I wasn't going to say anything on the last couple of episodes because, for whatever reason, I just wasn't overwhelmed by them and didn't have much to say but you guys' comments here sparked some things.
Interesting to see the marijuana dispensary tie in to organised crime. I wonder if it's true that the banks don't want their business? Seems unlikely to me, but I don't know much about how the US State/Federal system works in these cases.
To the best of my own understanding, the "it's legal in some states (and DC, I think) and illegal under Federal law so the banks don't deal and it's a cash business" is all true, though the major reason for it is state taxes and it being in cash must make it interesting to collect the full taxes. The tie to organized crime is a reasonable extrapolation but, so far as I know, is used for dramatic purposes rather than reflecting current reality. IMO, there are pros and cons to this but it will probably net more tax revenue with fewer downsides than tobacco or alcohol and, if that turns out to be the case, eventually the Feds will want the revenue, too, and it'll all be legal throughout and handled like anything else. Right now this is just being tested in the state "labs", though, so it's in a weird phase.
Good to see John and Dominic facing off, and reaching agreement. The writers do a good job with the gangsters/corrupt cops etc, but I'm much more interested in the AI side of things.
I was thinking about this very point: the HR/Elias-type episodes were great along with the occasional "wider conspiracy" eps but then you could reasonably go back to the standard weekly persons of interest. The odd thing is that, while the Samaritan story line has the potential for greatness, it kind of undercuts the premise of the entire show and ruins the standard person of interest episodes. The show was originally
about the "irrelevant". The problem is that, in the context of Samaritan, they really
do seem irrelevant. What profit to save a soul and lose the world?
So the idea that they may not, in fact, be irrelevant (any more), but part of The Machine's own recruiting process to combat Samaritan would make sense but they need to make this explicit very soon or have the standard episodes seem like more of a letdown relative to the main arc than they should.
But this sort of makes me actually miss the old little days of two guys saving the "irrelevant". (Still, given where we're at, I'd rather they opened it up, generally speaking.)
Root says the team needs to recruit members. I think she's right. It might take more than four to save the world.
Yeah, but this makes explicit what's actually a flaw in the show. They always should have had a vast organization saving irrelevant people all the time all over the world (though, for real-world reasons, they usually save people only in NYC). The idea that they don't do it this way because people can't know about The Machine, etc., is proved silly by the show's own internal logic in that the Samaritan organization (and Control) exists. And it wasn't that Harold didn't have money (even if times are tight now). So, given all that, I wished they'd have not said anything about it and just kept it small. But, as I say, if not, then make it BIG. Fast.
