Notes for season 4 episode 10, “The Cold War“
01:00 Shaw’s custom Chinatown sandwich order (the “Beatrice Lillie”) is as follows: “Pastrami, extra mustard, spicy and yellow, and enough pepperoncinis to create digestion issues in even the strongest constitution. No mayonnaise, please.”
02:00 Finch accesses the secret tunnel entrance by typing the first four digits of pi into a vending machine, like a geeky speakeasy.
06:46 The prop used for the medical device hacked by Samaritan, is the “OmniPod FreeStyle” blood glucose monitor.
09:20 Finch back on his high horse about allowing an AI to make “kill decisions” – even though he must have known that’s how the government would use the information supplied by the Machine. The “relevant numbers” would only have been perpetrators, since it was only tasked for mass-casualty events.
10:26 I think this is the first time someone uses the term “artificial super-intelligence” (ASI) in the show. “AI” in the real-world has just been an umbrella term for research into machine learning, language processing, etc, for decades. In 2023, on the cusp of a rapid adoption of these technologies, it still feels tied to the idea of a smart chatbot. But in movies, an “AI” has long meant a general artificial intelligence that exceeds human capacity. I predict “ASI” will soon become the description we’ll give to our sci-fi villains, while we soak in a warming pot of everyday AI-based technologies.
AI was just plot-lubrication in season one, but by season 4 we’ve gone full existential paperclip-philosophy. “What if a friendly AI decides to end hunger by killing enough people that there will never be a shortage of food?”
12:25 Blackwood’s office, near Lambeth North station, would have a southeast-facing window because you can see the dome of the Imperial War Museum. But I don’t know what the gothic clock tower is. Is it something that was there in 1973, but knocked-down since?
14:08 “The NYPD has locked up nearly two dozen criminals after Samaritan decrypted a host of IP addresses and anonymously emailed the information to the press.” Ah the unassailable, and very actionable, evidence of “a list of anonymously-supplied IP addresses”.
15:51 Fusco’s necktie looks like it’s made up of the location markers seen on the onscreen maps.
16:07 You can tell Reese is in a tech company office based on the bean-bag chairs and eBoy poster.
16:30 The SWAT team went into an office based wholly on someone searching online for “how to make a bomb” and the search engine company tipping them off.
17:09 Apparently there’s an area of the street on New York’s financial district, post-2001, that isn’t covered by CCTV?
20:57 “…hacked the entire witness protection list and then posted it on Pastebin.”
24:00 The “all the city’s chaos at the same time” scenario plays out like the penultimate mission of a Watch_Dogs game.
24:12 “ShotSpotter [identified] over 20 gunshots in the last two hours” It’s referred to by its real name here, but in season 5 it gets the in-universe name ShotSeeker.
28:27 “There is a hospital three blocks from here.” In 1970s London? I don’t think so. London’s layout is Roman roads and medieval desire-paths. You can’t really refer to a “block” in the New York sense – you’d convey as distance (in the early 70s, “300 yards”, or something).
28:34 We briefly see the label in Greer’s 1973 suit that reads “Choppers”.
29:14 It’s the “Assassination Chain” meme. Despite five seasons evolving into one of the top sci-fi shows ever, Person of Interest’s cultural legacy might be as source material for a briefly-popular image macro.
32:40 Ah, the always creepy “child speaking with the voice of a disembodied god/demon/alien/AI”.
40:43 I think Finch’s printer seen in the subway car is an Epson WorkForce WF-3620.
43:01 Wait, this whole time the empty building being used by Decima is above the luxury brand stores on Broadway, opposite the Stock Market?