Person of Interest 3.18: "Alligiance"

“We’re a lot like you Ms. Martinez. We help people in less fortunate circumstances. We only require one thing in return for our services. The truth.”
- Finch

We are in the home stretch folks. Only a few more episodes until we finish out season3 of “Person of Interest”. We begin this week with Bear being naughty and finding the doggie treats on a shelf. He is just so damn adorable. I wish we had more Bear on the show. Anyway, Shaw is trailing their latest number, Maria Martinez. She works for a compan6y that installs high power generators in third world countries. Shaw has eyes on her and she spots the POI steal a GPS tracker after getting a mysterious call from a man about a package. The fact that Maria and her phone buddy spoke Arabic, it triggers Reese to give Shaw a little back up in case they are dealing with a terrorist. While they’re off eating shwarma, Root is tracking the head of Decima. But he’s one step ahead of her. He is able to cut the cameras and mess up the audio and dump his phone so that Root finds someone else. I’ll give him this; he’s good at not being found. But I really hope the gang takes him out soon.

Reese and Shaw’s stake out leads them to the brother of the mystery caller. The brother, Omar, was detained by Customs a week ago on suspicions of terrorism. Omar’s brother gives Maria a package that our team thinks may be a bomb. Shaw keeps tabs on Maria and gets Lionel to offer an assist (mainly flashing his badge so they can sit in front of the UN without issue). Maria deftly slips a GPS tracker onto the car of a French diplomat. And quite conveniently this man is the one who can consider the asylum paperwork for Omar. I sense some blackmail in the works here. And it’s kind of amusing to hear Lionel bitch about the UN. Shaw slips into a black tie function where Maria confronts the French diplomat with the package. It turns out to be additional evidence to support Omar’s case for asylum. A Greek diplomat rescues her before she gets booted by security but I don’t trust him. There’s just something fishy about him I think. Reese and Finch pay a visit to the French diplomat, posing as attorneys and get a look at a letter supposedly sent by the Ministry of the Interior over in Iraq claiming Omar has terrorist ties.

Lionel and Shaw follow Maria home and Shaw immediately spots trouble. She gets into the elevator and takes out a French legion soldier who more than likely was going to kill Maria. Or at least drug her. Things get a little dicey when they exit the elevator and are greeted by some more gunmen but between Shaw and Lionel, they get all but two. One flees and the last one, Reese tackles out a window. Literally, they fall several stories onto a parked car and Reese gets up like nothing happened. Dude’s got big giant brass ones if you ask me.

The gang meets up at a safe house and Maria fills them in on some of the story. Omar saved her life in Iraq when they were ambushed by terrorists. So she wants to get him into the country. Finch and Reese decide that it might be best of they visit Omar as his new attorney. After Finch establishes his credentials and that he knows Maria, Omar spills that the generators delivered to Iraq went missing and he translated document about the transport signed by Maria’s boss. Unfortunately, the meeting was cut short by guards coming in and hauling Omar off to be deported. Lionel gets tasked with interrogating Maria’s boss and it doesn’t go very far. I mean he doesn’t really have jurisdiction to question the guy. And he’s got friends in high places and foreign diplomats in his pockets.

Back at the safe house, Shaw shares something very personal about herself when Maria insists that she doesn’t understand that fanatics will kill Omar when he gets back to Iraq. Shaw’s mother was from Iran and was an academic who got smuggled out of the country in 1979. It’s nice to get little nuggets of information that fills out our characters a little bit. And Shaw pegs that Maria and Omar are in love. And after looking at both the letter from the Ministry of the Interior and the supposed recommendation from Maria’s boss, they figure out that he was the one who wrote the damning letter. And not really surprising to anyone, Maria says she needs a drink and ditches Shaw in the room with magnetically sealed doors. Good one Shaw. But hey, at least Reese manages to gain custody of Omar without too much trouble. He only has to punch a guard out. But since Maria is heading straight to the French diplomat’s office to get the original of the fake Ministry letter, the team needs to hurry up and converge. And I kind of hope that Root’s storyline comes back into this at some point. It’s kind of annoying when she’s just sort of hanging off by herself.

I was right not to trust the Greek diplomat. As soon as he gets Maria up to the French diplomat’s office, he starts acting cagey. Then of course, he shoots the French diplomat when he shows up. It seems we were suspecting the wrong alliance. The team is on the way though. The boys borrow a fire truck and pose as firefighters. They manage to take out the rest of the French legion guys and arrest the Greek diplomat. Maria’s boss is in the wind but Root’s little mission (which included borrowing Bear) leads her to discover that Maria’s boss stole the generators to give to the head of Decima. So they have a way to power Samaritan now. Joy. She ends up using Bear to beat Decima’s method of getting lost and he offers her the chance to join forces with him. She’s not interested.

At least Omar and Maria get a happy ending. He’s get asylum and they can start their new life together. And Lionel has done a little digging and learns that it was the Persian New Year and orders some champagne for Shaw to celebrate. It’s nice to see her act a little more human, too. Reflecting on her parents having their first date at the restaurant softens her up a bit for me. But I can tell we are just getting ready to kick things into high gear. Samaritan versus the Machine is going to be a bloodbath.