“A Person of Interest” 2/16/09

Opening: Allison voice-over, talking about fixations and obsessions.  Do you remember the Hi-Pro dog food commercials that ran in the ‘80’s?  The items people were fixated on were glowing – they had the Hi-Pro glow!

Main storyline: Allison is channeling the early obsessions of a terrorist’s son, who just happens to be employed by her husband.  Instead of preparing dinner for David Brewer and his wife, Allison gets obsessed will building something in the garage, which just happens to be a home-made bomb, fertilizer and all.  Obviously, they have to lie to their guests, and return the fertilizer.  It turns out that David Brewer, Joe’s employee, used to be Arlo Slocumb, Mitchell Slocumb’s son.  Mitchell was a crazy militant who ended up performing acts of terrorism in the Phoenix area years ago.  The bomb Allison built was inspired by David/Arlo’s drive to build things.  The bomb was a replica of the one and only time David/Arlo went along with his father’s crazy ideas.  In the end, David was living a changed life.  Allison had no proof of his part in the bombing.  But he decides not to work for Joe anymore.

My thoughts: I don’t tend to over-analyze TV shows or movies, so I’m not really sure if it was the directing by Patricia Arquette, or just improved writing that made episode better than the last.  But I’m glad that the show is back on the upswing.  I enjoyed the horrifically funny concept of someone unknowingly building a home-made bomb in her garage.  Corny glowing special effects aside, I enjoyed the pacing and story.

“…About Last Night” 2/23/09

Main storyline: Allison wakes up under a freeway overpass.  She has no memory of how she got there, and she has about six hours of missing time.  As the memories start to come back through dreams, Allison convinces herself that she killed a man by running over him with her car during the missing time.  She ready to call the police and turn herself in.  Her angry husband fortunately talks her out of it.

The deal is that Allison’s body was taken over by a trucking company’s dead secretary.  The trucking company is really a coyote operation.  An undercover FBI agent made it aboard one of the trucks, so the driver was instructed by the boss, Hector Alvarez, to dump everyone in the middle of the desert and leave them there.  Hector kills the secretary, Maria, because she is trying to help the stranded people.  She possesses Allison to continue her efforts.  Hector was also responsible for the hit and run of Maria’s friend who was going to help.  Allison is relieved that she didn’t kill the man in the hit-and-run, but she did stab Hector Alvarez with a pair of scissors while acting as Maria.  She’s concerned she will be charged if Hector regains consciousness.  Hector’s son was driving the truck that was instructed to leave all the immigrants in the desert.  He killed his father, relieving Allison of her office supply murder woes.

Minor storyline: Joe is all excited about taking Ariel out to teach her to drive.  But his bubble is burst when she ends up reading his mind, leaving him no reason to instruct her.  Of course she senses his dislike of this situation and gets upset, but in the end they reconcile.

My thoughts: I’m really glad that Joe got pissed at his wife when she was all ready to turn herself in after one recaptured memory.  She should know by now how unreliable her dreams are.  I guess being impulsive goes along with being a psychic.  The story was interesting.  I like the misdirection.  You believe Allison is up to no good when you see her throwing a human hand into a dumpster.  But when you find out that Maria cut off her old (and dead) body’s hand while inhabiting Allison’s body to access the computer, it’s just not as evil.  Weird, but not evil.  Some things I wouldn’t want to remember.  A pretty good episode except for…

Two obvious slip-ups this week:

1. This week’s minor storyline was supposed to be about Joe taking Ariel out driving for the first time.  But Ariel drove to school with her dad a couple episodes ago in “Things to Do in Phoenix When You Are Dead.”  Oops!

2. Devalos stated that Hector Alvarez was smothered to death with a pillow by his son while in the hospital.  Since Hector was intubated and not expected to recover soon, how exactly did his son kill him?  Did he pull the tube out?  Would it have been necessary to smother his father?  Couldn’t he have just switched off the ventilator?  Oops!