Person Of Interest -- Samaritan

This is a show I avoided watching because of LOST. After the way the show ended and my dislike of Jack Shephard, I didn't want to watch a show starring Ben Linus and a man that eerily resembles Matthew Fox too much for my liking. But I finally gave it a shot, and have started watching it regularly now.

The holiday break left off with Arthur's wife being revealed as Shaw's former boss, Control. She was holding Shaw, Harold and Arthur at gunpoint. She wanted Samaritan, which was another computer just like the one Harold had invented. Meanwhile, Fusco was trying to pull Reese out of the pity pit he was wallowing in. They got into a fight that landed them both in jail.

We also had flashbacks of Young Harold wanting to help his father who had Alzheimer's by inventing a computer that would help him remember. Young Harold kept working on the machine as his father continued to get worse to the point he had to put him in a nursing home. And tonight we learned the last time Harold saw his father was when he was about to go on the run because the government was after him. He told his father not to believe it when they said his son had done bad things, but by that time his father had gotten so bad he didn't even recognize him.

As the episode open Root came to the rescue with gun's blazing. While Harold, Shaw and Arthur were able to escape the evil Control, Root got caught. First she pumped her with uppers and downers simultaneously and then cut out of the bone that allows sound to travel from the eardrum to the brain so Root was deaf on one side. Still, the psychotic Root got the better of Control and let HER speak through her to tell Control she wants to protect her. Anyone wanting to protect this evil woman just doesn't sound good. Then Root escapes.

Meanwhile, Shaw, Harold and Arthur go to the bank to retrieve Samaritan's hard drives. While Arthur and Harold head into the vault, Shaw keeps a look out. It isn't long before Vigilance arrives and stage a fake bank robbery so they can get to the vault, get their hands on the hard drives and to expose them to the world.

Meanwhile Agent Hirsch who works for Control arrives pretending to be law enforcement officers trying to get the bank robbers to give themselves up. The leader of Vigilance knows exactly who Hirsch is and basically gives him the finger as he heads to the vault to get those hard drives.

Before he can get into the vault, Harold locks himself and Arthur inside. He immediately starts trying to enter by force, while Shaw tells Harold when he blows open the safe she'll blow a hole in the floor below the vault with a pipe bomb that Harold and Arthur can escape through before Vigilance can make it inside the vault.

While trapped inside the vault Arthur makes a confession to Harold. Before the government shut down the project he got Samaritan to live. He reveals he managed to cross that boundary between human and machine. He started killing elements in Samaritan to see if it could repair itself and it did. He said it ultimately died, but for a few hours it lived.

Harold tells Arthur he has to destroy those drives, but Arthur feels like it's his child. That's when Harold reveals that he and Nathan built their own machine. The machine aka Root's HER is listening when Arthur tries to get Harold to acknowledge that the machine is his child. Ultimately, Arthur smashes the drives just as Vigilance blows the door to the safe off.

Back to the boring half of the show or the Reese part. He and Fusco are in jail and Fusco is still trying to get through to him. While Reese is being a total prick to him telling Fusco he'll revert back to the sleazebag he always was. Fusco finally has enough of Reese and tells the cops they can let them out and gives Reese a parting shot about how he hasn't been able to contact Harold and he's probably in trouble and needs their help.

Shaw's escape plan doesn't work as planned as Vigilance captures them but just as the three are about to be killed after revealing the hard drives have been destroyed they're fired on. It's Reese and Fusco who have managed to arrive in the nick of time and save them.

Harold is thrilled to have Reese back, but Reese declares that was his swan song and his way of saying goodbye to Harold, cause he's done. Then he walks out the door. Good riddance. I'm sorry, but Shaw has been more helpful to Harold than Reese has. If he wants to wallow in his pity pit for the rest of his life let him. Does he really think he's honoring Carter by doing what he's doing? That that's how she'd want him to be acting?

Harold visits Arthur back in the hospital who laments the fact he can't even remember the color of his wife's eyes because of his brain tumor. That's when the machine does what Harold hoped it could do for his father. It shows Arthur pictures of him and his wife to help him remember.

Any relief Harold was feeling over the knowledge Samaritan has been destroyed is destroyed when he receives a call from Root revealing the hard drives were switched and are now in the hands of someone else. She also tells Harold she wanted them to work together in this new phase, but that's not to be and she's going rogue. With that she hangs up.

So it looks like it may be Harold and Shaw against the world.

In some undisclosed location [if they mentioned it I didn't notice] the Asian bank employee that got shot and presumably died in the vault delivers the hard drives to Greer. He thanks her by putting a bullet in her. Let the games begin.