Notes for season 2 episode 16, “Relevance“
This is a really good alternative pilot for the show – and, if it didn’t ruin the twist in Firewall, I’d suggest people new to the show watch this episode as though it were a prolepsis, and then watch the actual pilot.
00:41 In the 2011 flashback, Daniel Aquino is given a yellow reticule, not a red one. This means that Aquino knew about the Machine, but that the Machine didn’t regard him as a threat, and wouldn’t have provided his number as relevant.
03:20 The endoscopic camera Cole pokes down the air vent is an iFlex Fiberscope connected to a iTool Video Imaging Hub.
04:30 The satellite phone Shaw uses on the roof is a Qualcomm Globalstar GSP-1600 and I think it gets used serveral times in the series.
04:46 Cole refers to “The Gas” and says that the only other people crazy enough are the FSB – which implies it’s the same (as yet unknown) gas used in the 2002 Moscow hostage crisis.
09:20 Wilson has a white reticule, not a blue one. Which means he doesn’t know the source of the information and isn’t considered a government agent?
09:54 Shaw cradles an Anthora coffee cup.
10:30 ISA agents also bluejack their targets. How well known is bluejacking as a technique? Is it still a Zero Day? It gets used over five seasons, and never gets patched out. So much for VEP.
11:55 It’s a little bit weird that torture is used as parallel construction to hide electronic surveillance, and not the other way around.
15:49 A classic “Texas Switch” as Shaw goes out the window.
20:08 Shaw is a “self-surgery” level action badass.
24:14 I’m a little confused by this phone conversation. Shaw specifies a meeting with Veronica in room 1458 of the Suffolk Hotel. Did Shaw already book the room off-screen? Did she know it would be empty? Is it just a block-booking for ISA use?
34:22 “The world looks like it did ten years ago, but underneath, it’s become very strange indeed.”
So one interesting thing is that it’s clear that the ISA modus operandi is just to assassinate the relevant numbers. And the Machine knows that when it provides a relevant number that person will likely be killed as a result, and extra-judicially.
And the Machine still operates. Which indicates the moral code it might operate under is that killing can be justified, by utility, without accountability. This becomes more relevant when the show adjusts its focus in later seasons.