photo: cbs
Person of Interest
Risk
Original Air Date: Feb 23, 2012
Len – Senior Reviewer
len@thetwocentscorp.com
Last week, I posed the question “What you think is going to be the big end-of-season battle?” If you’re keeping a tally board, get ready to mark one down! We had our three choices of Elias, Root, and Agent Snow. This week’s episode features handiwork associated with all three – there are murder framing attempts (Elias), phone hacking not done by Finch (Root), and government involvement (Snow). But who’s behind it all?
This week doesn’t offer much new information, Reese sets a new personal record for minimal effort, and the only questions you’re likely to be left with involve the financial plot (unless you’re somewhat investment savvy, which I’m not). But it’s still a fairly entertaining episode. I see the bull and the bear are already marking their territory, so click the link and let’s recap!
This week’s POI is a young stock trader named Adam Saunders (Matt Lauria of Friday Night Lights and The Chicago Code). He just completed a whiz-bang short sell of Virtanen Pharmaceuticals stock, which is a nice callback to the episode where we first met Zoe Morgan, whom I affectionally call “Girl Reese.”
From what I can tell, a short sell is when you sell a stock at a low price because you think you’ll be able to buy it back at a lower price. Saunders isn’t an insider trader – he just really did his homework on Virtanen, leaving no one more impressed than his boss, Sydney Baylor. Maybe it helps that the two of them are associates by day, lovers by night.
While Reese poses as an assets manager and makes nice with Saunders (including helping him out against other traders in the wussiest bar fight in history), Carter and Finch learn that Saunders was interviewed as part of an SEC investigation into insider trading at his firm, Baylor Zimm. In fact the investigator, a guy named Rasmussen, is still harassing him.
It looks like there might be something to it. The firm is putting tons of client money into a company called Tritak Energy, who has plans of building a big oil pipeline from Texas to New York. Some of that money belongs to Robert Sowoski, the man who raised Saunders after his father left. Is Saunders trading illegally to help his adoptive uncle?
Long story short, not ENTIRELY. But someone at Baylor Zimm is. And they want Saunders dead because he knows too much about it. On the way back from a driving range, Reese’s quick thinking saves himself and Adam from being “funneled” into a fake construction zone where a bulldozer nearly took out their car. This is one reason I love Reese – he’s hyper aware, and he’s seen everything. Who would have thought that little murder attempt had a classification?
Saunders isn’t out of the woods yet. He’s about to come clean about Tritak to Rasmussen, when a masked man attacks Saunders on the roof of his firm. Fortunately, Reese is still tailing him and dispatches the assailant with almost as little effort as the bar fight from earlier. My laugh of the day: Witnessing this ass-kicking prompts Saunders to state: “You’re not an asset manager.” No duh. He’s Reese!
The next thing you know, Reese and Saunders find Sydney Baylor dead in her apartment. And Saunders’ fingerprints are all over the place because, y’know, like I said, they’re lovers. (And of course, someone is setting him up.)
In a pretty cool, unexpected move, Reese takes Saunders to the only safe place he knows about other than Finch’s hideout – a homeless encampment. If you remember back to the pilot episode, we first met Reese as a punchy hobo on a subway train. I really liked this callback to Reese’s life before Finch gave him new purpose – there’s a nice, cyclical feeling when characters re-encounter their past in an organic way. (If we never got acquainted with Homeless Reese like we did in the pilot, this would have felt awfully forced.)
Once Reese and Finch figure out that one of Saunders’ pals at the firm is working with Rasmussen to do a short sell of their own with Tritak, it’s not long before heavily armed assassins track him down to the back streets. And these guys are super pros with masks and assault rifles with colored laser scopes that light up skid row like a Rihanna video. But they’re no match for Reese, who takes two out with his handgun while a third flees.
With Saunders now safe, Finch puts things right financially by helping him start a buying frenzy of Tritak stock, ruining Rasmussen’s plan. As the cops close in on the firm, Rasmussen tries to escape but gets hilariously clotheslined by Reese. Seriously, Reese barely has to lift a finger this week. I guess everyone needs a respite now and then.
The only question left is who’s behind all of this? As Finch points out, Saunders’ co-worker and a crooked SEC agent don’t shoot up a homeless encampment with automatic weapons.
It’s Carter who figures things out back at police headquarters. Saunders’ pal is in custody, but Rasmussen never made it. Another cop tells her he was found dead in his apartment. As Carter reviews some security camera footage, she sees the cop who loaded Rasmussen into the police car. The cop then tosses a cell phone into a nearby trash can. As Carter pauses the video, she sees the cop has a telling scar by his right eye. It’s Elias’ right-hand man that we met earlier this season!
It looks like Elias wanted to make some quick cash to help fund his personal war. As you might remember from earlier this season, Elias was trying to reclaim the Brighton Beach area from some Russian mobsters. After that, his goal was to reunite the “five families” and take over New York. The guy even seemed to have cronies in every nook and cranny of every government office! And the last thing he told Reese, after unsuccessfully trying to recruit him, was to stay out his way. Oops.
So I was entertained by tonight’s episode, but also a little disappointed. It reminded me a lot of the early part of this season when it felt too procedural. Nothing was moving forward and there wasn’t a significant amount of interesting back story explored. I understand that’s going to happen at times, but can I at least get some awesome Reese fight scenes like I’ve had the last few weeks?
In other notable stuff, add one more bird to Finch’s list of surnames (this week, it’s Crane). Also, did anyone notice if the third gunman was actually Elias himself? At the end, Elias calls Reese on a cell phone that Carter finds in a trash can, and Elias immediately knows it’s him. It certainly looks like that scar-faced cop left the phone there on purpose, so I was wondering how Elias knew beforehand.
So what did you think? Post your TwoCents in the comments below!
