'Person of Interest' Review/Recap: "Brotherhood"

Joe Carter ’18 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Person of Interest’s new plot arched interest involving the Brotherhood gang from the premiere season. The show resurfaced this week but was badly executed and disappointing. This was mostly due to the fact that the new numbers were two children, a brother and sister named Malcolm and Tracy, who only gain a limited amount of sympathy until they become annoying. The episode begins with a drug deal gone wrong. John (Jim Caviezel) stumbles across a crime scene to find the police doing their job, the drug money gone, and one surviving but wounded gang thug. John figures out that the kids stole the drug money and he and a woman named Agent Lennicks with the DEA try to find them before the Brotherhood does.
The Brotherhood first finds the children and shoots at them until Shaw (Sarah Shahi) backs a truck into the Brotherhood’s vehicle with the involuntary help of the wounded thug from the crime scene. John gets the children out of harms way, taking them to a safe house where the kids reveal that they wanted to use the money to get a lawyer, in order to get their mom out of prison for an unregistered weapon charge. John convinces them to tell him and Agent Lennicks where the money is, but Agent Lennicks leaves to get back up. In a completely predictable plot twist, Agent Lennicks is actually working for the Brotherhood and rats out John and the kids so she can run away with the drug money. Many gunshots erupt as John tries to get the kids to safety yet again. He threatens to destroy a large amount of their drug stash unless they let the kids be. The Brotherhood finally lays off… for the time being.

This episode had as much senseless violence and childhood charm as Home Alone. Much of the plot was predictable like the DEA Agent being evil. The moment Agent Lennicks mentions there is a mole in the DEA working with the Brotherhood, big red alarms scream “MOLE ALERT!” in the audience’s mind. The other plot twist of the episode (now the big red alarm should be screaming “SPOILERS!”) was the reveal of Dominick, the Brotherhood’s fearless leader. This episode built up Dominick to be some mysterious, harsh, and bad guy that’s misunderstood. Instead it was just the wounded gang thug that Shaw handcuffed to a pipe. Extremely anticlimactic.
Elias’ (Enrico Colantoni) and Root’s (Amy Acker) identity reveal followed the same style, but they were done so tastefully and unexpectedly that it was a genuine shock. This character merely seemed like a useless thug. The reveal was unexpected, but the show left little time to demonstrate Dominick’s reputation. The only thing he does in the episode that resembles a cruel drug lord is kill Agent Lennicks point blank in the head, and it’s only after her death is certain. It wasn’t completely unanticipated like with the person Root kills in her big debut. The person Root shot was a recurring character, and Agent Lennicks was just another miscellaneous plot accessory.

It also took a large chunk of fear away from the Brotherhood that their leader’s coming out party in the show was Shaw driving him around and using her basic intimidation tactics. So far there is nothing to suggest Dominick will be any kind of challenge for the POI team. It makes the Brotherhood look like a less organized version of HR, and HR was a big hurdle for the team to get past. The Brotherhood plot arch lacks that spark that makes the group frightening. HR had brilliant ways to execute their plans and cover their tracks. The Brotherhood only had botched-up drug deals.
Of course the episode had one glimmer of goodness tucked away behind the Brotherhood plot. Elias came back! And better yet, all of his interactions were with Harold (Micheal Emerson). The two of them talked shop for a minimal amount of their screen time, and the rest was filled with Elias demanding to know the truth about what happened to the team and to the world. Harold merely affirms Elias’ suspicions by saying “The world has changed.” The important take-away is that Elias is appearing more frequently and asking questions. Hopefully Elias and his gang are going to develop into a major plot arch and the Brotherhood is a poorly constructed smoke screen.
And the award for Most Memorable Moment goes to…
Elias asking Harold why he hasn’t come by to play chess in a while. The two of them have a lot of intellectual tension. Their brains should get married already and form one super brain.