Person Of Interest -- The Game

This is perhaps the first time I had no sympathy for the number and was rooting for the bad guys to take her down. That's how obnoxious, unsympathetic and nasty the Claire character was.

Reese got Claire's number and he set out to save her, but the big problem was she didn't want to be saved. In fact, she was willing to kill Reese and anyone else who got in her way and tried to save her from herself.

At first Reese thought she might be schizo, but she was actually playing a very dangerous street game that some talented computer hackers were involved in. Reese found that out when Finch looked at the street art she was studying and saw a message written in the art directing her to the next location.

It's sad, but even hearing how she lost all her family didn't make me feel the least bit sorry for her. She was just that unsympathetic. I don't know how many times during the episode I just yelled for them to just walk away from the nasty little troll and let her get whatever was coming to her if she didn't heed their warnings.

Finch also showed Reese the new headquarters that The Machine had lead him to. It's an old abandoned underground train line. Down there they'll be safe from the prying eyes of Samaritan.

Finch feels that Claire is very like Root. He can see she has the same slavish devotion to this little game she's playing as Root does to The Machine and both are capable of anything if you get in their way of completing their task. And Root helps Finch to realize that Samaritan is behind this game. That he's recruiting his own Root to blindly and mindlessly do his bidding. And I'm as bad as Root calling Samaritan He.

So Samaritan it seems wants to even the playing field so Team Machine has no advantages over him. He's got his own Reese in the blonde chick he sends out to kill anyone he views as a threat to him. And now he has his own Root. But I have to say if I was going to bet on who would win in a Root vs. Clueless Claire fight, my money would be on Root.

Reese drags Shaw into this mess from her new underworld life which she seems to be enjoying a lot more than her life as a perfume squirter. Shaw plays decoy as Claire to save her from the men after her, but do you think this chick would be grateful for the help? Oh, heck no. She'd turn around and shoot you in the face and be on her way.

Finch tries one last time to save this idiot from herself, but she doesn't listen. At the end of the game Samaritan protects her from the men after her and leads her to his lair.As he does this, on his screen he records her as a new asset acquired.

When Reese and Shaw catch up with Finch he tells them Claire is gone. You can only save someone that wants to be saved and she ran with arms wide open to her new life as slave to a machine. In short, the team did what I was urging them to do the entire hour. Just wash your hands of her and let her deal with the consequences of her own actions.

As I said, she's the only number I have disliked so much I was rooting for someone to put a bullet in her. I even felt sorry for the black guy in charge of Vigilance. He got tricked into ruining his life. And I was sad when he was killed. I'd hoped maybe after finding out the truth he might become a new member of Team Machine and he could use Vigilance to help fight Samaritan. It would of been a perfect slice of irony that the person that was used to help Samaritan ended up helping to destroy it. Unfortunately, that's not what happened.

Maybe Team Machine could look at it this way. Maybe they were never supposed to save this moron and let her go on her merry way to becoming Samaritan's mindless slave. Maybe she was a number to alert Team Machine to the game Samaritan was playing and save the other guy who was also playing the game. True, the dude was a glorified extra, but he was saved from the fate Samaritan had planned for him. He'll still have a life and not be a slave to a machine. Or possibly killed when he proved not to be the mindless little droid the dear little Claire is. So they saved someone, just not the one they'd been assigned to save.

As much as I wish this was the last time we'd see the super annoying Claire, I've got a bad feeling we haven't seen the last of her. We'll probably see her again after she's metamorphed into the perfect little droid slave to Samaritan. At which point she'll probably once again try to whack members of the team because he master orders her to. I imagine the little droid will tell Samaritan all about Reese and Finch during her conversion process. Which will give Samaritan a leg up on trying to track them down. However, since the foul cretin just blew them off she thankfully doesn't know much about them or their covers. All she can tell is that there still out there and fighting the good fight against Samaritan.