FIREWALL (1.23)

Reese is set the task of protecting their new POI; Caroline Turing, PhD (Amy Acker), a high-end psychologist who works as a therapist to an extremely powerful and secretive client list. Finch's attempt to hack into her system to get more information about her fails, forcing Reese to go into therapy with Turing in order to get closer to her. Fusco attends a meeting of HR's leadership, and learns that HR has been hired to kill Turing. Reese intervenes in the initial attack, and hides her in a high-end hotel downtown. HR finds their location, as well as the FBI task force led by Agent Donnelly, who is still hunting for Reese; both corrupt cops and federal agents converge on the hotel and lock it down, cornering Reese and Turing. Carter's suspicion that Fusco is working for HR comes to a head, and she corners him at gunpoint, only to learn he is working with Reese and Finch as well. With covert help from Carter and Fusco, and some technical magic from Finch, Reese manages to get Turing out of the hotel alive, and stays with Carter and Fusco to take down the HR members while avoiding FBI capture once again. When Finch arrives at his designated rendezvous with Turing, he is instead confronted at gunpoint by Alicia Corwin, who has been following Finch. She accuses the Machine of killing Nathan Ingram, a belief Finch denies, and demands his help in shutting the Machine down, tired of her life of running from it. Turing arrives by surprise and kills Alicia, revealing herself to be "Root", the hacker from "Root Cause", and that she hired HR herself, willingly putting herself in danger to capture Finch for interrogation about the Machine. Reese arrives only to find Alicia's dead body and Finch missing. While Carter and Fusco anonymously reveal HR's membership to the FBI, Reese talks to the Machine itself, staring into a nearby surveillance camera – Reese, labelled as a Machine asset, asks the Machine to help him find Finch. A nearby pay phone then rings, which Reese answers.

Air Date: May 17, 2012
Written by Greg Plageman & Jonathan Nolan and directed by Richard J. Lewis.

NO GOOD DEED (1.22)

Reese continues to spend time trying to learn more about Finch and his personal life, tailing him to see if he can learn anything. He watches Finch answer a pay phone and check his cell phone before calling Reese and revealing that he has been given a new POI: Henry Peck (Jacob Pitts), a chartered financial analyst, who Reese and Finch find is actually undercover; he is a security analyst for the NSA, and a very good NOC operator. Shortly after Reese begins to survey him, Peck is targeted by an unknown group and his life is destroyed; he is first framed for drug possession and loses his job, and soon after, assassins are sent to hunt him down. Ultimately, Finch and Reese find out that Peck is being targeted by the government; he uncovered some anomalies in some of his past security reports and, unknowingly, discovered the existence of the Machine, and his inquiries into the cause of these anomalies has resulted in the government members who know about the Machine sending black ops assassins from the Intelligence Support Activity, "an obscure army unit that does black ops so dark, technically they don't exist", to silence Peck. Reese saves Peck a number of times from the 3-man assassination team, while Peck continually manages to give him the slip thanks to his NSA training. Peck, while in NYPD protective custody, finally realizes that the Machine really does exist, and hopes to find someone he can tell his discoveries to. Reese sneaks him out of the police station and, after being attacked by an assassin (Marc Menchaca), who he kills, loses Peck again. The next day, Peck arranges a meeting with a reporter, but Finch shows up instead. Finch answers some of his questions about the Machine, but suggests that he stop looking for answers, and then offers him an escape with a new identity. It is unclear what Peck decided, but Finch ends the conversation by telling Peck that Finch was the one who built the Machine. In a series of flashbacks to 2009, Nathan Ingram is ready to deliver the Machine's hardware to his government contact, Alicia Corwin (Elizabeth Marvel). Alicia confirms with Nathan that only seven people in the world know about the Machine, although Finch, unknown to Alicia, makes it eight. Nathan, while talking with Finch, expresses concern about the morality of the way the Machine operates, and asks about making a backdoor entry in the Machine for the irrelevant threats in case the Machine is ever abused, which Finch claims is impossible as it could compromise the system's security. Ultimately, Nathan starts developing a contingency program alone; he hacks Finch's code and accesses the irrelevant list, hoping to help the people who show up as irrelevant. The very first POI is Anna Sanders, who Nathan appears to choose to help save her life. Reese eventually tracks down Finch's former fiancé, Grace (Carrie Preston); and comes to know that their relationship ended when Finch "died" in an accident two years ago. Finch, aware of Reese's efforts, tells Reese that he had to leave Grace for her own protection: if the government ever came to know that he created the Machine, Grace's safety would have been put in jeopardy. Reese subsequently gains a new appreciation of Finch's privacy. With a flashback to the conversation between Finch and Peck, all of which has been recorded by Alicia, including Finch's admittance to building the Machine.

Air Date: May 10, 2012
Written by David Slack and directed by Stephen Williams.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS (1.21)

Finch gives Reese the day off, as it is his birthday, and hands him a small gift containing a key. Finch does this because he knows that the new number will bring back bad memories for Reese. Finch decides to deal with the next number on his own with help from Detective Fusco: Karen Garner (Dagmara Dominczyk) a woman who is on the run from the U.S. Marshall Service for identity thefts. Finch decides to take help of Detective Carter, but she has a news of her own for Finch regarding a murder in New Rochelle relating to Reese's past. While Carter and FBI agent Donnelly (Brennan Brown) visit New Rochelle to find links related to Reese, Finch, who is in pursuit of Karen, is confronted by Reese, who suspects that Finch is working a case by himself. They find out that Karen's actual name is Sarah Atkins, who is on the run from her husband Brad Jennings (Jeremy Davidson) of the U.S. Marshall Service, who framed Sarah for his own good. In the same way, flashbacks shown throughout the episode reveal that Reese's ex-girlfriend, Jessica Arndt, was ostensibly killed in a car accident, when actually her husband Peter Arndt (Jonno Roberts) killed her by snapping her neck when she hit her head on a table during a fight and then staged the accident to cover it up, eventually leading to Reese killing him in retribution. Sarah is taken into custody by Jennings and is taken out of the city where his plans to kill her are foiled by Reese. Finch asks Carter to look for Reese after losing contact with him. She finds Reese, who is taking Jennings to deal with him, and lets him drive off with Jennings in the back of the trunk, not knowing what Reese will do to him. Later, Carter gets Reese's old military information and shreds it afterward to avoid Donnelly finding out about everything. She then receives a call from a warden letting her know that Jennings is now serving an imprisonment in Torreón penitentiary in Mexico after "a man in a suit" turned him in. Later, Finch gives Reese an address that he forgot to include with the key. The address leads him to an apartment that Finch has now given him. In the last flashback, a man in a wheelchair that Reese accidentally bumped into after learning of Jessica's death turns out to be Finch, who was too late to save Jessica.

Air Date: May 3, 2012
Written by Erik Mountain & Jonathan Nolan and directed by Frederick E. O. Toye.