Category: Notes

Notes for season 3 episode 21, “Beta“ 04:43 The Samaritan beta test is just a projector and bunch of laptops in black Pelican cases (Peli 1470) in an empty warehouse. Pure operator theatrics. 06:17 Ah, the secret paths though the city that avoid the Gorgon gaze of security cameras. 12:00 Briefly feels like another “Assault…

Notes for season 3 episode 20, “Death Benefit“ 3:19 Finch and Shaw leave $1 million (which we presume can’t be linked back to Finch) on the street, next to the drug dealers who were going to kill each other? Effective altruism. 6:10 The congressman is played by John Heard, the dad in Home Alone. 6:39…

Notes for season 3 episode 19, “Most Likely To…“ 01:56 Shaw gives the NYC taxi medallion number to Finch, who looks it up and retrieves the driver details. This isn’t quite right. The medallions are associated with the vehicles, not the drivers. There’s not a one-to-one relationship between drivers and cars, and there are many…

Notes for season 3 episode 18, “Allegiance“ 01:43 Shaw download’s the target’s phone contact list, which display’s in the unusual order of alphabetical by first name. 04:02 The advanced prototype chip that got stolen in the previous episode has already been reverse engineered and thousands of copies have been made. That’s an unlikely turnaround, but……

Notes for season 3 episode 17, “Root“ 0:42 The Machine notes the Samaritan backup as being on LTO-4 / 256-bit AES-GCM (even though, as established, the props aren’t LTO). 03:00 While we imagine Reese’s off-screen activities might involve walking the dog, cleaning his guns, and developing a “tier list” of New York bakeries, it’s clear…

Notes for season 3 episode 26, “RAM“ 01:50 As established in the commentary for the pilot, New York doesn’t have dark moody alleyways. But this episode doesn’t care. 02:19 You can tell it’s a flashback as Finch only has two monitors in his Battlestation. 03:19 Anthora, drink. 04:15 “Tiger Team” is a NASA term for…

Notes for season 3 episode 15, “Last Call“ 07:14 Ah, the old “stay as quiet as you can” plan thwarted by random phone beeping. 10:42 That’s a pretty high-res webcam for 2014 if you can make out details like the type of ring someone is wearing in the room. 16:02 30 thousand emergency calls a…

Notes for season 3 episode 14, “Provenance“ 06:50 We see the Nowell Codex, famous for containing the unique copy of Beowulf. Except this is presented as though it was an actual book, and not mounted pages. If you scroll through the British Library’s digital copy, you’ll see that the presented pages don’t match any in…

Notes for season 3 episode 13, “4C“ 01:03 One of the in-universe airlines is called “Gossamer Airlines” and I feel having a synonym for flimsy being painted on the side of a passenger jet would be pretty bold. 03:20 The news reports suggest this episode is going to be partly inspired by the October 2013…

Notes for season 3 episode 12, “Alethia“ 04:58 In the 1979 flashback, we can see that the prop used for Finch’s computer is a Commodore PET. (Although, while the PET is era-appropriate, I think the model used might be slightly anachronistic, from 1980 or later.) 19:20 The safe deposit box contains two LTO cartridges. Assuming…