Bad Code

Season	Episode
2	2
Air date	October 4, 2012
Running time	43:46
Production code	2J7202
Written by	Greg Plageman; Patrick Harbinson
Directed by	Jon Cassar
Viewers	14.58M
ID(s) from Intro	Nonstandard Intro
POI; Hanna Frey
	Flashbacks; Root

Episode Overview

Summary

POI

Crew

← Season 1 Person of Interest — Season 2 (Flashbacks in parentheses) Season 3 →
201 “The Contingency” (Finch)	209 “C.O.D.”	217 “Proteus”
202 “Bad Code” (Root)	210 “Shadow Box”	218 “All In”
203 “Masquerade”	211 “2πR”	219 “Trojan Horse”
204 “Triggerman”	212 “Prisoner's Dilemma” (Reese)	220 “In Extremis” (Fusco)
205 “Bury the Lede”	213 “Dead Reckoning” (Stanton)	221 “Zero Day” (Finch/Ingram)
206 “The High Road” (Finch)	214 “One Percent” (Finch/Ingram)	222 “God Mode” (Finch/Hersh)
207 “Critical”	215 “Booked Solid”
208 “Til Death” (Finch)	216 “Relevance”

“	It's how Root works. She set him up.	”
— Reese

"Bad Code" is the second episode of season 2, and the 25th produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on October 4, 2012.

Synopsis

The Machine delivers the number of a cold case that leads Reese ever closer to catching up with Finch and his kidnapper, Root.

Reese's search for Finch is successful with the help of Carter, Fusco and The Machine
Root's motivation for kidnapping Finch and freeing the Machine is explained
Denton Weeks's actions after knowing about the Machine are revealed
Denton Weeks is murdered
The Machine's location and how to access it is discussed
Carter begins to trust Fusco
Root promises she'll be coming for Finch when the time is right

Root's past with Hanna Frey and Trent Russell as well as her subsequent actions is revealed

Root and Hanna were playing Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe computer. Oregon Trail was developed for the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium (MECC), and used by elementary schools in the early days of home computing to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. Later, it was marketed to home users by Broderbund Software, which ceased updating the software when it was absorbed by Scholastic Books. More modern versions of the program eventually returned to the market across multiple platforms when The Learning Company bought Scholastic's software rights.
Although Root's full first name Samantha was never mentioned in the episode, she is listed as "Groves, Samantha" in Hanna's missing persons report.
Bad code, according to Root, is a person who is evil and can not change his or her nature. Finch later uses the term in the episode “Triggerman”.
To celebrate Person of Interest airing on Netflix starting September 1, 2015, IGN.com asked Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman to pick a few of their favorite episodes. Nolan picked "Bad Code", because with Root's introductory storyline it helped show people what the show can do.^[1]

Bear is trained to respond to commands in Dutch, including:

Locations identified as Bishop, TX were filmed in Congers, NY.
Jonathan Nolan's wife suggested Amy Acker for the role of Root, as she was a big fan of Acker's from Angel. She noted that Acker can appear innocent, and at the same time be very slippery, which showed great depth as an actor.^[1]

Bear chewed the spine of the book in one shoot and the other side in the previous shoot.
The Texas flag out side of Razorback Bar hangs upside down: red over white when it should be white over red.

The photograph of Denton Weeks in the newspaper article comes from a scene in “Super” when he and Alicia Corwin visited Nathan Ingram in his office. Weeks is wearing the same clothes and Alicia Corwin's ponytail can be seen in the background.
That particular newspaper article was written by Maxine Angelis who would later become a person of interest in “Bury the Lede”.
Relton, MD, the small town where Reese tracked down Root to Weeks' cottage, doesn't exist in real life. On Reese's map it was placed where there's actually a small historical town named St. Mary's City.
Finch left a tap code on Davenport's phone indicating Root's escape route. One might notice that Reese omitted the letter "K" from his deciphering grid. When using tap code, the letters "C" and "K" share the same grid square which allows the alphabet to be represented in a 5×5 grid.