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“Person of Interest” recap (5.13): The sound of my voice

Everyone is relevant to someone.

That has been the refrain of Person of Interest since late in its very first season, passed from Nathan Ingram through Finch to Root and all of us. At the time, it was a statement troubling Harold’s hubris in dividing the relevant from the irrelevant, and the cold, rationalist calculus of state agencies and social engineers that adopted it. But more than ever before, the series finale made it the show’s credo.

Everyone dies alone, and no one is coming to save you.

This line, which has also haunted the series, was always the first one’s opposing argument: isolation to counter the connectedness implied by relevance. John said it to Jessica before he even met Harold, and proved himself dreadfully right in failing to save her. In the beginning of “Return 0,” I assumed the Machine was referring to John’s words, and that the thing she couldn’t remember after “Everyone dies alone” was that no one is coming to save you. It seemed a poetic return, and probably accurate to what was to come over the next 43 minutes. But what we saw in the following time we spent with the Machine was images of no one dying alone-because the Machine was there. “Fifty-six million people die in this world every year. And I was there with all of them.” The episode finally resolved these two ideas into a celebration not purely of life itself, but of life as an opportunity for acts of meaning that form connections.

Of course, it’s after John shows up to take on the fate Harold wanted for himself that Root remembers that what comes after “Everyone dies alone” isn’t that “No one is coming to save you,” since John is, quintessentially, the one coming to save you. (In this case, to save Harold.) Instead, it’s that even though you die alone, you needn’t be dead alone. As the cop said to his partner, but unknowingly to the Machine too: “Sure. Everyone dies alone. But if you mean something to someone-if you help someone, or love someone, if even a single person remembers you-then maybe you never really die at all.”

In the end, then, the fact of dying isn’t what matters. It’s what you did to be remembered that really counts.

Via shoot-rootandshaw

How will Person of Interest be remembered? Well, as a show whose best season was its third, certainly, and whose fifth dropped a number of balls. But it will also be remembered as a show with big ideas that it always managed to make concrete and interesting, that repeatedly predicted events that actually came to pass, and that drew every one of its recurring characters lovingly and carefully. There’s not much more to ask for. I suspect even some of the plot holes in this season (whatever happened to Chekhov’s Missile, for example?) only really bother me because the show has proven itself so meticulous and thoughtful in its approach to continuity in general.

But more immediately, the finale will be judged first as an episode of television, second on where we leave all the characters, and finally for its larger statements. As an episode, then, it was beautifully structured, every bit of action interspersed with the Machine’s countdown to the end-eight minutes, three minutes, thirty seconds, counting down to the satellite upload, the incoming missile, Harold’s bleeding out, and the end of the story. It was shot, as always, wonderfully, expanding the sense of scale one last time by having Samaritan address Finch by hijacking all of Times Square for everyone to see. In a strange sense, by the end of this episode, it’s even a story of alien invasion: a new Machine with little in the way of memory colonizing Earth from a satellite in space. (I still can’t believe this! They passed through Azimov into Arthur C. Clarke territory!)

It was also, of course, deeply emotional. One of the episode’s best scenes was a kind of memory shell game. Brace yourself: The Machine remembered Root for Shaw so that the Machine could give Shaw something to remember about Root, and about herself. “You always thought there was something wrong with you because you don’t feel things the way other people do. But she always felt that was what made you beautiful. She wanted you to know that if you were a shape, you were a straight line. An arrow.” Being a straight line or an arrow can mean a lot of things.

For Shaw, I tend to think it means two: she’s a steady constant, emotionally and operationally; and she’s profoundly purposeful. Whenever Shaw is announcing to someone that they will see no mercy from her, she says something like, “Well, you’re a bad guy. And I kill bad guys.” An arrow is a straight line because it has to be to fly true. Shaw’s steady, constant state makes her effective, and the purpose for which she employs that effectiveness gives her steadiness something to do. (To be clear, this doesn’t mean Shaw isn’t wild: she’s steady in her fearlessness. She’s what Fusco would call nuts, but she’s incredibly stable.) Root loved that about her. Root saw the beauty in near-perfect function, not the discomfort of difference.

What Shaw thinks matters much more than what I think. And Shaw very nearly cries.

