S04.E16: Blunt

[Netfoot]

And to echo Stealinghome, do we know the Machine is NOT doing this?

 

She was perfectly capable of hiring dozens of people and staffing a large office when all those people were transcribing her memories; there might be, if not an army, then a planeload of really smart people quietly doing things in the background: from the hackers that the Machine "hid" from Samaritan to any number of the useful people Team Machine has run across up until now (and yes, I keep hoping the crazy billionaire who gave Harold a very expensive (and bugged) watch turns up again...)

 

The show is about Team Machine and their struggle to deter Samaritan and intervene with the number of the week.  But the fact is, we have no way of knowing whether there is a Team Machine in every city on earth... or not.  Root wouldn't know, unless the Machine wanted her to.  The only evidence one way or another is -- for example -- when Harold went to Japan.  If there was a Team Machine in every city, presumably TM Tokyo could have handled that mission without Harold having to fly out and do it himself.

 

Also, there could possibly be a TM in every city, but there is only one Harold, who created the Machine and with whom She maintains a special relationship.

[Texasmom1970]

Harper really rubbed me the wrong way, she's the worst Shawdition so far imo.

 

So glad to see I am not the only one who feels that way. I disliked her so much she brought the episode to me. Which is hard to do because I got to see all the guys and even bear!

[Oloryn]

Y'know, if we're expecting previous numbers to show up as potential recruits, aren't we already overdue to have Leon Tao pop up yet again?  Especially given that the recent Wall Street turmoil would probably have given him the opportunity to get himself in lethal trouble again , *and* that he once got into trouble with the Russian Mafia by getting into gold farming (might tie into Dominic).  And he has been useful to TM before.

 

Of course, I'm still waiting for a number to come up who is a doctor specializing in knee surgery, working for a hospital with ties to the prison system, who has found that demand for his services has for some reason skyrocketed in the last 3 years.  Watching John in action would probably be a revelation.

[Mari]

Of course, I'm still waiting for a number to come up who is a doctor specializing in knee surgery, working for a hospital with ties to the prison system, who has found that demand for his services has for some reason skyrocketed in the last 3 years.  Watching John in action would probably be a revelation.

I had no idea how very much I wanted this to happen until you posted it. 

[Camera One]

I thought this episode was fairly weak.  The POI was unconvincing as a con-artist, and she was annoying to boot.  I can't believe Reese turned his back to her.  The Dominic stuff... meh.  Why would he want a flight risk working for him.  I'm not sure what was the point of Finch tailing Root.  

[Cthulhudrew]

So is Root (and/or the Machine) hoping that the compression algorithm will somehow be able to destroy Samaritan?

 

They're going to Middle Out Samaritan?

[Cthulhudrew]

Also on that Caleb note, I do hope Jason Greenfield, Daniel Casey and Daizo turn up again.  Considering they were the other 3 (along with John, Shaw, Finch and Root) to be given a blind spot in Samaritan's all-seeing eye they have been conspicuously absent this season.  If Root is assembling help to fight against Samaritan, then I would think those 3 would be at the forefront. 

I was thinking the same thing. Frankly, there is a slew of people out there that could/should be recruited into this army. Where's Leon Tao been hiding? Team Machine could use his brand of wackiness to bait Samaritan with.

[Cthulhudrew]

Shawdition, love it. But this one not so much. Other than her potential to switch to The Brotherhood, I don't see any skills she has that the others don't. Reese, Root and apparently Finch can easily swipe things undetected. She's no Shaw, or Zoe. Although I'll say Zoe wasn't a Shawdition, she was around from nearly the beginning.

 

I suspect what she'll bring to the table is that she'll end up taking Dominic's offer to work with him, then turn around and become a mole for Team Machine, because she was enlightened into helping people by Finch and Reese. Which would be great, if that little turnaround had been the least bit believable. Harper went from not caring and questioning Reese trying to pay off Dominic, then giving her little "helping people is stupid" speech to Harold, to suddenly deciding to put her life on the line to save the pothead- except that she was really pulling a huge scam to save herself and bring down the Cartel, I suppose. 

 

Yeah, I wasn't exactly wowed by her character. The actress did a decent job with the role, but the writing and motive wasn't there for me. Then again, this show does a fairly good job of laying groundwork that they later faithfully follow through on, so there may be more coming with Ms. Harper.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

 

Today in why Fusco is the best: Harper pulls out the nightstick, he's just like "Nice.  But, see my nice little tazer with all the volts running through it?"  Ending the fight before it even began.  Yep, Fusco is awesome.

 

Dominic and The Brotherhood make a return.  I do like that he's using video games to funnel the money.  Goes with the idea that this is a new generation of criminals, making headway against the old-timers.  And, I've noticed that between this and Justified, legalized marijuana is becoming the new big thing with crooks.

