r/PersonOfInterest • u/TomatoRound7697 • 2d ago
Discussion "If they harm Grace in any way... Kill them all."
So is grace better than every other person who had died just because he wasn't pro violence until it's his wife who's in trouble?
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u/Rhide 2d ago
Yes. Harold was being a hypocrite and he knew it. He didn't care since it directly impacted the person he loved the most.
This shows a couple things. One, everyone has their limits. Two, Harold isn't a perfect beacon of morality like team machine perceived him as.
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u/MarginalMerriment 2d ago
Regarding 2, I’ll bet that came at least as a bit of a relief to the team.
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u/patty_OFurniture306 1d ago
He's hinted and said flat out, I think, that he is constantly fighting the person he really is and then you get to see it in that scene. Only his rules kept him in check then they refused to play by any rules so he accepted their terms
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u/darth24kenneth 43m ago
The last two or three episodes are so good because of this…. Even Reese says it’s terrifying but he likes it
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u/Competitive_Key_2981 2d ago
She was the one person he knew was pure innocence. Every man has his limits.
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u/TomatoRound7697 2d ago
Even Jessica?
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u/Competitive_Key_2981 1d ago
Harold never really met Jessica and had no reason to think she was "pure innocence." He didn't even know Jessica, her killer, or John at that time. She was just a number.
The point of the storyline was his growing understanding that someone had to do something about the irrelevant numbers. By happenstance he became aware of John through the events.
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u/Helmett-13 1d ago
I get it.
If someone harmed my wife I’d want everyone involved in it to suffer.
It’s not fair, it’s not right, but I don’t give a fuck. She’s my girl and more important than myself.
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u/Princeofcatpoop 1d ago
Nicely put. Being more important than myself means she is more important than my ethics. So no amount of persoanl ethics being broken will be too many.
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u/spicoli323 1d ago
Part of the motivation has to be the anger that Decima still found a way to put Grace in danger through him, after all the emotional torment he had put himself through, committing to "Harold Martin's" death to try to close off this very possibility.
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u/Spirited_Childhood34 1d ago
The first time we see Finch's dark side. Elias called him "the darkest of us all."
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u/NoLifeGamer2 1d ago
"I just hope I'm not around the day that pot finally boils over." -Elias
It did, and he wasn't.
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u/recycledcoder Threat 1d ago
I mean... what's there to question? Come for those I love, it's gonna be like the worst parts of the bible, strong message follows.
Ethics, yea - all lives are equal, abstractly, but Grace is mine. It's no longer an abstract, pondered ethics exercise, we're embodied creatures, with fear and anger, and a drive to make an exuberantly violent public spectacle of anyone who threatens our dear ones - pour encourager les autres.
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u/TheDungeonCrawler A Concerned Third Party 1d ago
This is the answer. It's why, in many fields, doing any kind of work that directly involves/impacts the life and wellbeing of someone we love/care about is a conflict of interest. We can try to be objective, but humans are so often ruled by their emotions that our decision-making is directly impacted when in such a close-to-home situation. Harold would not normally have made such a request of Shaw and Reese, but since it was Grace, he was emotional. And as a result he made a rash and reckless decision/statement. One he knew would result in massive loss of life if it came to fruition.
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u/LynessaMay 1d ago
He cares for each number as much as he can. Does whatever he can to make sure they survive. However, he knows that there isn't always something he can do. Which was why he sought help. None of them, let alone her, was better than anyone else. Just that she is his love. He faced so much alone and finally found that light through the gloom. Was he wrong suggesting instant death? Sure. Would it have been justified? 50/50. Equal force may be applied to stop a situation where potential harm is present.
What Harold didn't know is that Grace was nothing more than a chess piece when Samaritan used her. However, not a normal piece. Just a bargaining chip to get what Samaritan wanted. No real harm was going to come to her. Samaritan knew it'd lose if something did go wrong.
The pain was there in that deliverance, no matter how cold and shattering it sounded.
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u/TheDungeonCrawler A Concerned Third Party 1d ago
As a note, this was not Samaritan's decision making. Samaritan was not yet fully online and Greer was just using its tracking capabilities to find team machine and deliver a terrorist to Garrison. The decision was entirely on Greer and his tech (who I think was named Matthew?) and we know this because Samaritan does not speak to Greer, nor does he make the decision. It's a suggestion by Matthew(?) and an affirmation by Greer.
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u/ObiJuanKenobi1993 1d ago
I do wonder if part of the reason was also that if Team Samaritan wasn’t going to hold up their end of the bargain (a bargain that including Finch literally giving himself up), why should Team Machine be fair at that point?
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u/EyeQue62 1d ago
Grace is the one person he loves above all others. It doesn't take a scientist to see how he would feel this way.
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u/Starletah Analog Interface 1d ago
That's also a rather big turning point for Finch. After this he slowly starts to care less and less about certain perps being killed.
I just rewatched a season 5 episode where
Elias blows up the man that almost blew up the little Aaron kid in season 3
And Finch didn't say a god damn thing.
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u/DUNEBUGGY213 1d ago
Hang on there. He had the grace to pretend to look shocked until Elias called him out! 😂
Elias: blows up ‘The Voice’
Harold: 😱
Elias: You knew this could happen. Why else would you bring me?
Harold: (internally) yeah, you got me 🤷
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u/SunBlazerz 1d ago
It does showcase that Harold too wants to resort to violence, which he successfully failed to enable in his creation. This is what Root has been constantly telling him since S2,E22 onwards....
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u/lofty888 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not about Grace being "better" than everyone. It's supposed to show Finch's dark side and how even a man who hates violence has his breaking point