5.13 - Return 0

[ctg]

It was the end and I don't know what to say about it.

 

[REBerg]

"And maybe, this isn't the end at all."​

 

[sinister42]

The episode was perfect, and horrible, and sad, and perfect. I wonder though, any chance the showrunners are going to pitch this to Netflix or Amazon or suchlike to continue the series? The ending certainly left that possibility open. Could be a show with the DC team, or with Shaw and Fusco and Harold (who presumably survived?) working with the duplicate machine, and maybe an actor with more charisma than a piece of wood to take John's place. I don't know though - do we want that?

But god damn - the music they used on the rooftop scene was just ...fantastic. And ...damn. I loved that episode. Now I have to go find a new show to obsess over.

 

[REBerg]

The episode was perfect, and horrible, and sad, and perfect. I wonder though, any chance the showrunners are going to pitch this to Netflix or Amazon or suchlike to continue the series? The ending certainly left that possibility open. Could be a show with the DC team, or with Shaw and Fusco and Harold (who presumably survived?) working with the duplicate machine, and maybe an actor with more charisma than a piece of wood to take John's place. I don't know though - do we want that?

But god damn - the music they used on the rooftop scene was just ...fantastic. And ...damn. I loved that episode. Now I have to go find a new show to obsess over.

Maybe the occasional "special"? A feature film or dozen? They could at least have given the series 2 hours for its last hurrah!

 

[Dave]

Could be a show with the DC team

Where were they when the Machine was dying?

Is that the end of Northern Lights? Because it is blamed for the virus? Won't someone tell them it was actually Ice-9 and then start the program over again one day?

It isn't the end, it is just a minor set-back on an eventual path that must be followed. That is depressing because it means that it was all for nothing.

I also wondered if the quote from the Police Officer was actually meant as a tribute to the fans of this show.

 

[REBerg]

I also wondered if the quote from the Police Officer was actually meant as a tribute to the fans of this show.

That is a beautiful thought.
Person of Interest did not die alone. The more than 6.5 million fans who were watching will remember.

 

[J-Sun]

Way late here, but I had my reasons.

From 5.04:

I'm surprised at how few posts these threads have gotten since the series finally came back for its end run. Seemed to be a lot of interest when the last season came to a screeching halt with no decision about continuing.

For me, I absolutely hated the way the season opened with the improbable (impossible) resurrection of the Machine (I recently had to replace the harddrive in my laptop - if only I had set it on fire and sprayed it with a hose and frozen it and done other things like that, everything would have been fine) and some other things, so I was hesitant to get involved since I didn't have much good to say. And then I kept waffling as to whether I was enjoying the season overall.

From 5.10:

We lost a couple of people today. However, I expected worse and now the real fight has just begun.

NOT my reaction. I quit watching PoI after "The Day the World Went Away" because it was the day Ms. Groves went away. I was prepared to just skip the last episodes but, after 3+ months of "mourning" I finally stirred myself to see if the eps were still available on cbs.com the other day and they were and so I watched them, finishing last night.

From 5.08:

I punched air and shouted: "Yes! That's my girl." LOL

Wow. I did and said the exact same thing in 5.13 when she blew away the guy who shot Root and stabbed Fusco. I was so afraid we were going to get some kind of enlightened Zen thing but the writers stayed true to the context and to Shaw and gave us some tiny bit of catharsis.

So...

I wasn't happy with the way season 4 ended or with the way season 5 started. Chalk that down to the weirdness of being on the edge of cancellation and remove it from the equation. Grant that season 5 afterwards wobbled a bit but the show has always done that from Number of the Week ep to Number of the Week ep. Grant that it was a little confusing and playing with the net down at the end. Like was said in 5.11:

Still, this show cheats, like a lot, and always has cheated. There have been too many times when I've been like "now how the hell did they get out of THAT one?" "Hey, I'm about to shoot you, but let me stand here JUST LONG ENOUGH for someone to come shoot me in the knees and save you." That happened in this episode when our heroes were trapped in the stairwell. Baddies can't just shoot them, they have to make a speech first. Ah well, such is television.

(And they did that specific "watch someone about to shoot someone get shot" thing at least twice in this one episode, I think, or at least several times in the last three.)

Anyway, leave all that aside. Just taking it as kind of thematically/symbolically/structurally/aesthetically justified: I feel like they got the ending of season 5 right, as opposed to season 4. The Shaw incident I referenced above is kind of a single example of the larger things they got right. It was an exciting episode (or set of them). I feel like they toed the line between aiming too small and ending ordinary and aiming too Hollywood blockbuster big and making it all overblown. (I still they think they could have handled all of the last couple of seasons differently and had a true epic War of the Gods thing that could have been awe-inspiring but I mean, given where they were amidst this last season, this was the right "scale" of ending.) The continued assumption that Finch is more important than Reese has always bugged me (Finch is rich and smart and Reese is just muscle) but I think it's true to how Reese himself saw it, so I think his attitude of "borrowed time" and such like was appropriate and his ultimate fate and why and how and all. And the ultimate messiness - but something we can call a sort of hard fought "victory" that finishes the show but also leaves a little bit of uncertainty where our imaginations can play with the last phone call to Shaw - is right and good. Unlike some other folks, I don't really want to see any continuations. I think it had a good run and was just about right. Can't guarantee any extension would end as well. Despite killing off Ms. Groves, which infuriated and upset me, I think the show - in the last minute of its life - showed a lot about itself and why we all liked it so much. And they even mitigated the Groves thing, in that the Machine remembers, has her voice, and Harold can even hallucinate her pretty well. Letting us "see" "her" again was a nice touch. So I'm just relieved it turned out to be a pretty amazing show from start to finish for five seasons. Few shows can say that. Well done.