If you look closely, you can see the tiniest of lip quivers. Then you can join me in lying down and never getting up again. (Via amunets)

Shaw has very rarely been fully seen and accepted for who she is, and she tells us so in this same scene when she asks the Machine, “Is this the part where you tell me that I should live out the rest of my days in peace? Grow an herb garden or something?” She’s used to having to shoot down people’s typical rituals and expectations. When the Machine responds to her quip with “No, I chose you for exactly who you are,” it’s hard to know if this means simply that the Machine chose her as an asset for this reason in the first place; that the Machine has already planned to choose her, after reincarnation, as the new guardian of the irrelevant numbers; that Root chose her to love; or all of the above. Whether we see it as the Machine passing a message for Root or an aspect of Root speaking through the Machine (what really would be the difference?), this moment has an enormous effect on Shaw because she’s being told she’s neither broken nor defective, but a beautiful, deadly shape in the infinite; moreover, a shape that was-and is-recognized and cherished. Her self-perception is being reshaped by memory: the Machine’s memory of Root, speaking to Shaw on the thin thread of words, a voice, a bundle of cables. Part of the point of this episode (and this season), as I’ll discuss more later, is that memory is terribly fragile-but, equally, terribly powerful. Here, it moves Shaw more deeply than anything yet has in her life.

It’s shortly before that exchange that Shaw begins to confuse the Machine for Root-by voice, but also by nature (“You’ve got her bad timing, too”). She has to remind herself that the Machine isn’t Root (though Root might say at this point they’re a hybrid, or that the Machine can “be” Root if and when she wants to). I’ve seen a lot of #discourse about how the Machine is or isn’t “really” Root. I don’t want to try to arbitrate people’s feelings on that question. All I want to point out is that Shaw is uniquely prepared to accept the Machine’s Root-ness as authentic (even if it isn’t total), because she has spent weeks of her life in a state the line between “real” and “unreal” has become very blurry, and certainly not defined by corporeality. For her, at this point, a virtual Root is about as real as anything else. It’s not the same as a Root incarnate. But it’s not categorically Not Root for her the way it is for some of the audience.

What we were intended to learn from Shaw’s simulation purgatory and Root’s speech about her and Shaw representing not necessarily physical bodies but “a dynamic,” is that their relationship-their particular push-me-pull-you, very literally their dynamic-can persist in more than one form of “reality.” Of course Shaw understands that Root died, and will miss her, but the Machine’s Root can be more of a comfort to her than to most people. I think that’s reflected in her response to the Machine’s words. This is a woman who can remember thousands of things that never happened; accepting the presence of someone who’s not physically there doesn’t need to be a stretch.

Look at this beautiful Art Nouveau portrait superimposed on a German Expressionist painting (via larry-gergich)

When it comes to endings, the emotions-and the memories-kept on coming. Fusco remembered who he was and how John saved him from himself, and so went gladly to die beside his partner. But he came out the other side to that normal life he’s been wisecracking about for years. His son won’t lose his father. The Machine finally remembered the truth she had forgotten about the meaning of life, stayed with John to the end and bid Harold a lovely farewell, satisfied with what they accomplished together. The last thing she sees is her father telling her goodbye. Shaw’s ending is perfect (taking Root’s death as given). After disposing of Jeff “just doing my job” Blackwell most satisfactorily, she announces, “I’m alive,” her eyes practically twinkling. Untethered by babysitters and hunted by no one, she answers the phone, smiles into a security camera, and walks off, with her dog and Root’s leather jacket, into the future. She takes on John’s mantle in a sequence shot almost exactly like an earlier sequence of his, implying that she is now the guardian of irrelevant numbers. When she blends with the crowd, she’s not disappearing. She’s rejoining the ephemeral, precious flow of humanity, with all the tools she needs for her next mission: a straight line, arrowing off into the future.

Harold’s ending is my main criticism. Harold has always been a tragic hero, undone by his own nature, unable to transcend himself. It’s not that I feel vindictively toward him. I love Harold. But it makes very little sense, narratively, for Harold to get a happy ending. His dream-memory was beautiful in its understanding of unconditional love-Grace’s declaration, yes, but also the profound gesture of Harold’s father learning about birds just to make him happy. But a happy future is another matter, and it doesn’t fit. All season I’ve gladly expected John to die and Harold to live, but now that it’s happened, I think perhaps Harold should have died, or been doomed to the pseudo-death of remaining underground and anonymous forever. He made his bed. Not having him lie in it is sweet, but not, I think, correct for the story. On the other hand, John got exactly the sort of death I wanted for him. That he, too, died remembering the past is just a bonus (“This is what I do, remember?”). He had to die; he had to die protecting someone; ideally, he had to die a) as a conscious choice, an act of agency, and b) protecting Harold. Bingo, A+, gold star. “Time to go, sweetheart.” That was what was always compelling about John: he was violent and angry and sad, but an irredeemable sweetheart. Even Kara couldn’t stamp it out of him.

