Regarding "The Correction" - since Control is involved in this episode, and the next, could we see the payoff from Samarikid wanting to talk to the President?

I definitely think it's a call back to when Root and KidSamaritan had the meeting in the school in "The Cold War." Samaritan asked The Machine to surrender and be destroyed, and TM refused. Samaritan then promptly crashed the stock market… and we all know what happened next.

They definitely say that in the show too. Root straight up tells Finch that the only difference between Samaritan and The Machine is him. It's part of the reason she protects him so wholly, and willing to kill to keep him safe.

I sort of disagree about the example of "If-Then-Else" as The Machine not wanting to win at all costs.

No, Claypool was the one who made Samaritan. That's why Control (Camryn Manheim) was pretending to be his wife in her introductory episode - to find where he hid the disks containing Samaritan.

My local station decided to interrupt the last 10 minutes for a bullshit weather alert that amounted to "well everyone is fine for now but lets repeat the same information over and over again for no reason and not go back to the show!" So I missed everything from the commercial break when they entered the bunker.…

I agree about more Zoe, but since she is a regular on another show, I will take whatever I can get!

The show is on Season 4 right now. Carter was definitely not on for 5 of those 4 seasons.

I just want to point out that this wasn't just some Northern Lights agent… it was Alicia Corwin, who was implicit in the creation of The Machine and murdered by "Caroline Turing" in the final episode of S1, after Corwin finally found Finch.

Claire didn't drop her phone. It was Harold's that she had taken from him. It wasn't a new tool, but protecting their current ones.

I believe she shot Claire where she did, to make her drop the phone. Less apprehending, more "save our network from Samaritan."

It wasn't Claire's phone, it was Harold's. Claire had it to give to Greer, and Root saved it to keep their network intact.

He also said they wanted to make a lot of "Big Mac" jokes. Though I don't think that really ended up happening.

I am a little surprised that Harold would do that, because wouldn't that put him on Samaritan's radar? They did establish that cell phones were banned, so maybe there wasn't a way for Samaritan to see/hear it, but that didn't stop The Machine from turning a phone on with a different ringer and making it go off.

I don't think they said 5 season plan, but they have been very adamant that they aren't interested in a 200 episode show. Seeing as most shows hit 100 around S5, should hopefully be lots of time left!

They plan to kill everyone at some point. The producers and writers regularly talk about how each character has their "own little egg timers."

SNOO-SNOO

Speaking of the Euler's Theorem episode "Pretenders"… I wonder when they are going to get back to the plot line with Finch planting information on Beth Bridges' (Jessica Hecht) computer. It sure seemed like since Samaritan had an interest in her, that she was set up to come back later in the season.

This is a fairly common question in the comments sections here, so someone can probably answer that better than I. S1 is more about world building and some serialized elements, but a lot of self-contained episodes too. From S2 on, you definitely need to watch each. Honestly, it's best to just marathon the whole series.

This is partially my fault. I was confusing Senator Garrison (John Doman) with Congressman McCourt. My bad!