 

Can you explain how exactly money is laundered through the game? I don't play/purchase that kind of stuff and I always felt the money moved one way, user to game, not the other way around?

[DeLurker]

I was thinking the same thing. Frankly, there is a slew of people out there that could/should be recruited into this army. Where's Leon Tao been hiding? Team Machine could use his brand of wackiness to bait Samaritan with.

I think Leon is my favorite number.

But Ken Leung is over on The Night Shift which just started the second season. The show in S1 was gloriously bad, but Ken & Brenden Fehr were consistently good to the point it felt they were on a better show.

[Netfoot]

Gamers find/earn in-game money (and artifacts) for use by their player-characters.   Such money/artifacts can change hands inside the game, in exchange for real exchanges of cash outside the game.  Gold farmers play the MMORPGs solely to earn in-game money which can then be sold in the real world, for real cash, to players who wish to advance their player-characters. 

 

The Brotherhood plan seems to be to take all the un-bankable pot-shop cash, and buy in-game money and valuables.  This way, they don't have a mountain of cash to guard from passing bandits.  Then, when they need the cash back again, they sell the in-game money to game players and recover the cash.  in the process, the source of the original cash is obscured, i.e: laundered.

 

I'm surprised that there would be enough trading in in-game money to support hiding/laundering the bajillions of dollars in cash that is apparently accumulating outside the banking system, as a result of legalized pot-shops.  But then, I don't play, and I don't smoke, so...

[Oloryn]

Can you explain how exactly money is laundered through the game?

 

 

People who are players in the game will pay real money to have in-game money transferred to their in-game player's account.  So, you get a bunch of people playing the game merely for the purpose of racking up in-game money, for transfer to those willing to pay real money for it.  The laundering comes in by recording more money than you're actually receiving for game-playing as though it was received for game money (the extra money, of course, comes from whatever illicit revenue source you're laundering).

[Agent Dark]

Yeah, the idea is you hire cheap labour to 'Gold Farm' (ie play the game basically as a job, with the sole purpose of obtaining in-game currency) which you then sell to players outside of the game using real-world dollars (these players are looking for a quick injection of in-game currency to help them advance their characters beyond what they would have been able to 'normally' do in that amount of time).  If you use dirty money to buy the in-game currency in the first place, you can sell it back at a later date to make your real-world money clean. 

 

I've seen reports that value the "Gold Farming" economy at between $300-900 million USD a year.  The vast majority of it seems to be conducted out of China and South Korea.  While Gold Farming is usually expressly against the Terms of Service of the game itself (and game developers will usually actively seek to ban accounts that are being used to Gold Farm), the legality of it is pretty murky.  While taxation is an issue, the bigger concern are the potential for organised Gold Farming operations effectively using Sweat Shops of poorly paid labour to farm in-game currency.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

Thanks for all the information, the mind-boggling thing is that there are so many gamers out there willing to spend real money for game currency. I can imagine that the developers are not happy also because they don't get a cut of the transaction between players right? With a third party market providing the game currency, they don't have to buy via in-app purchases right?

Of course this is a society that somehow decided to make Kim Kardashian richer by first playing her stupid game and then buying in-app purchases.

[StarBrand]

The most interesting (to me) thing about this episode was Root and Finch's conversation. I guess Finch had more communication with Root than he let on with Reese. He's walking on eggshells around her and managing to annoy no matter how he refers to Shaw ("everything that's happened? That's what we're calling her now?") He's trying to be fair to her, and she's taking things out on him. Not to mention how dismissive she seemed to be about saving the pothead, and "regular people" in general.

 

Finch is being polite now, but pretty soon I want to see him lose his temper with Root. To tell her something along the lines of "hey, I'm sorry my machine didn't protect your friend, and wont' tell you if she's still alive, but this is not all my fault, or the machine's. Stop it with this passive-agressive shit; either you're in with us, or out ."

 

http://www.thefutoncritic.com/listings/20150223cbs07/

 

This listing indicates we might see more of Finch's state of mind next episode. I wonder if this will tie in to Finch having a discussion with Root about losing loved ones, how he eventually learned how to cope with it. But yeah, I really don't want him to allow this eggshell act to last much longer.

Edited March 3, 2015 by StarBrand

[fastiller]

This episode was on NYC's PIX 11 on Sunday.  I forget exactly how the interaction between Root & Harold went, but she seemed to indicate that the Machine wanted her to assemble other teams.  (It was something about recruiting other people, a la Samaritan.)  I thought it was fitting that we find out - - way at the end of S05 with the other episode with Harper Rose -- that the Machine had gone and done just that.  Tight storytelling, that's what this is an example of.

Edited July 13, 2016 by fastiller