Yes, it's a Vonnegut reference from Cat's Cradle. It's a fictional polymorph with wide-reaching destructive properties. In Person of Interest, it's the name of the virus Harold uses against Samaritan (originally named in the penultimate episode).
Person of Interest season 5
- Thread starter JoeZhang
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That would have to be a pretty robust satellite to have the same storage capacity as Samaritan's huge server farms or the Subway Car Full O' Game Consoles. And in the closing montage, we saw that the computer in the subway station was "Downloading Satellite Data," which I took to mean that the surviving Machine kernel was downloading itself back into the station's system -- which it would need to do in order to have access to the government surveillance feeds that Root had hacked into using the subway's grid. It's not like that surveillance access happens automatically. Either the government has to provide it willingly, as it did with the first iteration of the Machine and then with Samaritan, or a master hacker has to tap into them, as Root did this season. So I doubt a Machine software kernel stored on a Russian satellite (I think it was) would be able to access the NSA's surveillance data.
Also, I think Samaritan failed its superintelligence test by falling back on humanity's preferred dumb solution of dealing with every problem by killing it. Violence is the crudest problem-solving method there is. Look at what the Machine did -- she took people who could have been enemies and converted them to her side. That's a far smarter solution than just destroying them, because it increases the number of assets available to you for solving problems. The more you kill people off, the fewer people there are to come up with new ideas or answers, and the worse off the world is. But the more people you win over to your cause, the stronger your side gets. Granted Samaritan did win over a lot of people, like Jeff Blackwell, and it tried to win Finch over. So it wasn't completely blind to the benefits of that strategy. But it did kill off a lot more people as well, and on balance, I think that would've been a less sustainable strategy in the long term, for all that it gave Samaritan a brute-force advantage in the short term.
I was thinking it was the name that Harold used as the password for activating the Ice-9 virus. But it turns out that name, "Dashwood," was the name of the protagonists in Sense and Sensibility, the book Harold gave Grace upon their engagement. So I guess we still don't know. For that matter, both "Reese" and "Shaw" are false surnames, and "John Greer" was an alias. There are a lot of characters on this show whose real names we never knew, like Mark Snow, Kara Stanton, Control, the Special Counsel, Hersh, and Harper Rose. There were only a few cases where we learned the real name behind the alias -- Root was Samantha Groves, Peter Collier was Peter Brandt, and of course Charlie Burton was Carl Elias.
I wish it hadn't taken them so long to get into the meat of the concept, but I liked it that the procedural element remained part of the mix. I'm quite fond of the thematic premise that saving individual lives is as important as saving the world. The fact that Finch and the Machine cared about protecting ordinary people, that they weren't willing to turn a blind eye to individuals for the sake of "the greater good," was the whole thing that made them better than Samaritan. So it's good that the case-of-the-week element continued to be the spine of the series throughout.
Just watched the finale, wow. I was very much hoping the show would end on a strong note and I was not disappointed.
For awhile now, I've had a few wants for the end of the show, one of the big ones for me was for Fusco to live. Been a Fusco fan for a long time and I've always had a soft spot for characters who are the ordinary person wrapped up in the enormous events that go on around them. Reese, Shaw, Root & Finch were all elites of what they did. Fusco is a good cop, but I wouldn't call him an elite. He had elite moments, without a doubt, but was still the Miles O'Brien of the series.
Reese sacrificing himself adds another layer to the character for me. Since Samaritan really took hold and became a major part of the show, the planning of strategy had really been done by Finch and Root. While Reese was major to the action of the show and could plan the escapes/combat/etc. of how things would go, but not of the major overall strategy the team would take. What his strategy had been about was Finch, protecting one of his only friends. He was as dedicated to Finch surviving as Root was to Shaw being rescued, he was just a lot quieter about it. This showed that he was a little smarter than I think he was given credit for, I like that the show gave him that. Not just was Reese a tough and dangerous man, but he was smart enough to out think his genius boss and best friend to save him.
I'm glad they left threads going for it to continue, but I think those serve a more important purpose. The technology and advances that Person of Interest talked about are coming or here already and we can't forget that.
For awhile now, I've had a few wants for the end of the show, one of the big ones for me was for Fusco to live. Been a Fusco fan for a long time and I've always had a soft spot for characters who are the ordinary person wrapped up in the enormous events that go on around them. Reese, Shaw, Root & Finch were all elites of what they did. Fusco is a good cop, but I wouldn't call him an elite. He had elite moments, without a doubt, but was still the Miles O'Brien of the series.
Reese sacrificing himself adds another layer to the character for me. Since Samaritan really took hold and became a major part of the show, the planning of strategy had really been done by Finch and Root. While Reese was major to the action of the show and could plan the escapes/combat/etc. of how things would go, but not of the major overall strategy the team would take. What his strategy had been about was Finch, protecting one of his only friends. He was as dedicated to Finch surviving as Root was to Shaw being rescued, he was just a lot quieter about it. This showed that he was a little smarter than I think he was given credit for, I like that the show gave him that. Not just was Reese a tough and dangerous man, but he was smart enough to out think his genius boss and best friend to save him.
