Season 4 Episode 5 Recap/Review! 

Samaritan is Rigging Elections Now? – Person of Interest – Season 4 Episode 5 – “Prophets”

Harold and his team are back in the business of saving lives but things are different now, thanks to Samaritan. Will the team be able to save the irrelevant numbers, keep their covers intact, and avoid detection by Samaritan?  We will have to see…

This week we see John being placed on desk duty after he puts a shot into the knee of a possible roof jumper.  It seems the force thinks John needs some therapy. This should be interesting.

The machine has given the team another number, Simon Lee, a political pollster working on Governor James Murray’s re-election campaign, but Harold has given the number to Shaw, seeing as John may be out of commission while taking care of his therapy sessions.

Shaw is undercover working within Murray’s campaign. Harold checks in but Shaw has yet to find anything. She does see Lee being handed some bad news, as the poll numbers are not matching his predictions and Murray is losing.

Root shows up to see Harold. It seems she has a new identity and she is now going to be, Karen Iverson, a reporter for the New York Journal. She provides Harold with a gift from the machine, a map of shadow spots in New York where they will be undetected by Samaritan, as well as a message from the machine, “sometimes it is better not to know.”

Shaw checks in with Harold and explains that the campaign manager, Mike Fisher, is handing Lee a new one because Murray has officially lost the election. A fight breaks out between Fisher and Lee.

We see a flashback of Harold, back when he was first creating the machine. Harold found a suspicious line in the code and he had to kill the machine when he realized that the machine had added its own line of code. This is when Harold realized the power of what they were creating.

Back in the present, the team is still working on Lee.  Lee is explaining to the Governor that something was not right. He believes the election was rigged. Harold thinks Lee may have stumbled onto more than he can handle.

Root is with Shaw watching Lee, who is talking with the Commissioner about the election being rigged.  He needs to see the ballot scanners. They head into the Commissioner’s office where the Commissioner tries to put off Lee’s accusations.

Root realizes that this election is connected to Samaritan. All of a sudden a rogue employee heads towards the Commissioner’s office and is stopped by Shaw. Root tells them that Samaritan rigged the election and is now trying to clean it up.

We are once again back in a flashback. This is where we see the machine fighting for its birth and growing at an exponential rate. Harold realized he needed to restraint it and find a way to control it or it could one day control them.

Back in the present, Harold and Root are putting the pieces together. They realize that Lee has to remain quiet about the rigging of the election and they need to get the woman who won the election, Michelle Perez, to resign. Harold warns Shaw not to interact with Lee because she might get detected by Samaritan. John shows up on the scene and is anxious to help with the number, but Harold warns him that he is putting all of them in danger if he busts his cover.

Harold and Root start checking into Perez’s background. Harold realizes that the machine has not talked to Root in a while. She confesses to Harold that if the machine talks, Samaritan may find her. The machine talks to her, just in a very different way. She warns Harold that things are only going to get darker.

They find out that Perez has a criminal background. This could be the information they need to convince her to step down. They head to Perez’s acceptance event. Shaw points out that Lee is also at the event and is about to confront Perez.  Root notices that Samaritan has an operative there and she warns Shaw to hold off. All of a sudden Perez collapses and Root realizes that Samaritan’s operative wasn’t here for Lee, she was there for Perez.

Back in the flashback, we see that the machine tried to harm Harold. Harold’s partner thought they might need to abort the project but Harold insisted he taught the machine to think, but now he just needs to teach it to care.

Back at the Perez event, the operative has now set her sights on Lee. Shaw is able to throw the operative off while Lee exits the building. Harold is now following Lee.  The team is working to keep Lee in the shadow spots, which they know because of the map the machine gave them. Lee checks himself into a hotel room but notices there is no phone and no internet.

Shaw and Harold are in the room next to Lee. Shaw prepares a plan for extraction and contacts John for help. Root and Harold realize that Samaritan wanted Perez’s Lt. Governor to be the man in charge, which is why it took out Perez.

Root tells Harold that they can figure out Samaritan’s end game and Harold assures her that they can’t even begin to understand Samaritan, even though it is based off of Harold’s design. Harold tries to explain to Root that they will never understand the capabilities of the machine and she shouldn’t tie her life to the machine.  Root knows that there is a possibility they will not all make it through this war alive.

Lee attempts to make a call on a maid’s cell phone. Harold disrupts the call, but it wasn’t in time. Root heads out to run interference on Samaritan’s operative who is now in the hotel.  Root is above the operative and when the operative realizes she is up there, Root shoots!

The hotel starts to evacuate once they hear gun fire. Root gets shot trying to protect Lee as he runs out of the hotel.  Shaw comes up behind Lee on the street and knocks him out. With John’s help she is able to get Lee off the streets.

The next day Harold visits Lee, undercover as a reporter, and tells him his numbers were wrong and there was no conspiracy. Shaw asks Harold if he has heard from Root. He tells Shaw it is going to be a long fight but it must be won at any cost.

Lee makes the call to his boss saying he was wrong. Harold watches and is joined by a recovering Root. She tells Harold that the machine needs him. He is the difference between the machine and Samaritan.

We see Samaritan preparing for its next quest, to find the machine. Harold is walking down the street when he pauses and looks up at a security camera and says it is about time him and the machine had a talk.

Be sure to tune in next week to see what that talk will be about and what steps Samaritan may take next to find Harold and the team.

Samaritan is Rigging Elections Now? – Person of Interest – Season 4 Episode 5 – “Prophets” was last modified: October 21st, 2014 by

The Brotherhood Continues to Be a Problem – Person of Interest – Season 4 Episode 4 – “Brotherhood”

The Team Faces Money Woes and Fusco Needs a Date – Person of Interest – Season 4 Episode 3 – “Wingman”

Audrey Surprenant on ShondaLand Thursdays on ABC – is Shonda Rhimes Taking Over Primetime?

patrick munjaru on Homeland Returns! Homeland Season 4 Preview

Thomas Thorn on Seven Months, Was It Worth The Wait? – The Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 1 – No Sanctuary

Anita on ShondaLand Thursdays on ABC – is Shonda Rhimes Taking Over Primetime?