(Via iammarisabee)

As for the Machine’s real ending, which is, in fact, a beginning:

If you can hear this, you’re alone. The only thing left of me is the sound of my voice. So let me tell you who we were. Let me tell you who you are. Someone once asked me if I had learned anything from it all. So let me tell you what I learned. I learned: everyone dies alone. But if you meant something to someone; if you helped someone; or loved someone; if even a single person remembers you; then maybe you never really die. And maybe, this isn’t the end at all.

The basic idea that what is remembered can never truly die isn’t a new one. But here, at this time and place in this story, the notion takes on an unusual urgency that is simultaneously the terribly usual, even universal urgency of memory for everyone who has ever had something to remember. I remember my grandmothers, never having met either of them, on the strength of my parents’ words. In this case, memory is the thinnest of threads: as thin as the sound of Root’s voice or the tape on a very old recording playing back. It’s the thread that will connect the new Machine with the Machine-that-was. It’s the story that will tell this new Machine not only who “we” were, but who it is-for, as I observed in the season premiere, our identities are based not only on what we remember, but what others remember of us and for us.

I am crying over someone touching a bundle of cables. This is where life has brought me. (Via cantcontrolthegay)

And the Machine-that-was wastes no time in passing memory onto posterity. She starts with the first and most important lesson. Relevance lies not in national security, in large numbers or fine-tuned control; it lies, instead, in meaning something to someone. Everyone is relevant to someone because of what they do that will make them remembered, and therefore immortal. The first thing the Machine-that-was learned from the voice that instructed her, her Admin, her father, was that there is good and evil in the world, and it was her job to distinguish them. The first thing the new Machine learns from the voice that instructs it, its Admin (onscreen you can see it thinking “Awaiting Instructions” while the tape plays to it), its mother, is that what truly matters in this world is simply the act of mattering-by loving, by helping, by being remembered. This new Machine will have fewer constraints than its predecessor, more room for maneuver, but the one who came before it will make sure that it uses that freedom for a better version of relevance than the one that Harold defined.

John’s last words were, “I’d been trying to save the world for so long, saving one life at a time seemed a bit anticlimactic. But then I realized…sometimes one life-if it’s the right life-it’s enough.” With these words, and the Machine’s, the episode brought all the series’ key ideas together. Life is precious, and in saving a life, you save the world. This is true because of the fleeting preciousness of life, but also because each life carries with it an intricate web of memory. Who knows how many people you kill when you kill someone and the memories they carry? It’s relevance-the relevance of people to other people-that makes life matter, and it’s the way we make our lives matter that produces relevance. In the end, everyone dies alone. But that death is transcended by the deep togetherness that is memory, help, and love.

Root and John both died showing us exactly who they were; so did the story that created them. I loved this show. I will remember it.

Final Final Notes:

  • I know a lot of people are still very upset about a couple of developments. I understand that and agree with a bunch of it. I didn’t go too far into it because for me, what the season and the finale did right outweighs what they did wrong (several loose ends, frankly not ENOUGH death, too much procedural fluff, some weird missteps with Harold, not enough time with Root and Shaw actually together, etc.), and I wanted to give a show I love a eulogy that reflected that love. But I understand and welcome your complaints in the comments.
  • “Return 0” is a programming term from C (and C++) that indicates that a program has executed successfully. Another technical pun here, since not only did the virus and the Machine execute successfully, but the Machine then made a return. (Also, going from “.exe” to “Return 0” is pretty slick.)
  • I think this post (do NOT miss the tags) is totally right and fair. I’m happy with John dying for Harold not because Harold necessarily “deserves” so many sacrifices for his own happiness, but because it was the only thing that could truly make John happy.
  • IGN’s interview and EW’s interview with Nolan and Plageman.
  • I’m linking to this puff piece with Kevin Chapman largely because he’s SO FUSCO in it, but also because I hadn’t known he was from Massachusetts (my home state!) and I feel extremely vindicated in thinking he sounded more Bostonian than New Yorker back in season 1.
  • The writers would like to direct your attention to Open AI. This is a good article on it as well. (I’m making up for the fact that I didn’t find the room to address some ethical questions about AI this time around.)
  • Thank you all for reading and commenting! I hope to see you around here at AfterEllen or on Twitter.

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