Category: Notes

Notes for season 3 episode 4, “Reasonable Doubt“ 01:00 Apparently the vet scene was originally written with Reese and Shaw posing as a dog-owning couple, but it’s always far funnier to have Reese and Finch as co dog-owners. 08:20  Another reference to the NYPD/Microsoft “Domain Awareness” surveillance network. 08:57 The episode’s first appearance of the…

Notes for season 3 episode 3, “Lady Killer“ 01:29 The name of the fake credit reporting agency Finch gets the report from is “Equian” 03:29 “smartphone applications like Tinder and Angler”. Tinder was launched in September 2012, this episode would have been written mid-2013, so it had become TV shorthand for dating apps in under…

Notes for season 3 episode 2, “Nothing to Hide“ 04:00 Lifetrace appears to be a people-centric search engine. (Add thelifetrace.com to the Warners domain pool.) Finch treats data brokers with distain, which seems a little off. Comparisons to the operation of the Machine aside, every week Finch builds up full dossiers of not only the…

Notes for season 3 episode 1, “Liberty“ 09:00 If you’re wondering where you recognise Dr Carmichael, it’s probably Bruce Altman’s portrayal of Evil Corp exec Terry Colby on Mr Robot. 09:02 Is Root’s hospital alias “Robin” a reference to Finch’s bird naming scheme, or a Batman reference suggesting Root as a future Team Machine member.…

Notes for season 2, episode 22, “God Mode“ 04:10 The next time we see Shaw’s machine reticle, after being told about the AI, it has changed from blue to yellow. (Implying that anyone with a blue gov reticle doesn’t know about the Machine, or that the machine no longer considers Shaw a government agent?) 04:39…

Notes for season 2 episode 21, “Zero Day“ 01:33 Reece has a Uniden Bearcat scanner (probably a UBC125XLT) for listening to police radio. 04:00 According to the OSC Decima report, the RFID chip implanted in Alicia Corwin, prior to 2012, had a 256kb capacity. While this seems like a tiny amount of space compared to…

Notes for season 2 episode 20, “In Extremis“ The title of the episode “In Extremis”, reminds me of the words David Cameron used in 2015 to describe the rare and extreme circumstances in which private communications would be looked at. Eight years later, and governments have now moved to call for proactive monitoring. 05:07 Is…

Notes for season 2 episode 19, “Trojan Horse“ 03:59 Monica refers to “hex cores” when discussing the fictional tablet CPU. This is usually “hexa-core” (ie a CPU with 6 cores). 04:39 The executive has strong opinions about New York pastries. (Not a fan of Parisian macarons?) From the context, it feels like Rylatech or Censatek…

Notes for season 2 episode 18, “All In“. 01:00 Leon can’t believe that the “Nigerian scammers” are actually Nigerian. I did enjoy the comic sound effect as Bear bites down on a scammer’s crotch. 06:42 “Just your garden variety Abuse of Power.” Obviously police corruption is the narrative prerequisite for vigilantes, but the show is…

Notes for season 2 episode 17, “Proteus“ 01:07 You think the episode might be a “Rashomon” structure, but no – it’s an Agatha Christie. 02:52 Finch checks the NCIC missing persons database. 22:00 Ah, American television continuing to push polygraph propaganda. 22:13 Fahey alludes to the FBI’s ViCAP database which was made available online to…