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Notes for season 1 episode 23, “Firewall” 02:12 Spoiler for decade old series: The person of interest, Caroline Turing, is actually Root – the unseen hacker from a previous episode. Root usually uses aliases that have some connection to mathematics and computer science, and this first one should be obvious. 02:54 Again, if you’re paying…

Notes for season 1 episode 22, “No Good Deed” 01:05 Flashback to 2009, and Nathan Ingram walks through an apparently silent server room. somehow silent server room. 03:43 Finch checks his phone and then looks for a pay phone in order to receive a new number. Given the egress constraints established it shouldn’t really be…

Notes for season 1 episode 21, “Many Happy Returns” 01:50 Reese is casually reading a copy of “Stress Fractures in Titanium”. This is the book, albeit with a different cover, that DeNiro’s character in Heat, Neil, is looking at in the diner when he meets Eady. 03:53 Reese gives a key to… the Key Master…

Notes for season 1 episode 20, “Matsya Nyaya” 01:14 Can’t quite tell what phone Reese swaps the SIM in for the 2010 flashback scene, but I think it might be a BlackBerry Tour, which matches the timeframe. 06:49 Finch sets up an ANPR system on the back of the truck, and it’s later implied the…

Notes for season 1 episode 19, “Flesh and Blood” 05:29 Reese calls Carter on his cellphone, and you hear the rapid tone sequence of a speed-dial. In my experience the smartphones of this era didn’t actually do that. It’s been added in to convey he’s making a call (already obvious visually) but on relying recognition…

Notes for season 1 episode 18, “Identity Crisis” 02:00 The joke about Finch inventing social media to provide information for The Machine mostly lines up with the timelines of major social media sites in the real world. 09:00 The female Hester is played by Sarah Wynter, who is recognisable as Kate Warner in 24. 11:14…

Notes for season 1 episode 17, “Baby Blue” 11:24 Fusco clearly tells Simmons “Bite me” – but the easily offended captions transcriber instead offers “[responds unintelligibly]” 19:30 Reese follows the man he believes is the child’s father, sees him kiss another man, and immediately concludes he’s not the father. While technically correct, this is clearly…

Notes for season 1 episode 16, “Risk” 10:45 Finch runs a “GPRS reroute” to stop the target’s calls being monitored – which I assume from context is putting a reroute entry in the cellphone provider’s database – ie the mechanism used for number portability. Except later we still see that he gets text messages, so…

Notes for season 1 episode 15, “Blue Code“ 02:00 The gurning blond is familiar, it’s Robin Lord Taylor who played Penguin on Gotham. 06:16 Flashback Reese casually listens on a Grundig S450DLX to a German Numbers Station broadcasting on 17898kHz, presumably as a meditation. A few weeks after this episode aired in 2012, you could access the…

Notes for season 1 episode 14, “Lone Wolf and Cub” 01:43 It’s not clear what Finch is waving about when he re-enters the library. We can assume he’s using an RF scanner to check for hidden transmitters. The flashing red LEDs suggest he might be using something like a cheap CC308 RF detector. 04:52 911…