S04.E02: Nautilus

[FormerMod-a1]

Let's keep it to episode specific talk here.  Discussions that are solely about Root, or any other character, should be in their thread.  Discussions of characters' actions, back stories, etc that is directly related to the episode is fine to stay here.  

 

Thanks you!

[SnarkyTart]

Samaritan told Greer it was working on finding Finch.   Sure, it doesn't have Team Machine's new identities, but certainly it has facial and voice recognition.   Obviously, Samaritan would have been watching every move Claire made and seeing that these same people (Finch, Reese, Shaw) showed up everywhere Claire went, every step of the way, taking crazy measures to intervene and keep her from being killed.   It seemed very clear at the end that Samaritan had a bead on every one of our guys on the rooftop, with that distorted fisheye lens effect on surveillance. 

 

It left me wondering if Samaritan was really using the Nautilus game to recruit computer geniuses, or if Samaritan was using it to somehow flush out Harold Finch. 

[Camera One]

In which case Reese was being really idiotic in continuing to try to help Claire.  We know he had what it takes to look at the bigger picture and let one person go (eg. advising Finch to let that congressman die).  He knew that helping Claire jeopardized their covers and without them Samaritan would win with no opposition.

 

Now, was Claire in any actual danger with those multitudes of hit men to begin with?  Samaritan clearly wanted to become her savior.  So maybe she wouldn't have died even if Reese and the team had given up on her?  

Edited October 5, 2014 by Camera One

[stealinghome]

Samaritan clearly wanted to become her savior.  So maybe she wouldn't have died even if Reese and the team had given up on her?

I actually bet that Samaritan would've let her die and considered it "survival of the fittest" or some such. Like, realistically, at the point where a Silverpool operative is right behind her in a dark alley with a gun, I'm not sure Samaritan could have saved her (unless we think Buono's character was shadowing her the entire time--but then she should have caught Reese, Finch, etc).

 

I agree that tactically it would have made more sense for the team to let Claire get killed--although I have also wondered if Finch trying to help her/her needing help to win is going to come back and be a plot point in favor of Team Machine down the road--but I think by the time they figured out Samaritan wanted to recruit her, they'd invested too much in helping her to turn back. Plus, as much as the episode took pains to parallel Root and Claire, I think Harold very much saw himself in Claire as well, so had a deep-seated need to try to help and protect her. Double plus, Harold--and really the show--is invested in the idea that people can, in fact, become better people. In the same way that Harold couldn't stomach killing the congressman, I think he felt(/feels) the need to give someone like Claire every opportunity to be better. There's no way he could cross her off for decisions that she hasn't even made yet.

[Camera One]

Sure, it doesn't have Team Machine's new identities, but certainly it has facial and voice recognition.   Obviously, Samaritan would have been watching every move Claire made and seeing that these same people (Finch, Reese, Shaw) showed up everywhere Claire went, every step of the way, taking crazy measures to intervene and keep her from being killed.   It seemed very clear at the end that Samaritan had a bead on every one of our guys on the rooftop, with that distorted fisheye lens effect on surveillance.

 

The fact that none of the team members have bothered to alter their physical appearance or even wear a baseball cap or sunglasses makes it hard to buy that they are trying all that hard to avoid detection.  And this is supposed to be super high stakes.  I understand they can't all have plastic surgery since that would require complete recasting, but still.  I would like to think that Root programmed it so that any cameras that captured them with facial or voice recognition would completely scramble the information to make the feeds unreadable or distorted.  Or maybe there are Claire-equivalents playing this game all around the world with multiple "winners", so that no one will individually look through the footage.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Camera One

[immortalfrieza]

 I would like to think that Root programmed it so that any cameras that captured them with facial or voice recognition would completely scramble the information to make the feeds unreadable or distorted. 

That's exactly what happened. Root and her hacker buddies switched out several of Samaritan's servers with bugged ones to prevent it from being able to detect them, a "blind spot" as she put it for Team Machine. Just how blind this make Samaritan however is yet to be revealed, but based on what we've seen thus far especially in this episode it seems like it's pretty much unable to detect the team on it's own at all. As several have said Team Machine really couldn't be more obvious who they are if they tried at this point.

