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☆ CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Sameen Shaw
CANON: Person of Interest
AGE: 35-ish
CANON POINT: End of series finale (season 5)
BACKGROUND: link

PERSONALITY: “I thought you might be a robot,” the young girl Gen once told Shaw, after poking her with a finger as if to test her sensory response.

Indeed, at first impression this might seem like an accurate description Sameen Shaw. Both personally and professionally, she tends to put on a very stoic face, has flat responses to most social overtures, and can push through tasks with machine-like efficiency and detachment. She doesn’t feel things the way that people normally do.

Shaw was about twelve years old when she began to realize that she is different from everyone else. Her father dies in a car accident, and she reacts with cool disinterest, much to the shock of the paramedics who come to their rescue. Even as a child, she was unable to mourn the loss of a loved one. One might think she didn’t care for him at all.

A personality disorder

During her first year in medical school, she diagnoses herself as having Axis II Personality Disorder. Shaw describes this as the ability to kill someone without feeling a thing, but more broadly, she has very few emotions at all. No guilt, no sadness, no fear. She doesn’t cry when her father dies. She will not flinch at the report of gunfire. She can kill people and have no remorse.

This condition is also the reason why she eventually drops out of her residency, even though her supervisors describe her as “technically brilliant.” She has the skills for the work, but lacks the human touch necessary to be truly good at it. She will do a death notification to devasted family members while chewing nonchalantly on an energy bar and think there is nothing wrong with that. Her lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others comes from her inability to comprehend their sadness and gravity of loss. That sense of attachment to others, the pain of losing someone you love, indeed loving someone at all are things she cannot experience in the same way.

The difference between treating someone and healing them is the level of emotional investment the physician puts into the patient. As her supervisor (correctly) suggests, she will eventually get bored of the work, which is not a very desirable trait in a doctor.


An efficient killer

Her stint with the U.S. Marines begins shortly after her failed medical career. She explains that she figures she is “better at killing people than fixing them.” It turns out to be very true. I think she excels in the military because of her condition: it makes her fearless and level-headed in the midst of chaotic and violent environments, and she can inflict pain and / or death with cold efficiency. She is later recruited into a special operations unit of the Army known as the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), which requires her to travel around the world on highly dangerous and classified missions that are truly tailored to her skill set (combat, intelligence, assassinations). She executes missions without question, which is also key to what makes her a great agent. This unquestioning focus will evolve into something more fluid as her character develops over the canon. (I’ll get into that later).

Though her personality disorder (and her own admission) might suggest she joins the military so she could become a coldblooded killer, I think there is something else at play here. She has an acute awareness of her condition, and how it makes her strange or disengaged from humanity at large. I think she chose a profession where her psychology will not be a detriment. If left unfocused, she would inevitably become a danger to the people around her. So while she does take life without feelings of guilt, I do think she has a conscience of some sort. This is why, despite being betrayed and almost killed by her own agency, she still “protects the program.” She believes that there is value in the ISA’s work, which is safeguarding the American people from terrorist threats.


Working with Finch and The Machine

It turns out the ISA sources its information from a top-secret government surveillance program known as “Northern Lights,” an all-seeing ASI (artificial superintelligence) created by a brilliant hacker named Harold Finch. (Finch calls it “The Machine,” and it serves as the central premise of the canon). Shaw’s ISA partner Michael Cole suspected the existence of this program, which is why the government put out hits on both him and Shaw.

After being targeted by the ISA, Shaw fakes her death and (with some reluctance) joins an underground vigilante group led by Finch. She comes around to working with him despite her initial objections because she needs some outlet for her skills, and she is curious about the secret system that was apparently behind her work at ISA.

Though both the ISA and Finch get their information from The Machine, and both are in the business of stopping bad things before they happen, Finch approaches things with a very different philosophy. He doesn’t like violence or guns, and values all human life. He tries to steer his team into courses of action that won’t require killing people. Shaw’s work with Finch and the Machine is the beginning of the evolution of her character, driven chiefly by Finch’s sense of compassion and morality.

“I would have taken the head shot, but Finch gets annoyed when I kill people,” she says at one point.

