Person of Interest is the Best Show You Haven’t Seen (Yet)
Netflix binging. We all do it. Even if we don’t have an account ourselves, we find a way in. It’s just too tempting, to be able to sit back on a lazy Saturday afternoon and churn through a season of a compelling drama. Or have the white noise of a multi-camera sitcom on while you’re studying for a big test. The convenience is just too good to pass up.
It also helps to catch up on shows that you may have let fall by the wayside. The rigors of keeping up with some shows as they air new episodes can be tough, especially when you have an active life or other commitments. Recently, I got back into a show that I had let slip through my fingers, and was reminded as I worked my way into its final season that I was a fool to give it up.
That show? Person of Interest. Believe me when I say it is definitely worth a few of those lazy weekend days to get on board.
Executive produced by J.J. Abrams and developed by Jonathan Nolan (who is currently adapting Westworld into HBO’s new hit show), Person of Interest follows John Reese, an ex-CIA operative living on the streets of New York City, as he is recruited by a mysterious billionaire named Harold Finch. Mister Finch reveals to Reese that he has developed an artificial intelligence — “The Machine,” as it is known — to report to the government looming terrorist threats. The Machine, however, sees every potential crime, from armed robbery to domestic violence. Unable to let these “irrelevant” people suffer, Finch and Reese work together to save those The Machine warns them about.
It’s a heady concept that only gets more intriguing when you realize the numbers The Machine gives them relate to either the perpetrator of the crime or the victim — which Reese and Finch must discern before it is too late. For a show that aired on CBS, which airs formulaic procedurals like NCIS and Elementary, one would think the potential for a show like this wouldn’t be met. Far from it.
The show does begin as a typical procedural drama/thriller. The crux of the early episodes revolve around Reese, Finch, and later members of “Team Machine” trying to deduce who to save and who to stop based on the numbers The Machine gives them, but also trying to avoid detection from both the NYPD and the FBI. But as the show expands its mythology the further in it goes, the more it becomes a deeply serialized show in the vein of Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy, which rely on viewers having seen every episode from the get-go to understand new developments.
Arguably the biggest way the show develops its mythology is through the villains it utilizes. While there are always “criminal of the week” villains to stop by episode’s end, the show also introduces a multitude of compelling, multi-season villains for “Team Machine” to fight. From the rising gangster Elias and the corrupt group of New York cops known as H.R. to rogue hackers and a stronger A.I. known as Samaritan, the heroes of the show have their hands full.
The show also keeps viewers on the edge of their seats by offering up real stakes for the characters to go through. Most CBS shows would only see a hero suffer through cliched trials and tribulations before coming out stronger. Maybe they would even push the envelope by killing off a character here or there. Person of Interest, however, builds to the point where anyone could wind up dead. Whether they be recurring figures or key players, no one is safe.
This idea comes to a head in season three’s three-part storyline that sees “Team Machine” going up against H.R. once and for all. Both sides throw everything they have into taking the other down, and plenty of characters get caught in the crossfire. When the final credits role on “The Devil’s Share,” the final chapter, one major character on the team is dead, the others are shaken to their core, and the series shifts its trajectory from there.
You might be saying to yourself, “Okay, but they’re just characters. They’ll introduce new ones that I’ll grow to love just as much.” True, they do have a sprawling cast of characters by the final season. Naturally, some of them are a bit two-dimensional. But the main characters make you care for them as they fight to make New York a safer place. Reese and Finch stand as the backbone of the show, as each successive season peels away the layers of their past to lay them bare for us to both judge and sympathize with them, but other characters get the same kind of treatment, whether they be hero or villain — or somewhere in between.
Finally — and this is just a personal interest of mine — the show utilizes real world techniques to showcase how technology can be manipulated. On a show with sentient super computers you would think realism would be out the window. But so much is taken from actual methods, such as cloning phones and accessing email accounts, that it can be slightly unnerving to see how easily some of it can be. When you hear the writers get so unnerved at some of it that they deactivated their social media accounts, it’s enough to make you take pause.
From crazy action sequences and philosophical quandaries to questions about privacy and the freedoms we sacrifice to feel “safe,” Person of Interest is a great show that stayed on the air just long enough to tell its story. Running five seasons, all of which are currently on Netflix, it is definitely worth a look for people who want a show that postulates what technology might one day be…with some shootouts to spice things up.
