. Sure, it was nice to see the show embrace diversity, but these days, showing a bi-racial couple or married homosexual couple does not feel as groundbreaking as it might have ten or twenty years ago. Which is a good thing. It would have been more surprising to have a female person of interest who did not look like a model.