She had unfettered license to kill in the ISA, but for the first time since then, she must rein herself in. And while she staunchly defends her independence and doesn’t always listen to Finch’s orders (like when she ignores his request to seek treatment for her injuries and goes off to infiltrate enemy territory by herself), she comes to respect the integrity of life. She practices much restraint throughout the show, though one might say that’s a relative thing. She still uses a lot of guns and explosives, but just doesn’t kill people, if she can avoid it.

And more importantly, through her work with team Machine, Shaw begins to form real connections with people in a way that she’s never really been able to before. Her personality evolves as a result of this, making her a more developed human being, beyond just the robotic exterior that one encounters in the beginning. I’ll summarize quickly before this turns into a big rehash of everything that happens in the canon:


The volume turned down

“It’s not that you don’t have feelings,” Gen says to her later. “It’s just like the volume is turned way down, like the sound of an old tape. The voices are there, you just have to listen.”

This is probably the best description of what’s really going inside Shaw’s head. Obviously she has emotions, but they are highly suppressed and come out to the surface only with some coaxing. A few examples;

Bear, Finch’s dog, is the first recipient of her affections. Perhaps it was easiest to connect with a dog instead of a person at first? She showers him with gifts and even tells people she decided to start working with Finch “for the dog.”

She is fiercely independent, in contrast to her somewhat blind trust in the ISA early on. Shaw maintains a lot of control over her missions with Finch, often going off on her own to do investigating. She’s learned her lesson from the betrayal of the ISA, which ended in the death of Cole, who was (at the time), the only person in the world she “actually liked.” She tracks Finch and even bugs his office at first, just to make sure she can trust him.

She is loyal, a trait that presumably one could only possess if they care about someone. Shaw has exacted revenge for several people (Cole, Carter, and Root) over the course of the show, tracking down the people responsible for their deaths with steely determination and cold brutality. She often says that anger is the one emotion she does have, and you can see the ultimate consequence of that in these revenge killings.

Shaw has compassion for children as is evident in her interactions with Gen. While she says she’s “not wired” for sentimental things, Gen still gives her a precious memento that belonged to her late grandfather, a gesture that Shaw finds very touching, in spite of herself. Shaw also comes to the rescue of her partner Fusco’s young son Lee, leaving Fusco himself unprotected. She understands that parents value their children over their own lives, and can act accordingly.

She’s shown to be a little prideful at times, feeling insulted when her teammates don’t think she is presentable at a black-tie event. “I know I look good!” she insists. (Of course, she can’t really do too much about her dour expression, which is what her teammates objected to in the first place).

Shaw can be somewhat sarcastic or teasing in her sense of humor (which she does have!), often making cracks at her teammates at their expense. (Like when she tells Reese she gave him a big gun to hold so he’d feel less inadequate while she got behind the wheel of a fancy sports car).

She is self-sacrificing, which comes through the most in the episode just before her character’s hiatus, when she uses herself as a distraction to ensure that her team can escape from enemy hands. She is later captured and tortured for many weeks.

She says “relationships are for amateurs,” but her unnamed feelings for Root is one of the greatest developments of her character. Root is someone she comes to respect and admire over the course of their work together for Finch and The Machine. I think she recognizes in Root a kindred spirit: someone who is equally morally void, a sociopath who has overcome a lot of self-questioning in order to find her place in the world. And while they are both probably sociopathic in nature, Root is the opposite in terms of emotions. Shaw has very muted feelings, while Root has a more open plethora of them. I think at first, Shaw found her annoying and baffling, but her view of her evolved over time. From admiring her skills with a gun (“that was hot”) to recognizing her as someone who possesses qualities that Shaw herself lacks. Maybe she thinks that Root can fill some of that hole inside of her that she knows has always been there, that emotionless place that she knows is somehow wrong.

During her captivity and torture at the hands of the enemy, Shaw repeatedly escapes to Root in her mind. She calls Root her “safe space.” She is put through repeated simulations where she would be tricked or tempted into betraying her team. The psychological torture makes her question herself and her sense of reality and loyalty but throughout the ordeal, she can never bring herself to betray or kill Root. All of this point to the depths of her feelings for her.