[Princess Lucky]

Just how blind this make Samaritan however is yet to be revealed, but based on what we've seen thus far especially in this episode it seems like it's pretty much unable to detect the team on it's own at all. As several have said Team Machine really couldn't be more obvious who they are if they tried at this point.

I agree. Which is why I think that the team will have trouble not because Samaritan will recognise them but because their cavalier actions will get then on Samaritan's radar the ol' regular way; as deviants.

 

I feel that this episode may have been foreshadowing Reese's eventual capture. In the premiere as well, it was Reese who broke character, who went off saving people just like he used to pre-Samaritan, and Shaw had to come in and extract him before he totally blew his cover. This week, even after Finch's explicit warnings, he went off again trying to save people, because that's still his job. Shaw and Finch, though no more comfortable in their covers (though Shaw's got massively upgraded with Romeo and their shenanigans), are much more careful. But Reese? He can't help himself. He has to help people.

 

So, I think it would be really smart (and tragic, and funny, and realistic) if The Machine's plan with the servers worked perfectly (and apparently it does) but the Team was still compromised. To add to the above potential clues for foreshadowing, Root also told Shaw that as long as she was a B+ criminal, run of the mill, she wouldn't stand out. Meaning, there's leeway even for deviants and even if Shaw was flagged Samaritan wouldn't make the connection that Sameen X, the criminal, is Sameen Shaw from Team Machine. But what if Reese crosses that line? And gets flagged by Samaritan for, I don't know, extremely devialt behaviour? Having his cover compromised? Hm. For that matter, Shaw didn't seem too keen on only being a B+ criminal so maybe it'll be her.

 

This episode opened up a lot of doors.

[immortalfrieza]

I feel that this episode may have been foreshadowing Reese's eventual capture. In the premiere as well, it was Reese who broke character, who went off saving people just like he used to pre-Samaritan, and Shaw had to come in and extract him before he totally blew his cover. This week, even after Finch's explicit warnings, he went off again trying to save people, because that's still his job. Shaw and Finch, though no more comfortable in their covers (though Shaw's got massively upgraded with Romeo and their shenanigans), are much more careful. But Reese? He can't help himself. He has to help people.

That's why I think The Machine used being a cop as a cover for Reese, as he has a perfect excuse to run around saving people all the time. Reese is so obsessed with saving people at this point that The Machine must have figured that giving him a legitimate job that requires him to do just that is a good idea. However, Reese is really pushing it at this point.

[stealinghome]

Based on this episode, though, I actually wonder if it won't be Harold that ends up outing them all (in part because we least expect him). Reese is pushing it, for sure--but his cover is a cop, so while the chances of him being around all these incidents are astronomical, at least he has some excuse for sticking his nose into them. Similarly, the criminal cover can help explain why Shaw might be around at odd hours or doing some shady things (ha, it just occurred to me that now that Reese is a cop, Shaw is kind of to him what Reese was to Carter/Fusco). But as far as we know, Harold Whistler is pretty boring and ordinary ("vandalism" arrest aside)--he seems to have less than no reason to be doing shady things. Harold was also, I think, the least cautious of all of them in this past episode about saying things out in the open, near people with presumably working cell phones. Plus, when it comes down to it, I think if confronted with a life-or-death situation, Harold is actually the least able of the three to make the hard call (ie he couldn't kill the congressman in Death Benefit)--he would save the life even if it blew his cover. So I wouldn't be surprised if, at the end of the day, it's actually Finch that reveals them all.

Edited October 6, 2014 by stealinghome

[Texasmom1970]

Wasn't really feeling this episode. Maybe it was because I didn't give a crap about Claire shoot her or whatever did not care.

The good was the gang getting back together in their new hideout. Oh, and Bear, always love Bear!

