Want to hack the Pentagon?

[sovay]

So rushthatspeaks and I are continuing to watch our way through the first season of Person of Interest (and now the second season of Leverage) at the rate of one to two episodes every night or so. I'm enjoying it tremendously. I have become intensely fond of all four main characters, I like the way the show is now generating suspense from the second-order implications of its overlapping ethical dilemmas, and I really appreciate its ability to combine the cold equations of John le Carré with a surprisingly high percentage of character-based and structural humor that doesn't feel at all out of key. I mean, the FBI is now involved. That's just funny. When we get a representative from the NSA, I will applaud.

Also, this thing we've been noticing. Last night's episode opened cold on Finch with a tape measure around his shoulders kneeling before Reese, meticulously fitting his partner for a suit: "The cuff should shiver on the shoe, not break." The scene lasted maybe sixty seconds; it was like watching somebody's very specific Yuletide request. Rush thought maybe they had read it. It would have been by Naomi Novik.

In the two episodes we watched tonight, Reese and Finch temporarily adopted a baby (and had an argument about the fact that Reese had not yet moved his stash of assorted artillery out of the library like he'd promised, meaning that now the baby is teething on a tear-gas grenade) and an MDMA-drugged Finch offered to tell Reese anything he wanted and then called him by his dead partner's name. That was actually quite poignant. Right, and the latter episode also included Reese getting Finch out of a person of interest's apartment by turning the automatic sprinkler system on him and then tossing him a towel when he came dripping and grimly straight-faced home. Michael Emerson's hair makes him look like a very spiky and annoyed cat when that happens.

I am aware that this show enjoys a thriving fandom, but if this is where the canon starts its viewers, what do they write? After Reese asked Finch if he thought they'd ever have kids at the end of "Baby Blue," we joked about the inevitable sex pollen episode. Then we kind of got it. ("You might regret it in the morning. You're a very private person, remember?") I can't wait to see what very specific axis of fanservice we get next.

Comments

[tam_nonlinear]

Annoyed cat is a lot of Finch's mannerisms. I particularly like that his approach to showing affection towards quite a few people comes across as 'persistently tolerating'. He's not the demonstrative type.

One of the biggest underlying themes to the show is what we can hide and what we can show. I love how the story plays with that in part by having such closed-off characters, all of them wary and hesitant and carrying layers of past around them in a cloud.

[sovay]

He's not the demonstrative type.

No, but he's not unreadable, either, which is something I love about both the performance and the show. The same goes for Reese. Neither of them has anything resembling a normal affect. It doesn't mean you can't tell what they're thinking or feeling and it doesn't mean they don't feel. You wind up watching the characters with the same microexpressive attention they apply to each other—when they exceed their familiar parameters, we're really supposed to notice. So when Finch comes for Reese after the attempted assassination in "Number Crunch," the unhesitating way he puts an arm around his wounded partner to take his weight stands out because it's the first time we've seen him touch anyone of his own accord. (There was that scene they staged during the bank robbery where Reese grabbed him by the shirt front, but that was running with someone else's direction, not initiating contact himself. The ease with which he hugs Will Ingram in "Legacy" is still surprising, because Finch really doesn't come across as the hugging type; and if he isn't, then it really means something about how he views Nathan's son. Doesn't stop him from lying to the kid, of course.) He's much more normally emotional when he's zoned out of his skull on ecstasy, but his voice scales up anxiously like any worried parent after Leila jailbreaks her book-pile playpen—"Oh, God, I'll never forgive myself"—and in that same episode we see that the only thing that will break Reese for Elias is the danger to a six-month-old child. It's a testament to the show that neither of them feels out of character in moments like these, customary finely tuned deadpans notwithstanding. And their less demonstrative interactions are revealing more and more all the time.

I agree with you that Fusco and Carter are part of this dynamic, by the way. At this point we know almost nothing about Carter's past or personal life except that she was an Army interrogator and she has a teenage son, but we have a very clear idea of her capacities, her boundaries, her moral stances, and some of the dangers on her horizon. We got more than halfway through the first season before Fusco said anything to illuminate his own view of himself ("You try to go down doing something good. You wouldn't know about that, would you?"), but the actor had already anchored him as a sympathetic character through nothing more than expression, delivery, all the other physical detail that goes into making up a person.¹ And now the question is not whether he's redeemable, but whether he's in a position that will allow him the chance. Reese is running him like the NYPD version of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and he should know that has a high likelihood of not ending well. We hope nonetheless that it will.

One of the biggest underlying themes to the show is what we can hide and what we can show.

I fully expect never to learn the names under which Harold Finch and John Reese were born and I am fine with that, because we know already that it's not the kind of information that would matter. What matters is what they do, who they reveal themselves to be through their actions.

1. Okay, and he got shot in the ass while protecting a fourteen-year-old suspect, which is a tremendously endearing thing. "I can already see the ass cake on my desk when I get back."

[kore]

This, yes! Every time Finch calls Reese "John" I'm all AUGH. Then again I notice every time Finch calls someone by their first name now, the show has trained me. It doesn't happen often and usually means everything is absolutely going to shit.

And they're not expressionless at all -- one routine T and I do around the house is "MUST you do that in here?" and Reese's "When I do it in the park, people look at me funny." It's the whole relationship in one exchange, all the fussiness and worry about violence and safety and nihilistic sarcasm and burnt-out heroism.

[sovay]

"MUST you do that in here?" and Reese's "When I do it in the park, people look at me funny."

We just saw that episode tonight! You did not mention it is also the episode where Reese successfully disguises his secret crimefighting identity from the investigative reporter he's dating by putting on a pair of glasses and pretending to get knocked out during the climactic fight, also the episode where Finch online-dates on Reese's behalf and hides in Reese's closet. (It's full of guns.) "The longer she stays, the more questions she'll have!"–"Imagine how many questions she'll have if she comes out and sees you here." Plus Chekhov's carousel and the squeaky toy.

[kore]

OMG, I forgot that bit! T called it the Lois and Clark episode.

[sovay]

OMG, I forgot that bit! T called it the Lois and Clark episode.

It was like the Superman/Cyrano de Bergerac in-character crossover I didn't know I needed.

[kore]

I forgot how slashtastic early Finch/Reese is. They did dial it way back later on, mostly in S4 I think.

[sovay]

I forgot how slashtastic early Finch/Reese is. They did dial it way back later on, mostly in S4 I think.

Well, I'm enjoying it while it lasts!

[kore]

That's all we can really do with life itself right! I don't mean that the shifting dynamic is bad, or that the Reech/Finch slashiness goes away forever, it just does become different, largely because the cast changes and does get bigger.