After Root is killed, Shaw feels anger but can’t mourn her in the way that she thinks she should. This is the most complicated aspect of Shaw: the idea that she sometimes wants to feel things but cannot. But she comes to terms with this eventually, after The Machine gives her the following message: “You always thought there was something wrong with you because you don't feel things the way other people do. But [Root] always felt that was what made you beautiful. She wanted you to know that if you were a shape, you were a straight line. An arrow.” Shaw manages to shed a tear after this, thus finally able to feel the greatness of her loss. She says at one point that she feels angry that other people can have people that they love, as though this is something she can never possess. But I think she does love Root in her own unique way, even if it’s not the word that she might use or recognize.

And ultimately, her moral compass adjusts itself, and by the end of the show, she knows that “how you do matters as much as what you do.”


ABILITIES/POWERS:

Weaponry: Shaw is a highly skilled marksman and sniper, with knowledge on the use and upkeep of a large variety of firearms and explosive devices. She is ambidextrous in that she can fire handguns with both hands (at the same time) with good accuracy. She often offers support as a sniper on missions, able to shoot down targets in a very controlled, non-lethal manner in the dark and through walls. She can extract sensitive materials from bomb making devices (cesium) and set off explosives as well.

Combat: While her compact frame might be easy to underestimate, Shaw packs quite a punch and is a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat. She is trained in many martial arts disciplines, but excels in Krav Maga in particular.

Intelligence: Shaw is skilled in gathering intel, much of it through actual field work. She can infiltrate target sites (either undercover or by breaking and entering), crack safes, interrogate subjects, and so on.

Languages: Shaw speaks English, German, Spanish, and Farsi.

Medical training: She is a trained medical doctor and can perform minor surgeries in the field (sometimes on herself) even without proper medical equipment. She’s been known to remove bullets from herself and give herself a blood-infusion on the fly just to keep on the mission.

High tolerance for pain: Shaw can withstand great amounts of physical pain, able to patch herself up and keep going, even when she’s gravely injured. She also has an impressive resistance to psychological torture, as is evident in her captivity with the agents of Samaritan (another ASI and arch-nemesis to The Machine). They put her through literally thousands of simulations designed to break her down psychologically and to make her reveal the location of her friends and/or The Machine. She thwarted them every time.


INVENTORY: black hoodie, black leather jacket, black jeans, boots, H&K USP Compact (.45ACP) with laser aiming module, Beretta Nano (9mm) with laser aiming module, four loaded magazines (two for each caliber), a boot knife, her dog (Bear, a Belgian Malinois).

SAMPLES: one | two

three:

Samaritan and The Machine. Two technological gods went to war, hundreds of miles above Earth, and only one of them came back. She knew this because the phone rang. She picked it up, heard her voice, and smiled. Everything was as it should be. The team might be no more, but Shaw still had Bear. Fusco counted too. Things could go back to where they were before the war. Or so she thought.

So what the hell was this?

For a simulation, it was a damn weird one. Samaritan put her through thousands of them before, but they were all grounded in reality. That was what made them such a mind-fuck. She couldn't distinguish what was real and what was not. After so many scenarios and going through the motions of escape, reunion and self-doubt, she barely knew up from down anymore. Putting a bullet through her skull was the only way to make it stop. She would do it again, but they wouldn't let her have her guns back yet.

That might have something to do with the fact that she tried to kill them when she first woke up here. Could you really blame her? Shaw was not the sort of person who took to being kidnapped very nicely. The last time that happened, she was tortured for weeks, and got her mind worked over by a megalomaniac of a machine. All this high tech gear in this so-called spaceship wasn't doing it any favors in the trust department.

It's been a few days since her 'arrival.'

Shaw sits in what must be the brig of this place, eying the invisible force field that keeps her in, disgusted. If this is a sim, they sure know how to make a girl feel welcome. Like a dog with an electronic collar that zaps him every time he reaches forbidden boundary. Shaw might be a sociopath, but even she would never do that to a dog.

"You know, I've done this kind of thing before," she says, looking straight into the camera that she knows is trained on her. "I can do this forever. You might as well just give me a gun right now, and I'll end it."

There's no response but silence. Hmph. She turns her gaze to the small portal on the wall. It's just a black background dotted with tiny bits of light. Is she supposed to think she's in space? It's a clever new tactic, maybe. A philosophical approach, making her feel like an insignificant speck in the universe. Irrelevant.

But Shaw knows something that Samaritan doesn't: everyone is relevant to someone.

For now, she sits and waits.