I'm glad they left threads going for it to continue, but I think those serve a more important purpose. The technology and advances that Person of Interest talked about are coming or here already and we can't forget that.
All Reese did was make a deal with the Machine to protect Harold. I assume the Machine worked out the specifics of how to do that.
The way I saw it is that he initiated the deal, I may be wrong, but that's how it looked to me. Reese has known he could talk to the machine simply by looking up at a camera since season 1. Also, I doubt that the machine would have made that suggestion to Reese without first having discussed the possibility with him first.
Yeah, but you were talking about him being smart. It doesn't take smarts to say "Let's agree to protect Harold." That's just basic loyalty. The smarts -- i.e. the details of how to mislead Harold and send him to the wrong building -- probably came from the Machine.
If anything, I think the deal Reese was referring to may have been the one he made with the Machine back in the season 2 premiere, when he refused to help any more numbers until the Machine helped him find Harold (who had been abducted by Root). Ever since then, they've had an understanding that they're partners in protecting Harold.
I just realized we didn't get resolution on what happened to Special Agent LeRoux. I don't care about the character himself, but I do care what Lionel decided to do with him.
I see it differently, since the Machine had to be rebuilt, Reese wouldn't have assumed that any deal he had with the machine was still valid. Reese wouldn't have the knowledge to know if the machine would honor that or if it would even be able to access that info from itself.
I think after Root was killed, Reese assumed that all bets were off with Harold and that he was likely to do what he would do in similar circumstances, sacrifice himself to protect his friends, requiring him to coordinate with the machine directly. We know Reese was willing to do this, especially given what happened when Kara Stanton strapped a bomb vest to him in season 2. Given that incident, it's also appropriate that the moment of sacrifice took place on a rooftop, like in season 2.
But everyone gets to see things from their own perspective, I guess ours don't agree. That's fine by me.
I did get the strong impression that Reese said he and the Machine had made their deal some time ago. Whether it was earlier this season or several seasons earlier, I don't think it was meant to be something that just happened.
And again, there's a difference between having an idea and being smart. It's quite common for one person to have an idea and to leave it in the hands of smarter people to work out the details. Reese didn't have to be a genius to say "I want to protect Harold." He had the idea, the Machine worked out the specifics. That's all I'm saying. The fact that Reese had this idea doesn't prove anything about his intelligence, only his loyalty.
I have a slightly different take on the end - Machine 2.0 is playing the Finch role via the tape recording to Machine 3.0. That's why the graphics show it is waiting for instructions about what it's purpose is. It's not the same machine at the end, it is its off-spring.
Yes, but the Machine 2.0 that was "born" this season was also an offspring of the original. And yet she was able to "repopulate" her memories from the surveillance feeds and perhaps from other backup storage, and thus was able to become essentially the same entity as before. She and Harold certainly spoke to each other as if she were the same entity he'd created over a decade ago. For an ASI like the Machine, human language may be inadequate to distinguish between an offspring and a continuation. Root argued that only the "shape" mattered, that we are merely patterns of information, and so we live on in the Machine's simulations of us. So if we're willing to believe that the Root emulation within Machine 2.0 is actually Root living on in some way, then we can believe that the original Machine lives on through her offspring.
Thanks for that. I missed that line. Glad he wasn't forgotten about.
Nolan and Plageman answer questions:
https://tvline.com/2016/06/21/person-of-interest-recap-season-5-series-finale-reese-dies/
They confirm that Shaw did hear the Machine speak in Root's voice at the end; we were going to hear what she said, but they decided in editing that it didn't fit the moment. The opening summary of the episode also confirms that Reese's deal with the Machine about protecting Harold was a "previous arrangement" that they made long ago.
https://tvline.com/2016/06/21/person-of-interest-recap-season-5-series-finale-reese-dies/
They confirm that Shaw did hear the Machine speak in Root's voice at the end; we were going to hear what she said, but they decided in editing that it didn't fit the moment. The opening summary of the episode also confirms that Reese's deal with the Machine about protecting Harold was a "previous arrangement" that they made long ago.
I finished the series yesterday.
There were some puzzling moments, as LoB pointed out (like the Times Square sequence). Still it was emotionally satisfying. When you realize Harold is at the wrong building....
So, does Shaw pull Fusco back in?
A good, solid mystery of the week show that became an outstanding Sci-Fi series. I still think it had some legs left and they ended it too early, but that's just me.
There were some puzzling moments, as LoB pointed out (like the Times Square sequence). Still it was emotionally satisfying. When you realize Harold is at the wrong building....
So, does Shaw pull Fusco back in?
A good, solid mystery of the week show that became an outstanding Sci-Fi series. I still think it had some legs left and they ended it too early, but that's just me.
Hard to believe she and the Machine wouldn't take advantage of their asset on the force. Besides, he'd probably want to stick around for the dog, like Shaw did.
Plus now we know the Machine has other operatives, so the infrastructure is basically still there. Logan Pierce can become the new Sugar Daddy.
I was watching If/Then/Else again in a rerun and I noticed that as soon as Harold and Root died in the simulation the Machine reset to the beginning, but when John died it kept the simulation running until the others died too. Now looking back on that after seeing the finale, I wonder if that was an indication of the deal John struck with the Machine.
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