Person of Interest

Person Of Interest

Episode 9: Get Carter

By: Carlos Uribe

Person of Interest is a drama about preventing planned crimes before they happen.

Spoilers Ahoy!

This may be the best episode of Person Of Interest yet. It was based on a simple idea: Detective Carter's number comes up. The problem is that she has numerous people who want to kill her, so Finch and Reese have to neutralize numerous threats without getting caught. At the same time, the show got closer to her and gave her more layers. It had good character growth, a good plot, and even better action. All of these add up to not only the best episode of Person of Interest, but also to an amazing hour of television. It'll be harder for the writers to replicate the success of this episode, but I have faith that the writers can eventually get there on a consistent basis. This isn't to say the other episodes aren't good, but to say that this episode is great. I do have a minor complaint: is Carter the only non-corrupt cop in New York City? Why is it that in shows with corruption, either every cop is corrupt or only one is? I get that corruption is running rampant in the show's universe, but you'd still think the show would portray some other honest cops.

The first threat Carter faces is that of an abusive husband of some girl. It's a domestic violence case, which means that Carter technically has no business with the couple. She still feels compelled to help the wife, because she feels it's a homicide waiting to happen. Near the end of the episode, the husband does try to kill his wife but Reese manages to stop him. He does this to ensure that Det. Carter doesn't get in harm's way. The threat wasn't that big, at least when compared to the other threats, but it would be terrible to protect someone from a real threat to have that person die from a minor, accidental death. The threat wasn't terribly interesting, but it did give Carter some similarity with Reese and Finch. She just wants to help people. This leads me to believe that sometime in the future, Carter is going to start officially helping Reese and Finch.

The second threat Carter faces is from a gang leader she's trying to put away. The gang leader killed a witness who got too scared to testify, a witness that Carter knew. This made the case personal to Carter and she decides to try and pin the murder on the gang leader. It takes some police work to do so, including exposing his two girlfriends to each other. Reese tries his best to help neutralize the threat but in the end it's Carter who takes care of herself. It was nice to see that Carter could indeed take care of herself, which only leads to the credibility that she's a pretty good cop. In other shows, Reese would have had to neutralize all the threats by himself because he's the only capable one. By having Carter be almost as good as he is, the show lets her be seen as an effective detective that can almost catch our heroes.

The third threat Carter faces is Elios. Elios has become an effective threat to not only Carter, but Reese and Finch themselves. He's not going to go after Carter himself. At first, I thought that he would try to use the police to have some accidental friendly fire. It actually caught me as a surprise, until the scene it happened when it became instantly obvious, that it was her criminal informant who ended up killing her. As it turns out, the people who you pay aren't very loyal to you if their life depends on it. While the criminal informant does shoot her, it goes straight into her bullet vest. Reese quickly does kill the criminal informant. It's important to note that the threat that gets to Carter is someone she thought she could trust.

Just like her flashbacks. Throughout the episode, the show continually flashbacked to scenes where Carter investigated some terrorist bomb transporter. She manages to get him to turn over to the Americans, after she promises him and his family safety. It turns out that her fellow soldiers decided to kill the guy anyways, in an “accident”, and then show themselves to be corrupt. Poor Carter, always surrounded by corruption. She thought she could trust her fellow soldiers. It turns out not only that she can't, but that she's made an enemy out of them. I don't mean an enemy combatant, but as an ally they don't respect or like.