2.06: The High Road

[ctg]

The Machine is back and this time it sends John into a sleepy suburban neighbourhood. But that's not all as you get to see how Finch started to test the AI about the human behaviour in one of nice harbour parks. And although he was explaining to his mate, "It needs to learn about behaviour," I for one, think it had already stepped over the threshold and chosen to pair Finch to the Artist-in-the-park.

How It did it makes me think about the concept of can a "machine" have a soul? What do you guys reckon? And if It has one, is it evil or good? Does it see things same ways as we do?

PS. Zoe is again in this episode.

 

[J-Sun]

I for one, think it had already stepped over the threshold and chosen to pair Finch to the Artist-in-the-park.

Agreed.

How It did it makes me think about the concept of can a "machine" have a soul? What do you guys reckon? And if It has one, is it evil or good? Does it see things same ways as we do?

Regardless of any "soul", it can be good or evil (or behave positively or negatively) and, while the writers are free to throw all kinds of nonsensical twists at us, I feel like Finch designed it and Finch is a pretty decent guy. I think he would have created The Machine to be pretty decent.

PS. Zoe is again in this episode.

Of the eps she's been in, it also gave her a pretty high proportion of screen time. I think this is the first time she's been on twice in a row and definitely the first for two unrelated episodes.

On the episode in general, as usual, I could make minor criticisms: what was Reese's plan if the guy who went to investigate the noise was five feet tall and three hundred pounds? Just taking his mask probably wouldn't have been enough. And the Number sure reacted calmly when one of his fellow robbers transformed into his neighbor. And so on.

Still - another take on the redemption motif and not bad.

I'm not sure if I like or dislike that they were really emphasizing how rich and reclusive Finch is and how Reese might as well have had a batsuit on when he was getting into the apartment from the other one. I think I'd kind of like them to keep it lower-key, though I can see how it could also be kind of fun living it large.

 

[Lenny]

I'm not convinced that we can say the Machine has a soul. Finch's amusing party trick to find the links between the taxi driver and his passenger demonstrated that he had the Machine in some kind of test mode to allow him to examine it's effectiveness at searching through a person's past. Although it is kind of nice to see how Finch met his 'perfect lady', the fact that she appears to be exactly that strikes me as lazy writing. On top of that, I felt that the number of the week was there simply to complement the backstory (flimsily, at that), and show the kind of relationship that Finch might have had. I also find it unbelievable that the former safe-cracker's wife wouldn't flip and demand he leave after being told what her husband does.

Having said that and taking the episode as forty-five minutes of television, it wasn't a bad episode - same high standard of production, following the same winning formula.

And I do love me a bit of backstory (however contrived it is).