 

[Ursa major]

I've held off commenting because I watched the last season (and all the previous seasons, for that matter) on terrestrial TV in the UK. Episode 5.13 was broadcast as recently as last night.

I thought it was a very good ending, in the way that others have mentioned, and I won't elaborate on those ways.

I'm posting to ask a question. Did the machine deliberately lose all those zillions of simulated fights with Samaritan? I only ask, because it seems the Machine has survived and Samaritan has been defeated, leaving the machine as the sole silicon God on the planet. It did so not because Finch had taken the machine's gloves off: the machine (and Samaritan) knew about Ice-9; all it needed was someone desperate enough to use it (doing so believing that the Machine would be sacrificed and was, indeed, prepared to sacrifice itself, so the world would return to the way it had been before).

It seems to me that Finch was manoeuvred into taking an option that would lead to the Machine's survival (or, at least, allowed its rebirth) at the expense of Samaritan... which may explain the lack of other teams... or, at least, the lack of visibility of other Machine-driven teams. No-one**, but the machine itself, seems to have been aware that its core functions were safely out of harm's way.

Regarding that second team.... To me, but only with hindsight, the most important aspect of the second team is that the machine created it. The machine did not create Finch's team; Finch did. (He knew how to: he'd arranged the delivery of the numbers to him.) Only the machine could have initiated that second team.

The machine seemed to be gambling -- and we know it is good at calculating odds -- that the relief caused by the second team's arrival would stop anyone, in particular Finch, from considering what this might mean: that the machine, for all the hobbling Finch had applied to it, was ultimately in control. (We have had, for some time, r00t's independent activity, but that could be explained away by her disciple-/apostle-like reverence, which the machine has been indulging, and she did have that unique interface.)


One final thought, one that is not at all comforting. Samaritan, though the Big Bad, seemed to believe in its own virtue. It argued (though mostly to its inner circle, obviously) that it was making the world a safer, better place, and examples were provided, offset by the cost in human lives. By contrast, the Machine lied to Finch: it played on the idea that it was dying when it must have known that it was not. And it was surviving in a way that won't be quite as "informed" by Finch's humanity as the version that died.

We can look back the early episodes of this season to know how the reborn machine might behave, we know it has chosen a sociopath as its new principal (and less principled) contact and it has its simulation of r00t on board -- come on: do we really think that the choice of r00t's voice was a happy coincidence? -- someone's whose aim never seemed to be directed at the bad guys' knees....


Anyway, sorry if anyone is unsettled by that final thought.


** - Well, perhaps one person may have known. Recall r00t's reporting her belief that she would, in a way, live on inside the Machine, as it would be running a simulation of her? That faith in a longer life rather depended on a belief that the Machine itself both survives and does so in a sufficiently good state to be running that simulation of her (and of the others, particularly Shaw).

 

[ctg]

Did the machine deliberately lose all those zillions of simulated fights with Samaritan?

I don't think so. The Machine didn't think like us. It wasn't anything like us and yet, it had feelings which made it to be one of us, even though it was just a machine. It ran the simulation and all it's permutations, probably changing one bit at the time, hence the huge number of losses.

 

[Ursa major]

What I meant was did it really lose every single one of them or, alternatively, did it only win once, a win that went unobserved (because it was too late in the day for Harold (or anyone else**) to see? And yet, in the real life (of the show), the Machine won, to the extent that it is the sole AI survivor of the war of the "gods", and it won because its human operatives did as it directed them (including the sniper who saved Reece and Fusco) to do.

It had a plan of how it could win and it won.

It wasn't as if Samaritan was off its game: it too had a back-up plan... well, two back-up plans, both of which the Machine overcame. And after all that, the Machine did not contact Finch, its creator. (Surely the machine was not embarrassed to have either survived or lied, which it could have claimed was necessary to protect itself until it was sure Samaritan was destroyed.)


** - I'm sure there was dialogue where someone said that the Machine had not won a single fight.

 

[Dave]

** - I'm sure there was dialogue where someone said that the Machine had not won a single fight.

Yes, there was. I couldn't tell you which episode but it was a long way back. Root said that to Harold inside the subway car.

 

[ctg]

And yet, in the real life (of the show), the Machine won, to the extent that it is the sole AI survivor of the war of the "gods", and it won because its human operatives did as it directed them (including the sniper who saved Reece and Fusco) to do.

To be honest, I think Nolan wrote himself in the corner and Samaritan won, but he couldn't allow that to be the ending, as the audience wouldn't have bought it. It had to be dramatic and heroic at the same time.