Person Of Interest is a creative show that pushes itself to the limits, trying to demonstrate the scope of what a network drama with procedural roots can really accomplish. Still, it stays true to itself and to certain expectations by honoring a comforting template that serves as a reliable foundation for its unique stories. Person Of Interest isn’t Community, experimenting with form every week, nor should it try to be when it does what it does so well. This week, however, the writers do take a risk and embrace an opportunity to experiment, producing an episode with a multiple-scenario structure. What appears to be a typical episode with a standard plot that occurs in real time reveals itself to be a series of three different hypothetical scenarios, which the Machine is cycling through in order to determine the best possible plan to get the team out of a precarious situation and prevent a stock market collapse.
Executing an episode with multiple scenarios is especially tricky; structure and order need to be maintained so that viewers realize that they are watching multiple parallel situations instead of separate plots, and so that each situation is delineated enough to prevent confusion. An episode like this requires a number of parallel scenes with enough repetition to reinforce the idea that these are comparable scenarios. Meanwhile, there have to be enough twists in each timeline to help differentiate them and maintain viewers’ interest during the repetitious sequences; it’s a difficult balance, and “If-Then-Else” strikes it elegantly. The scenes that have to be repeated in the name of coherence maintain viewers’ interest with creative execution, including slow-mo, an interesting score, vibrant color work, and humor.
Of course, the most important keys to the episode’s structure are the Machine’s main objectives for this mission. Samaritan has crashed the stock market, and like usual, the team depends on the Machine for guidance, which is delivered via Root’s earpiece. To determine how to best advise the team, the Machine runs multiple scenarios in order to evaluate the best plan for accomplishing the mission, which involves installing a fail-safe capable of protecting the servers hosting the majority of financial exchanges while inflicting the minimum amount of damage on the team members. Meanwhile, each scenario has a different impact on another mission, Shaw’s attempt to save a subway train from demolition by a would-be suicide bomber. Herein lies the genius of this episode, one where a standard mission-focused story morphs into a portrait of the Machine’s logic, then finally reveals itself to also be a moving ode to Shaw. Unlike the Machine, Person Of Interest aces every scenario when it comes to this mission.
Television series and movies have attempted the multiple-scenario structure before—Person Of Interest isn’t reinventing the wheel here—but this particular use of the form is exciting and entirely justified because it serves important story-based purposes instead of reducing the unique structure to a gimmick. The team’s success relies on the guidance of the Machine, but the audience only sees her interactions with Root from an outsider’s perspective. This season has been invested in fleshing out the character of The Machine, which is difficult to do given her nature, and watching this entity of artificial intelligence painstakingly consider hypothetical scenario after hypothetical scenario in order to guide the team in the best possible way she can gives us more insight into her, and the full scope of these missions, than ever before.