Person of Interest (TV Series) RAM (2014) User Reviews

PERFECT, could use as a template in film school, wow

[A_Different_Drummer · 10/10 · 17 March 2015]

Wow.

First to be clear let's talk about the episode. Not merely the best in the series so far, not merely technically perfect, but soars even above the usual standards for POI. The script which is flawless works on multiple levels, not only telling a story via the trope of flashback but carefully introducing new elements like a time release drug to shock the viewer in real time and yet (this is not easy, trust me) also adding to our understanding of the characters for episodes to come.

"Wow" does not do justice. Nor is the 10 score high enough.

I need to repeat this is technically perfect, no false notes, no wasted words or frames, and constant viewer connection.

Makes those handful of TBAA episodes ("touched by an angel" theme in the lesser POI entries) look tawdry in comparison.

And the script team from ARROW, who have turned the flashback, as a reliable script device, into a weapon of torture should be forced to watch this episode on a continuous loop with their eyelids taped open.

Not to benefit them. To benefit their viewers.

One of my favorite episodes

[gridoon2024 · 8/10 · 22 March 2021]

Dense, complicated, tingling, and sometimes hilarious ("They've got a head start" - "Yeah but they haven't got the Finchinator doing his hacker mojo!"). It also establishes the missing link between Finch and Decima. Neil Jackson is delightful as Reese's predecessor: rude, hedonistic, opportunistic, amoral - he's a like a wink of the writers to those sections of the audience who may find the real Reese a little too straight-and-narrow. This episode could be the model for a series of spinoffs: "Harold Finch's Tryouts". Also glad to see Kara and the Control government guy back in action. The one silly part is the whole impromptu self-tooth-removal-thingy, but what would a good POI episode be without a silly part? *** out of 4.

Wow!

[shuvrapratim · 10/10 · 22 April 2022]

This show never fails to surprise you. Yet it didn't receive the recognition that it deserves. This single episode is more thrilling and enjoyable than most of the contemporary movies out there. My favorite episode till now. I will definitely watch it again someday.

Mr. Dillinger is the man in the suit (not quite) and John Reese is not (yet).

[bi-azh · 10/10 · 29 July 2018]

The beginning of this episode is a game with viewer expectations and playing with it. First we get the old s. 1 intro up to the sentence: But I needed a partner....then the machine interrupts and rolls back in time but not giving us the date - yet. The following scene of the man in the suit saving a damsel in distress could be out of Finch's playbook but is all so wrong at the same time. Finch wears his old glasses. Then we find out it is 2010.

Let us compare Mr. Dillinger and Mr. Reese:

Mr. Dillinger:

• wears a perfect dark suit, white shirt, no tie, haircut the same as Reese later
• badass demeanor but then it goes all wrong when he says "protector of the innocent" John would never have said something that blunt, and ends up in bed with the lady.
• Kills the bad guys
• Wants the weekend off
• Brags about his blackwater-time
• Is an awful macho towards women ("she should have made me dinner", that sad expression on the woman's face after he leaves her bed). John on the other hand likes women and always treats them with respect and politeness, even those who are insulting him like Root.
• Doesn't know that Finch hates coffee, their relationship is somehow off, not trusting, Finch hasn't told him about the machine (whereas he tells John right at the beginning).
• Dillinger likes what he gets out of the job (women and money, John gives his money away to charitiy), is really full of himself, doesn't care about the people he is saving, awful how he treats Casey
• refers to himself as a shark (later Reese refers to himself as a "real monster" and isn't proud of it at all).
• doesn't want to "wind up dead" when he is working for Finch. No need for redemption.
• Accuses Finch about not trusting him, when he asks about the laptop. Would it have been different, if Finch had handled him differently? I doubt it.

Mr. Reese:

• wears a very earnest and very long coat with scarf, hair in government-operator style
• seems to be perfectly in line with his partner Kara, dark and cold stare, professional and no nonsense behaviour, highly efficient
• only follows orders, doesn't seem to care about the people he is killing
• is ready to kill Dillinger
• but doesn't like the torturing, that is when we first sense that he is different
• is asking questions about the mission opposed to Kara who doesn't care

....and then that last scene that turns everything around and opens the door for Mr. Reese to become the man in the suit.

