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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…

Notes for season 2 episode 15, “Booked Solid“ 00:54 Finch states that the first public mobile phone call was made from the New York Hilton. But it was made on the street, walking away from the hotel. That was the point of the demo: to show mobility. 04:50 “Aggro Push” is probably the most plausible…

Notes for season 2 episode 14, “One Percent“. The title “One Percent”, alluding the 2011 Occupy slogan “We are the 99%”, because it features a billionaire. Uh, ignoring the fact that every episode features a billionaire? And that statistically unlikely number of the “persons of interest” are extremely wealthy Manhattenites. A significant investment of resources…

Notes for season 2 episode 13, “Dead Reckoning“ 02:07 Finch pulls a bunch of fake books to construct the social security number, among them “Debugging the Mind: A Guide to Information Ethics” 09:39 I believe the game being played in the disk-seller’s place is 2012’s “Far Cry 3”. 09:41 The disk is plugged into what…

Notes for season 2 episode 12, “Prisoner’s_Dilemma“ 06:28 Donnelly finally gets some pushback for his actions from the warden of Rikers. He shuts this down by threatening to report violations of regulations regarding the care and treatment of prisoners. Touché! 09:22 Finch is using the defunct “Shotshuffler” site from S2E05 to do facial matches. 09:38…

Notes for season 2 episode 11, “2πR“ 01:20 We see the men suspected of being Reese receiving DNA swabs, and your first thought is probably: “They took his fingerprints in the pilot, surely identification would have happened by now?” (This will only be addressed in a later scene.) 02:30 Reese finds a regular-sized flip-phone in…

Notes for season 2 episode 10, “Shadow Box“ 05:00 “You heard the 10-31 too, detective?” (Burglary in-progress. Although this was a case of a staff member, permitted to be on the premises, downloading a file without authorisation. So not technically a burglary?) 07:41 Finch is able to open a remote desktop mirror, but using sftp…

Notes for season 2 episode 9, “C.O.D.“ 02:30 Finch carries a credit card that puts the taxi’s information terminal into admin mode, giving him access to the onboard camera. A reminder that every cab conversation is in the presence of the police. 03:59 Even in the context of the show, the intensive surveillance of random…

Notes for season 2 episode 8, “Til Death“ 03:40 Add ebook publisher eastvillagepublishing.com to the Warners domain pool. 04:52 The RFID duplicator Finch hands Reese has the same form factor as you’d get if you searched AliExpress for “handheld RFID writer”, but zhuzhed up with more lights. 05:50 Finch has a Nazar hanging from the rear-view mirror…

Notes for season 2 episode 7, “Critical“ 1:30 Leon is running a gold farming scam in 2012. I think gold farming’s cultural peak came with the suggestion that prisoners in China were being forced to grind in mmorpgs. I didn’t really hear much about gold faming until Axie Infinity tried to make gold farming the…