Oh how I love episodes where we get a lot of Root. Here we get a little unhinged all around, too. Good times.
I have watched the whole show before, so SPOILERS MIGHT HAPPEN. Big spoilers will be blanked out but references and irrelevant spoilers are going to be out in the open.
We open at the exact spot we left off, with Control having the upper hand, and our two AI masterminds – Claypool and Finch – in trouble.
Just as the scary boss lady orders two shots to Shaw’s head, though, Root barges in, shooting everybody, freeing Sameen and instructing them to flee. But! Hersh shoots her, incapacitating her. What will happen to our favorite lesbian??!
Finch, Arthur and Shaw make it out of there, and Arthur confesses he “played the tumor card” pretending not to know anything about any drives containing Samaritan code with Control, but he knows. Sneaky, sneaky pal.
[1979] Harold has packed his dad’s bags to take him to a facility, and he (the dad) says something about going there and bragging about how his son is going to change the world. Awh.
Root gets a black hood taken off her, and she is in a cage with Control. Control seems to think Root works for Finch et al against her will, hence her previous stay at a mental hospital
Root: Seems everybody wants to lock me up.
Control wants Root to give her administrative access to the Machine, as if Root can (or would) hand over her god mode badge or something. Since Root wont do that and basically calls them incompetent, Control brings in the torture props.
What are these props, you ask? Needles. One with downers for one arm, and for uppers on the other. Fun, fun, fun. Root at least seems to be having some, impending possible heart-attack and all.
Root: You think you’re in charge? It’s adorable just how wrong you are.
I love unhinged Root. Have I said that already? I really, really do.
Arthur Claypool takes Shaw and Finch to a safe deposit at a bank, where he put the drives under a fake name. But it’s a fake name that the Vigilance interrogator lady got out of him on the previous episode, so of course my favorite privacy activist babe Collier is there too. So now Harold and Arthur are locked inside the vault, and Shaw is outside, thinking of what to do to get them all out of there. And Hersh – bless his stupid ass face, I swear – is there now too.
We travel to Colorado, where Reese is in jail with Fusco, being all broody about how they weren’t helping anyone with the numbers, just delaying the inevitable. Lionel insists that losing someone isn’t an excuse to be a little bitch, tells John that Finch is probably in trouble, but what the hell, right? And leaves John there.
Sameen is talking with Finch about possible ways to leave, and Finch tells Shaw to be careful, as if this was the time for prudence.
Finch: I urge you to consider what Mr. Reese would do.
Shaw: Brood?
LMAO. Exactly right, my dearest wife. Exactly right.
Arthur and Harold talk about AIs, about Samaritan being an open system which can be targetted and controlled, and Arthur realizes that he figured out how to make his AI work right before he got shut down by the government back in 2005.
Control keeps drugging Root, and asking her stupid ass questions like what her username and password is to access The Machine. Root tells her that she is the interface, so all she needs is a phone. One of her dudes brings in a phone to the cage, and Root tells Control that she works for the Machine, not the other way around. The Machine is her god, her motivation, her power. So that’s not intense. Root’s absolute belief that this AI protects and looks out for her, that this AI is the future, that she needs to be a good soldier for this AI…. it’s fascinating. I live for this shit.
Control believes her, and tells her she will remove her stapes (one of the little bones inside the ear), right then and there, so she can’t hear the Machine anymore.
And then, one of my many favorite things happens. If you’re under 40 something, dear one of three people who read this, you may hear a buzz. You’re not going crazy (or maybe you are, but this isn’t why). It’s an anti-boomer frequency – I’m calling it that, I don’t care – which Root can hear, and Control can’t. It’s The Machine! Telling Root she’s sorry for what’s about to happen, which is a stapedectomy sans anaesthesia. Fun, fun, fun.
[1980] Harold is trying to do something with a computer, and he plugs in all sorts of things to get more power to it. Or something. I don’t know how that works. The computer turns back on and it becomes apparent that he is weaseling his way into Arpanet.
Harold: If they don’t want people to get inside, they oughtta build it better.
Harold and Claypool keep debating about what life is, what beauty is, as if Collier wasn’t about to blow their testicles up. Finch insists the drives must be destroyed, Arthur insists that his child could be good. If you’ve seen the rest of the show, you’re probably begging Finch to just grab the drives and burn them himself instead of debating the matter to death. Anyway.
Arthur destroys the drives at the last minute, or so it seems, and Vigilance blows up the vault door, captures the three of em. And just as they’re about to kill Shaw and Finch and kidnap Arthur, look who the fuck decided to show up at last? John, at the last exasperating minute. He isn’t back back, but he came back to save Daddy for now.
On another side of town, post- unnecessary surgery, Root tells Control that she’s an idiot, that the Machine has been talking to her in the very high frequency I was telling y’all about, telling Root that Control had a knife in her pocket, which she grabbed when Control was playing doctor sadist with her. She gains the upper hand with a deliciously deranged look in her eyes, grabs the phone and says hi to her AI bestie.
Root: So, what do you want me to tell this bitch?
Root then starts speaking verbatim what the Machine says to her, effectively giving her a voice. She/they tell Control how nobody controls baby, baby is the boss of everyone, baby watches over Control’s daughter. The Machine instructs her not to question her judgment or come after her agents, to trust her. And all of this, with Root’s recently-tortured slightly unhinged but straight face. I love all of this. I love how the Machine calls the humans her agents, and I love how Root doesn’t edit or paraphrase or embelish. She’s a human avatar with a knife, and I love it so very much.
Root calls Harold while he is visiting Arthur in a sort of hospital with monitors and all. She tells him they were supposed to help Arthur together, because now bad people have the drives. But how? You ask. They were destroyed, right? Nope. Apparently someone locked up the bank employee lady before they arrived, and this other random woman took the Samaritan copy and took her place, pretending to help the cute-but-naive engineers. Now the drives and the lady are “Root’s problem”.
Root, and the Machine, have a last gift for Arthur, though. A carousel of footage of Arthur and his deceased wife, so he remembers her to the very end. That’s so dark, and wholesome, and sad.
[1980] After the Arpanet breach, baby Harry visits his dad at the home where he is staying at. He tells him that some people might visit him to question him about his son committing treason. His dad merely looks at him and asks him who he is. Ooof.
Harold asks him about the birds outside, and gifts him a book about birds.
Which is why all of Harold’s fake last names are species of birds! That is very depressing too, but sweet.
There are two people meeting up at a rooftop in New York City, and one of them is Ominous British Man! Oh, how have we not missed him. And the other is the fake bank lady who stole the drives! We thought it might have been Vigilance, but nope! It was Decima Technologies. Ominous British Man thanks the woman for her services, and shoots her dead.
Now Decima has a copy of an open-system artifical intelligence. that’s great.
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