This episode wraps up loose ends and opens doors at the same time

• We learn how Finch knew John, why he chose him and that he probably knew about him through Jessica, who was a number at the time this episode takes place, but not dead yet.
• We learn about the mysterious Ordos-laptop, what was on it and how it ended up in China, and so in the hands of Greer/Decima. Lambert is already in the game and very interested in the AI-thing - and hides his British accent. And Harold plants the virus that triggers the machine to it's independent action later (end of s. 2).
• Control already wants access to the machine. She is such a badass when Special Counsel dares to critize her about killing Nathan: "Nathan Ingram has outlived his usefulness and was dealt with accordingly." That is one hell of a thing to say and a thread to the other man. Who wants to work for Control? Probably only people like Shaw! And this matches exactly how Greer deals with Lambert: "Fail me again and I will find someone more adequate to the task."
• Harold and Casey have a good understanding about each other, they seem to relate and like each other.
• We even get a glimpse on Shaw in action, how her career started and how her way of handling things was appreciated by Control and Special Counsel. How could Finch ever trust her when he has seen before what a cold-blooded killer she is?
• And we learn about why Control ordered Kara's and John's death.
• That burial scene didn't make sense at all except than connecting it to the pilot where Fusco sets out to bury John and winds up burying Stills. (Why does Finch have a shovel in his car, how is he able to do it with his injuries and why do it at all because the police will certainly find Dillinger, it is Central Park!?!?)
• In the switchback to present time the plotline is picked up by Root who now is in need of brilliant hackers. That scene in Canada could have been handled a bit more realisticly but who cares?

Holy #$%&!! How Is This Show So Good?

[MamadNobari97 · 10/10 · 5 July 2023]

This is how you do flashbacks. This show found a really great way to do flashbacks and balance it with the present timeline and not overdo it so when they do flashbacks like this, they would blow your mind. And they did it again.

This might not be the best episode of the show as a whole, not even better than the ones before it, but it's definitely out there with how perfectly it's written and executed.

The way they find new ways to surprise you with the storylines you already are familiar with is just brilliant and they also do a great job of integrating the new reveals we had only a couple of episodes ago into it without the need of keeping it secret or mysterious since it's already out there. The reveals in the previous episodes help shed more light on the new storyline of the episode as well as multiple other storylines that we already know of, some of which already had their ending in season 2.

It's amazing how they can show a little more of an already finished storyline with characters that aren't there anymore and still blow your mind with it, and still connect the plot of the flashback episode to the present so it's not just a random filler flashback that just revealed some trivial details and is pointless.

This episode also serves as a great retrospective to show us how far these characters have come and how much they've changed and how good the writing for these character arcs is.

This is my first rewatch of the show after probably 6 years, so I'm familiar with the story and characters and how it ends, but I don't really remember everything and the show still manages to give me goosebumps from how well-written. I didn't really want to review episodes of the show on my rewatch and just wanted to review the whole series after I was done, but this episode was so good that I just couldn't not say anything about it.

The story might seem a little generic and boring from the beginning, but the more it goes on you realize that it is actually essential and related and even central to every single major storyline we've seen so far, and some characters. And the writers do a brilliant job of connecting every dot and giving us more from the storylines of the first season.

Revelations

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 3 March 2024]

In 2010, before working with Reese, Finch works with Rick Dillinger. The Machine delivers the number of Daniel Casey, a hacker that works testing security systems and vanished two months ago. Dillinger heads to see Lester Strickland, who had hired Casy in a previous work. When he leaves Strickland, he calls Casey and asks what he had done, since first a couple and now a man had visited him looking for Casey. Finch sends Dillinger to a hotel, where he sees Reese and Stanton, who worked for CIA. They are talking to each other and say that Casey had stolen the government and must die. Casey leaves the hotel and Reese puts a bug in his pocket to track him down. After a shootout, Dillinger rescues Casey and brings him to see Finch. Soon he learns that the government had hired Casey to break into The Machine. He had accessed some information through a backdoor and now the government is trying to kill him. Finch examines Casey's laptop and the code he accessed would allow to introduce a virus in The Machine. He asks Dillinger to put Casey in a charter airplane to go to Canada. But Dillinger drugs Finch to sell Casey's laptop to the Chinese and leaves Casey on his own.

"RAM" is an interesting episode of "Person of Interest". In flashback to 2010, it shows connections to several episodes. Casey's laptop is the one that Reese and Stanton were sent to Ordos to retrieve. Control is the one who ordered to kill Reese and Stanton. Finch interested in Reese when he spares Casey, despite the received orders. It is also shown the first "helper monkey" mentioned by Root is Dillinger. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "RAM"