Person of Interest 3.16: "RAM"

“I know that anyone who has contact with the code that you were working on either ends up dead or they lose so much they wish they were.”
- Finch

It’s time to meet Team Machine 1.0! Before there was Mr. Reese there was Mr. Dillinger in 2010. I have to say I am not a fan of this guy, and not just because I adore Reese. This guy is abrupt and too direct for my taste. Plus, the first number we see him save becomes a sexual conquest. The real case of the week is a guy named Casey who worked on teams testing company security systems. Dillinger goes to meet an old contact of Casey’s in a bar and clones hi phone. But he’s cocky and brings up Casey right off the bat. Finch is clearly not pleased with this approach but it gets results. The guy calls Casey and Finch is able to ping the GPS to a hotel. And it sounds like Dillinger isn’t alone in his hunt for Casey. During the call he overhears, the guy helping Casey mentions a couple asking about him. Dillinger spends quite some time outside the hotel and thinks he’s spotted the couple looking for their number. And wouldn’t you know ti is Reese and his former partner (the one who strapped Reese to a bomb vest last season).

As soon as Finch gets a photo of Reese and his partner he cautions Dillinger to be careful. He recognizes Reese as CIA and it makes me wonder what he knows because if memory serves they don’t meet until early 2011 when Reese finds out his ex-girlfriend is dead and Finch is recovering in the hospital. Anyway, we cut from Finch and Dillinger to Reese and his partner chatting about the case and what they’d do if they got a few days off. It seems they’ve been sent by the CIA to kill Casey and bring back teeth as proof of death. I don’t know how that works exactly since you could yank them out while he’s alive. But apparently they believe Casey stole state secrets which makes him a traitor. They spot Dillinger and Reese assesses him as private military and they’ll take him out with ease if necessary.

Casey finally comes out of the hotel and it’s a tense minute when Reese starts getting close but he only plants a bug. Dillinger follow Casey into a coffee shop while Reese and his partner walk off out of view. Casey meets with a guy he believes is from a senate subcommittee on intelligence. Apparently Casey found something that proves the government was doing something illegal. But Casey is not stupid and he gets out of there when the guy he’s meeting with can’t even tell him the year the committee was formed. Kid’s got good instincts. And it would see the CIA lied to their operatives to get them to kill Casey. Gee, like they’ve never done that before. It wouldn’t be Person of Interest without at least one gun fight and we get it as soon as Dillinger catches up with Casey in the back alley. Reese and his partner nab Casey but the fake government guy and a couple other hired guns drive up guns blazing. Reese and his partner take out two of the guys while Dillinger absconds with Casey. I’m interested to find out how all of this relates to stuff happening in the present. I’m guessing Dillinger might be connected somehow to Evil Finch.

Dillinger makes the monumental mistake of bringing Casey back to the Library. Finch does not like having his inner sanctum violated. So he banishes Dillinger outside to check the perimeter. I don’t think they were followed since Reese and his partner are busy torturing the surviving gunman with wasabi. Seriously, who does that? We get a bit of exposition that Daniel was brought to a facility not to test a system but to break in. And down in DC we see some familiar faces from Special Projects and Northern Lights who are behind the CIA op to kill Casey. It seems he outlived his usefulness too. Well and they’re protecting Northern Lights. Oh and I think we already knew this but they were responsible for killing Nathan. And if that weren’t enough of a trip down memory lane we learn that the fake subcommittee guy is working for the Brit who hired Reese’s partner. They are all interconnected in this mess.

Finch is making some new documents for Casey and he believes that Dillinger is getting a plane out of the country. He’s also been looking at the code that Casey managed to snag out of the Machine and he’s going to try and sell it on the dark net to at least lure out one of the interested parties. Unfortunately, Dillinger is more interested in a pay day so he’s already set up a buyer with the Chinese and he drugs Finch and tells Casey to run. Reese and his partner get very little out of their hostage before he jumps through a window to his death. Reese plans to get Casey back and kill him while his partner goes to see his friend who is making hi additional documents. When Finch wakes up, he drags himself to his car to try and find Casey before things go down but Reese has four our POI first. The Brits show up at and confront Reese’s partner but she shoots most of them. Reese has a change of heart and lets Casey go free and gives him money and sets him up with a guy in Canada. Finch tries to stop Dillinger from selling the code to the Chinese but he fails and Dillinger and all but one of the Chinese buyers get gunned down by none other than Shaw in her early days with Northern Lights. And wouldn’t you know the laptop heads back to China which in turn leads Reese and his partner on that semi-fatal mission. It’s all coming back around which is kind of cool.

In the present, we find Casey in a little cabin up north. He’s making some tea when he gets a visitor. Root appears and tells him he needs to go to South America to meet a man. She starts setting things up to go boom and warns that armed men are on their way. It seems they have a mutual friend (the Machine) and it needs Casey’s help.