3.02: Nothing to Hide

[J-Sun]

Because I like Sarah Shahi and especially Amy Acker so much, I've been happy with adding the one and recurring the other (why was she in the credits last night when she never appeared?) but now they've given Carter a partner on the uniform day shift and, that coupled with the move to Tue@10 has made me realize that the Suits have "retooled" and possibly ruined our show. (And the ratings are reflecting it.) And it doesn't help that last night's writing sucked. I'm all for the privacy issue but this was delivered with a sledgehammer and I was cringing at the scene in which the woman who, from her perspective, had been pulled over by a cop for no apparent reason who turned out to know things she shouldn't possibly know had the reaction of dumping her life story to her new best friend and being grateful when Carter let her off "with a warning". What the hell was that? And Bear wasn't a whole hell of a lot of good when his master was getting brained with a pot, was he? And, while I think the central story idea could have been fine, I don't see it being a good idea for a "new secret rogue organization in a continuing storyline". And so on.

It's just too cluttered and busy with Carter and her new buddy and Reese, Shaw, and Finch and the PoI all in the same room all the time and so on, and what's with the day shift nonsense? This is supposed to be two dudes fighting the dark.

Yet it's not "cluttered" enough in the good way of dealing with Root and the Machine and Elias and HR and random boomerangs from Reese's past and so on - that's just all evaporated after last season's excellent finale.

Still, so many aspects of this show have been so good and so much other television is so much worse, that I'm still tuning in (for awhile) and hoping it'll recover.

Anybody else as bothered/worried as I am, or do you think the show's basically the same or even better or whatever?

 

[ctg]

that coupled with the move to Tue@10 has made me realize that the Suits have "retooled" and possibly ruined our show. (And the ratings are reflecting it.)

I didn't know that and I'm sure you're right about it. Late night slot to hide the government dirt isn't the right thing to do, especially as they got high profile publicity around the time of Snowden revelation. So you can expect they will reschedule the show again for the US viewers. But in the same time you should know that POI hasn't lost any interest in the net, quite the opposite as more and more people are getting really interested in this show.

And it doesn't help that last night's writing sucked.

I'm all for the privacy issue but this was delivered with a sledgehammer and I was cringing at the scene in which the woman who, from her perspective, had been pulled over by a cop for no apparent reason who turned out to know things she shouldn't possibly know had the reaction of dumping her life story to her new best friend and being grateful when Carter let her off "with a warning". What the hell was that?

Bad writing like you said.

And Bear wasn't a whole hell of a lot of good when his master was getting brained with a pot, was he?

No he wasn't and I was thinking about it as I finished watching the episode ten minutes ago. Bear is a trained attack dog and he could had killed the perpetrator. And that would had made the situation interesting as then we wouldn't have found about the "Anonymous" as we did now.

So I for one accept him taking chunks out from the poor fellow.

Shaw, and Finch and the PoI all in the same room all the time and so on, and what's with the day shift nonsense? This is supposed to be two dudes fighting the dark.

I was never about just two dudes. Not even on the first season.

Anybody else as bothered/worried as I am, or do you think the show's basically the same or even better or whatever?

Same. And I'm afraid of the consequencies of Elias mixing with HR, Anonymous doing the "jobs" and the Machine splitting in two entities.

 

[Lenny]

For an episode that played as if it was filler**, I found it rather enjoyable. Yeah, the whole data privacy issue was dealt with in a terribly ham-fisted way, but that's all the rage these days so who can blame 'em?

Again, it was great fun to watch Reese and Shaw working together, and I particularly enjoyed their appearance at the party. I'm not sure what it is (whether it's me, or the writing), but Jim Caviezel doesn't strike me as being so wooden any more, and Shaw is his perfect complement.

On the subject of including more storylines, I for one welcome it. We've seen that when it's not dealing directly with the main story arc, PoI can be weak and totally uninteresting. It's early days yet, of course, but more storylines will hopefully mean that every episode is relevant in some way. It also means that Carter and Fusco get to do something other than support (we now have Shaw) or research into the number of the week (which has always been Harold's domain). I'm going to look a right plonker in ten episodes time, when Carter's partner is killed during a huge gun battle with HR in the mid-series finale and turns out to be nothing but an innocent rookie who wanted to train with the best, but I reckon the twist with him is that he's been put on her by HR to keep an eye. I'm not quite decided what Fusco is going to end up doing (though it will likely involve Cal's murder and investigating HR with the help of Elias).





**I'm not yet sure if Collier and co will return as a set of villains. If they do, I reckon they'll be in league with Decima - the virus Decima planted in the Machine last series sent some information to the Chinese, and the rest went to a completely unknown entity. However, it might just be easier to directly re-introduce Decima at some point, removing the need to flesh out a new group and then tie them to an old group.

 

[Dave]

I see you are also addressing my issue with the 'gang' rather than the 'pair'. I disagree that it wasn't originally just Reese and Finch, because it was.

Wasn't it also a bad idea to leave Wayne Kruger alone with Finch in the Library? They questioned leaving Leon alone with him before!

Not much to add, not much of the story arc added. I also see a lot of villains getting added to the crime-fighters.