Yeah, tonight really added a whole bunch of them. That guys is just lucky it was Reese and not Shaw who shot him. The look on the helicopter staffs' faces was pretty funny too - the nonchalance of watching a car flip over followed by two people commandeering your helicopter must be a New York thing.

@avclub-6307a12d5c9e2fb5f23518a9a0ee8dd1:disqus You're right - she didn't say anything after she was shot by Shaw. I think her idea of freeing the Machine was that it would become her new best friend; instead, she has to cope with that lost. I though Amy Acker was very effective in conveying that broken shell after…

I like to think of the government agents as matryoshka dolls - you can break one but there's always another one side. Although the analogy breaks down since the bigger bads are higher up on the food chain, but the dolls get smaller as you go in.

It was - albeit a tiny bit contrived. I wonder what other things he has put into place to mitigate future threats.

That makes sense in retrospect.

Nathan - definitely not. He was the "public face of IFT" (the president of the company), so it would be like trying to say Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer was a victim of a mugging - very, very suspicious.

But Hirsch is like Reese's nemesis. Also Shaw's nemesis. Lots of people want him dead. Probably Shaw more since he killed her once.

I'm surprised that they put her there considering how dangerous she is. But she seemed really destroyed when she found out the Machine had moved, which was puzzling since it's kind of exactly what she would have wanted. I think her drive going forward will be finding and connecting with the Machine, and to regain that…

I know, right? Funny thing - the reviews on some other sites like IGN and a blog review said exactly the same thing. I think the PoI writers underestimate how well they've developed Fusco and how much the fans want to see him.

The visualization as the Machine was analyzing the Decima threat was really cool. But why did it tell Root 3:00? At first, I thought it was to show that the Machine was messing with Root since it told Reese 4:00, but then the awesome started.

Oops, I misread the original question. I think the Machine only provides intelligent for perpetrators when it comes to the relevant numbers - otherwise, it would be pretty useless for government agents to follow around potential victims all day. Also, there would be a lot of them.

There was a little hint of that "this was my plan all along" thing with Finch's virus within a virus, but aside from that, I'm glad we were wrong about it going back to the plain old status quo.

They had to make it look like an accident / collateral damage. He was a high-profile target, so an assassination would have raised too many eyebrows. The terrorist attack was just a happy convenience for Hirsch.

Last year was quieter but the revelation was more shocking - we directly "hear" the Machine for the first. Also, the twist was that they were saving Root (you'd think we would have seen it coming since an earlier twist was that they were saving Elias).

*tips hat* Thank you! Hope you enjoyed the episode too.

Ditto. I'd love for her to be a regular but I can't really see them justify it from a narrative point of view. Hopefully she gets the same type of treatment like Elias this year - using them in short bursts can be very effective.

Government-sanctioned assassinations are not reported in the interest of saving tax dollars. Why bother hunting yourself?

They're doing this for Community, so I figured why not here too. At least we don't have to be worried about renewal prospects.

The Machine's in control now! Part of this episode was just preposterous, the other part hit some interesting story points and emotional notes. Bringing together almost all the threads from this year to a very satisfying conclusion while altering the status quo just enough to give us the show we love while opening for…

She died. …Nina, not the actress.