Person of Interest 1.23: "Firewall"

“He’s in danger now, because he was working for you. So you’re going to help me get him back.”
- Reese

The finale has finally arrived! I’ve been waiting quite anxiously since last week to see how everything played out this week. And let me tell you, did not disappoint. We start with an in media res with Carter getting a call from Finch saying that Reese needs help. She heads out when the FBI agent swoops in to drag her away. They’ve spotted Reese on surveillance and they plan on catching him. We rewind to 6am that morning and find Finch waiting for Reese in the library. Reese has been encouraging Lionel to show initiative and get noticed more by HR. It will have to wait though because they’ve got a new number, Caroline Turing (played by the lovely Amy Acker. She’s been popping up in guest spots all over my favorite TV shows this season). She’s a psychologist for the rich and secretive. As Reese is spying on her, it sounds like some of her clients have some issues that might prove dangerous to her safety. Meanwhile, Lionel finally meets the top brass of HR and they give him and Simmons an assignment. With Elias gone, it seems that HR is moving into murder for hire. They’ve been contracted by a wealthy guy to take out someone. That someone turns out to be Caroline. Right off the bat things are going to be really complicated.

Reese installs a motion sensor camera in a thermostat outside Caroline’s office and ends up posing as a new patient to keep an eye on her. She makes some accurate observations about him and he has to speak very carefully in how he answers her questions. Say the wrong thing and it could get very messy. And as if things weren’t complicated enough with the case, Alicia (from the NSA) has found Finch and is watching him. She sees him go into the library. After their session, Finch alerts Reese to the fact he’s brought in an old friend to help them narrow down which client put the hit out. Enter Ms. Zoe Morgan. I really have to say I like the way she and John work together. I hope they bring her back more often next season. She has narrowed it down to three possible clients and is going to check them out while Reese keeps an eye on Caroline some more. Finch also lets Carter know that things are fishy with one of HR’s top brass, a city Councilman. So I guess she knows about the corrupt cop network, too. Speaking of, Simmons and his guys are setting up how they’re going to take out Caroline. They’ll ambush her and make it look like a robbery gone bad on her way home from work. Of Course, Reese is there to save her.

Reese and Caroline duck into an expensive hotel and of course the only available room is the honeymoon suite. But they take it. They don’t have much time to settle in, though, because HR has found them. We do have a kind of touching scene where Caroline starts to freak out and Reese gives her chocolates to make her feel better. I have to say I laughed both times I watched that. He delivers it so straight-faced but that makes it all the more amusing. We get the scene we started with where Finch calls Carter for help and she sees Lionel is among the people in ops. Finch has an idea though. The person who had the penthouse before them had a helicopter that’s still there. Reese may be a little rusty but he’ll give flying it a try to make their escape. They don’t get far though because the FBI has figured out where they are. The HR crew is on their tails now, too. So they’ve got both sets of guys to worry about.

Zoe has gathered a little more intel on one of the potential clients, a prominent prosecutor. The guy Reese saw in Caroline’s office was a fake. He was blackmailed into doing it. So Zoe is headed for Caroline’s office to snoop around some more. Meanwhile, Finch is on his way to meet Reese and Caroline after they make their escape. Unfortunately for him, Alicia’s still spying and she breaks into the library. That can’t possibly end well. Meanwhile, the HR crew is going to blow up both Reese and Caroline and make it look like Reese (who they’ll say is unstable and would do anything to resist capture) did it. Carter is frantically sending Reese texts to help him evade both the FBI and the HR gang. Someone is obviously feeding HR intel because they figure out Reese is on the freight elevator. It doesn’t look good for Lionel because Carter notices him texting furiously on his phone, too. Just as both teams are about to make their move, Finch shuts down all the cell towers in the surrounding area, hacking it so that only he can call. Meanwhile, Carter goes to confront Lionel about his involvement and we get the scene we’ve been waiting for since Carter started working with our boys. Lionel admits he’s been working with Finch and Reese and Finch calls Carter and confirms it. But they’re all going to need to get downtown to help Reese get out of the predicament he’s in.

Reese manages to get Caroline to the service tunnel that she needs to take to get away, but he’s going to stay behind and hold off the guys with guns as long as he can. Finch is waiting for her at the water treatment plant. And in a small scene that I missed before, Reese breaks into the HR car and steals a gun and sees the remaining explosives in the trunk. "Person of Interest" wouldn’t be complete without a big gun fight, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Just as Reese thinks he’s out of luck and time (Simmons says as much), Carter and Lionel show up and give Reese enough cover to get in their car and they take off, HR in hot pursuit. Thanks to the explosives, Reese manages to blow up the HR car. We also get a rather funny scene where Carter and Lionel were complaining to Reese about him not telling them about the other.

Meanwhile, things aren’t going very well for Finch. As he’s waiting for Caroline to arrive, Alicia gets in the front passenger seat with a gun trained on him. She knows who he is and she wants some answers. She’s obviously come a little undone since the whole inception of the Machine. He tries to tell her that the Machine didn’t kill Nathan (I’m guessing they had some kind of connection beyond business contacts) but that people did. Before she can say more, Caroline arrives and shoots her. She reveals that she’s the hacker from “Root Cause”. I have to say that I’m quite excited by this revelation (though I initially thought Alicia might be the hacker). We get Amy Acker going from sort of Angel season 3 clueless Fred to Dollhouse season 2 evil Whiskey. I like it. She’s quite excited to finally meet Finch and she was glad that he and Reese figured out she was in danger, although she made sure she would be by taking the hit out on herself.

Reese gets to the drop off point to find Alicia’s dead body lying on the ground and the car gone. Caroline has taken Finch. It turns out that the FBI agent was the mole and he gets arrested. But Simmons is still out there running around. So we have a nice set up for season 2 and more Amy Acker to come! At the end Reese addresses the machine, telling it that he needs help to find Finch. It looks like the Machine isn’t quite as tied to human control after all. A nearby payphone rings and we are left with Reese answering it.