Okay, now I'm confused.

Yeah, I like to think Finch could have written Ice-9 himself in a few hours, and it was just not something he would even have thought of doing until it was an emergency.

I like to think the guy who tried to fire Reese & Fusco wasn't even a real cop, just a Samaritan plant to distract them while the extraction team got into position outside. As far as anyone on the force knows, Fusco is still golden.

Yes. Rewatched "Firewall" and the S2 opener in preparation for the finale, and I loved that detail.

Watching "Baby Blue" recently, knowing where the show would go, it was totally a cute palate-cleanser, like the "Reese and Zoe as suburbanites" episode. Maybe I'm just a sucker for early Finch doing impulsive things and then having to tell Reese about it.

Before the finale, I remember thinking that the writers were going to need to have the Machine sacrifice herself because otherwise, Finch couldn't have a happy ending. He was rescuing people because he could, and as long as it was possible he would not be at peace with living a normal life.

Wait, that was BEFORE Snowden? I got into POI last year and watched from the beginning— but hadn't thought about the timing. I just read that episode as if it were about Snowden because, like, every other fiction I've seen with a government surveillance whistleblower, for years, was a transparent stand-in for Snowden.

Heroes on this show don't die offscreen. The Machine is going to be in the finale, some way or another.

"(unlike Finch and Reece)"

As we see more of pre-altruistic Finch, I think we realize that he is risking his life to save people because he CAN, and he could never refuse the responsibility of doing that. He knows it's the right thing, but if he no longer had the option, he could relax and just be a billionaire philanthropist.

Root's adoration for / need for the approval of Finch has definitely been played as flirtatious sometimes. In the season 2 premiere she was all "I'll be the best PARTNER you've ever had". It seems like, until she became The Machine's interface, she was not interpreting her own interest in women the same way she does…

I think "Critical" may have been the point where I realized I love this show— not only was the surgeon married to a woman, but it was (rightly) treated as not even unusual enough to mention. Her wife was just her wife.

OH. That makes way more sense. During his scene with IA, I was all "why is Fusco acting shady? he's telling the truth!"