[webruce]

Why when Finch found out that Samaritan was behind the treasure hubt, didn't he some how send the Silverpool guys after them? They might make enough of a problem that Greer can't try to locate The Machine crew and Claire Mahoney? The head Silverpool guy ,David that Reese locked up maybe back again. That actor is familiar.

But I also thought we would hear again from the Rich Computer guy that Reese had to chase around his sports car on his motorcycle a couple seasons ago. He tried to check into the teams back ground.

The treasure hunt reminded me of "National Treasure" with Nicholas Cage. But like standing in the middle of the street to find a clue was kinda dumb.

Harold was reluctant to help Claire, but he at end was all set up and back in business.

Reese(Det. Riley) sure seemed to have a lot of free time. But in past so did Carter and Fuscoe.

I hope Greer and Samaritan don't figure out that they could do an algorithm on people with bird names as last names. They would find a lot of Harold's aliases.

Fusco dumping that load of paperwork on Reese was funny. Also him doing "New York New york" was funny.

Shaw on her own crime spree with Romeo and his gang, I am not sure where this will lead. Reese coming to get her help could have put her in danger.

Finch and Reese talking on plhne at precinct, "Captain calling, Hi Captain", Harold replies, Glad I've been promoted!"

[stealinghome]

"Go cow or go home." "He's gonna let his frustration with you upset his judgment." Bwah. Shaw, COME BACK SOON. WE MISS YOU.

 

This episode improved a bit on rewatch; I wasn't too fond of it the first time it aired, but thought it was better tonight, if still not as engaging or interesting as 4x01. The dialogue was unusually snappy, I thought--there were lots of great one-liners in addition to the Shaw quotes above. (Finch's "Glad to know I've gotten a promotion"; pretty much everything Fusco said tonight, especially with the puzzle; John giving Harold a hard time when he arrested him; the list goes on.) Also, after having recently watched Q&A, I have to say the Claire actress was better in this episode--which is not the direction in which we want to be trending...maybe it's because she didn't have to do a lot of heavy lifting acting-wise?--and finding her stronger than I remembered/thought also helped with the episode, I think.

 

In addition to the "hunted and on the run" vibe that I wish the show hadn't dropped, I also wish it had put the team members at odds a bit more in the wake of S3. I've said it before, but John is never so interesting as when he and Harold are disagreeing, and tonight was yet another example thereof. Harold, too, was a bit more "live" tonight than he can sometimes be. I wish the show had had a low-level tension simmering under the surface of the team throughout this season. S4 so far has been pretty light on real character development (and the one character they've done a lot with is the one they're totally dropping the ball on right now...), but the team being at somewhat low-level odds with each other could have prevented Finch in particular from becoming pretty stagnant, which he kind of has this season.

 

The cinematography in this episode was particularly nice, I thought. Lots of excellent lighting decisions. Reese in the dark room with the Silverpool operatives was great, and Finch, Reese, and Shaw all looked lovely in the natural sunlight in the scene at the top of the Empire State Building.

 

Also, I really enjoyed seeing Shaw and Harold team up for a bit. Like Reese/Root, Shaw/Harold is one of the show's really neglected partnerships, but they're a lot of fun. Shaw pokes at Finch in a way that neither Reese nor Root do, brings something out of him that is neither brotp/(platonic?) life partner nor very fraught yet wildly compelling antagonistic niece/uncle. I know why the show generally pairs its characters off the way they do, but I do wish they mixed it up a bit more. Both Finch/Shaw and Root/Reese are really interesting, in part because they're the duos that are more alike personality-wise. And I think Shaw has a kind of soft spot for Harold that makes me go "awww." Like, Reese and Root she knows can take care of themselves, but she's a little extra worried about Harold usually.

 

New theory, after watching this episode and Q&A: Claire's incompetence will lead to the team getting a victory at the end of the season somehow. Their connection to her will help, but not in the way we thought. Instead, it will be all incompetence-based, and Samaritan will rue the day John saved her ass like thirty times!

 

Oh, and Root/Finch scenes are almost inevitably the highlight of any episode they're in together. Emerson and Acker just work so, so well together.

Edited March 18, 2015 by stealinghome