If you tell people to watch poi for the f/f, you can’t just leave out the fact that Shaw is a woc. Yes, shoot is a very well written f/f relationship. Yes, the writers treat the women well. But it’s so important that Shaw is a woman of colour whose ethnicity is never ignored. She has never been whitewashed. And Sarah Shahi is a Persian woman just like Shaw. They didn’t just make her a generic brown woman (like tlw did) or whitewash her (like Fairly Legal did). The show constantly talks about her parents, her Iranian heritage, and we are shown how proud Shaw is of it all. Sameen Shaw is a bisexual, neurodivergent, woman of colour. Every part of that representation is important. Not just the fact that she’s part of a f/f pairing.
I’m running on like five hours of sleep and it’s early so I apologize if this answer isn’t as detailed as it could be but: @aresmarked got me into the series, first and foremost, mostly because they reblogged a lot of gifsets and commentary.
The Root/Shaw relationship stuff definitely caught my attention, but what made me finally start watching was all the really thoughtful posts I saw regarding The Machine (if you don’t know what that is, you will by the pilot episode) that convinced me there was an aspect to Person of Interest I’d been missing this whole time.
Like, PoI honestly does look like the most whitebread procedural from the outside at the beginning and it takes a season and a half for some of the best characters – the ladies – to start showing up with regularity. But even Finch and Reese are Surprisingly Watchable White Dudes, and I love Fusco despite never expecting to.
My favorite character is Shaw, hands down (followed in quick succession by Carter and Root). And it’s just…having a bisexual woman with a personality disorder that isn’t fetishized onscreen is unique enough, but PoI frames Shaw as so important. Just her appearance literally makes survival chances skyrocket, and her full swing around from uncaring assassin to someone on the Machine’s side is a sight to see, and also kudos to Sarah Shahi for portraying it with a lot of subtlety.
What I enjoy about Person of Interest is that a lot of modern action-heavy shows (especially American ones) that deal with crime or terrorism or anything else sets up the main characters as the Unmistakable Good Guys, no matter what horrible things they do. Procedure can be violated left and right as long as you shoot the bad guy at the end, right?
Well, PoI’s cast is not filled with good guys coddled endlessly by the narrative (Carter is arguably the one character who is defined as Good, and she meets a hundred complications for it despite being a fantastic heroine): it’s full of people who have made really terrible mistakes and decisions that they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to fix – while trying not to make those mistakes worse in the process – and just try to do better even with the deck heavily stacked against them. I appreciate flawed humans trying to make a difference in the world far more than the perfect hero who turns things right with a touch of their hand.
The pain Root felt when she thought she saw Shaw die has been discussed a lot so far. But the same cannot be said for Shaw’s reaction to seeing Root die in the simulation. Or should I say hearing-because this is Shaw. Shaw knows guns, knows the sound of one being fired better than she knows the sound of her father’s voice, at this point.
She knows something is a bit off with Root, with all that talk about a future together, because one thing about Root is that sure she flirts and she’s playful, but she never actually pushes, not really. She respects Shaw’s boundaries and always lets Shaw control the pace of their relationship, backing off if it gets to be too much.
And Root’s voice is a little bit shaky, trying a little too hard at seeming to be happy. She hears Root’s cries and the sound of gunfire-and this is Shaw, she very well could know simply by ear what Martine’s preferred firearm sounds like when it’s shot.
And look at Shaw‘s face. It just freezes. The self-proclaimed sociopath goes from seemingly indifferent to caring in a heartbeat. “Root?” she asks the first time, after hearing “That’s good enough for me,” a hail of bullets and the sounds of Root’s short, pain-filled groan. Shaw’s voice is almost soft, filled with disbelief and fear, hoping against hope that she’s wrong, that what she heard wasn’t what she knows it to be, that Root will make some stupid flirty innuendo that she’s grown so fond of.
And then the last “Root,” urgent and panicked and concerned, her fears confirmed but she will try one more time, but in her voice you can hear it. She doesn’t think Root is at all ok. And now, now Sameen truly knows what it means to feel fear.
You know what small thing about this scene has always fucked me up?
This, right before the simulation ends:
The Machine’s box for Shaw moves around a lot in this perspective shot. Those boxes move along with their subjects, and given that Shaw’s box covers basically the entire car, for the box to move as much as it does means that Shaw had to be moving around a lot. Every time I see it I get this mental image of Shaw thrashing around in anger and desperation, needing to get out of her cuffs and out of the car and get to Root.
And it kills me.
I was wondering if anyone would bring Shaw’s part up, and I’m glad fandom provided!
Because you know what? This? This is the saddest and darkest timeline.
Because not only does Shaw lose Root, she loses Harold, John, and Fusco.
She’s the only remaining survivor with the US economy down and only the Machine and Bear for allies.
Like it or not, but Shaw in Samaritan captivity was actually the best outcome for everyone, at least there was still hope that sometime in the future the Team would get Shaw back.
“I’m a sociopath, I don’t have feelings.” “And I’m a reformed killer for hire. We’re perfect for each other.”
Okay I’m gonna be that douchebag that reblogs their own tags here, but in my defense I wasn’t thinking properly at the time (GEE I WONDER WHY) and I really should have put these comments in this text box to begin with anyway because I REALLY REALLY NEED TO TALK WITH SOMEONE ABOUT THIS:
You know what I find so incredibly wonderful/painful/gratifying? In every iteration Root needs to talk to Shaw one last time, and in every iteration, Shaw acknowledges (on some level) their relationship. This isn’t just “its canon” this is “its canon in all the permutations that exist.” This is so canon that the Machine could not calculate the survival of its agents without including this particular aspect of their relationship. Which honestly to me is even more telling than the physical kiss although thank fuck for that kiss because now the general audience can’t pretend they’re “just good friends.“
Kirkwall Was Totally Built On a Hellmouth 