TV Review: PERSON OF INTEREST - Critical 2.7

I wouldn’t say I was all that blown away by this weeks Person of Interest episode “Critical”, it really didn’t do all that much for me up until the last twenty minutes or so when Reese decided that he had enough of playing games and donned his ass kicking shoes, even kicking one guy up onto a car bonnet. Last weeks “The High Road” was a lot more effective in the weekly procedural, although my liking of Son’s of Anarchy may have had something to do with that (go read the link). What “Critical” didn’t do this week was give me any reason to care about what was going to happen to the Dr’s wife, she didn’t get enough screen time and although we were “living it” through the eyes of the brilliant surgeon I didn’t feel all that engrossed. What served better last week was the fact we got to know the whole family in the story and what they all stood to loose, I really wasn’t feeling that this week.

“Critical” did do something which we didn’t see in “The High Road”, it moved on the story a little, bringing people back who haven’t been in the show for a while as well as introducing us to another possible “big bad” guy for Reese to keep watching out over his shoulder for. Alistair Wesley (Julian Sands) was the former MI-6 operative who this week was in New York with his elite team of former SAS soldiers, they needed business man and energy Tycoon Oliver Veldt to be done away with, their plan? Get the surgeon (mentioned above) to botch her open heart surgery on him, as Mr Wesley stands to make a fortune if energy tycoon is out of the picture. I think all in all this may serve as an introduction to a new bad guy, Wesley knows Reese from their former Government lives and left the party a little unhappy thanks to Finch and Reese messing with his plans. He will be back, he even said it himself, so I guess we will just have to wait and see what the writers have in store for a guy who like Elias will clearly be a worthy opponent to Reese.

You always know that Reese and Finch are going to win whatever battle they are involved with, and this week that was no different, even when it emerged that they were up against former elite SAS soldiers. It never crossed my mind that they wouldn’t win and save the girl’s life and her wife’s job. I have to be honest, the SAS is the UK’s elite in the military, I’ve never been in the military but from what I gather, in order to be in the SAS you have to be hard as f**k, non of Wesley’s crew really gave me that impression and Reese dropped them like flies, now I know he is ex CIA but aren’t they more of the thinking and strategy type? They leave fighting up to Navy Seals who would probably be the US equivalent of the SAS. Of course I wouldn’t want to see Reese get beat up and I’m pretty sure that the CIA, like MI-6 will train their field operatives to a pretty high standard.

No part again for Fusco this week (well, he was in a little at the end), not that I really missed him but his corrupt story line with HR will no doubt come back into the frame of things at some point. Nice to see Carter in on things though, although she wasn’t actually involved in the weekly procedural side of things, this week she was actually doing police work showing up at the office of some tech company where someone has just opened fire. That person just happened to be our old friend FBI Agent Snow, who unbeknownst to Carter had a bomb vest strapped to himself. This could be the week where Crater finally drops deeper into the fold, as Snow informed her that “She” is going to do something terrible. We as the audience have known since season 1 that Reese’s former partner Kara Stanton is still alive and has something planned, quite what that is we don’t know as yet but I’m hoping there will be some brilliant episodes to come so we can find out. Plus Reese doesn’t know she is still alive yet, so that should be fun. She doesn’t have a reason to go after Reese though, does she?

We are really starting to get some stack of bad guys built up in this show now, all of whom seem to have something against Reese, Finch or the Machine. It should serve as an excellent run for some hopefully brilliant episodes. This week was mediocre, but like I always say they can’t all be brilliant, I think this week’s could be the staging for some brilliance to come but I guess we will have to wait and see. How about you? What did you think of “Critical”?