Your number is up. It’s time you started watching Person of Interest.
Person of Interest season 5, the show’s final season, premieres tonight at 10:00 p.m. on CBS. It’s hard to imagine why CBS, a network with a flare for running procedurals well into double digit seasons, is not paying attention to Person of Interest. First, the episode order was cut, then months of radio silence on when the show would fit into CBS’s calendar. Finally, word emerged that the show’s final season would air two episodes per week and disappear from CBS’s lineup as quickly as possible. The behind the scenes network drama should not deter from Person of Interest’s growth from standard case-of-the-week procedural to serialized ASI war drama that, at its core, asks a particularly pertinent question, “How okay are we with being watched?”
Person of Interest premiered pre-Snowden. Why is that important? For those unfamiliar with the show, the opening title sequence begins with, “You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of everyday.” Coming into the show today a new viewer would think, “Uh, duh!” But at the time of Person of Interest’s premiere the idea that the government was making use of the nation’s surveillance systems and listening in on calls to prevent terrorist acts was a cloudy idea. Something that might be happening, but probably would not affect our lives. Enter Person of Interest to unpack the “what if” scenario with the tale of ASI, or artificial super intelligence, and what that technology could be capable of placed in the right hands.
The ASI, or as its creator Harold Finch (Lost‘s Michael Emerson) prefers to refer to it, The Machine, is a super system that learns patterns in people’s behaviors. Its objective is to seek out potential danger and identify the perpetrators to the authorities. Finch, way back in 2006, sold the machine to the government to do just that. But when he learned that the government would assess and deploy prevention tactics only to stop major crimes and acts of terror, Finch created a back door and took the cases considered “irrelevant” into his own hands. Enter John Reese, a former CIA operative. Finch works with the brains of the operations, Reese provides the muscle.
Say hello to the perfect procedural ingredients. Each week The Machine would provide a new number (the social security number of a person who was either in danger or about to cause harm to someone else), Reese and Finch work to identify the person through surveillance and electronic records, the NYPD contacts provide assistance in acquiring case histories and diverting police vehicles, and bing, bang, boom by episode’s end the photo pinned on the wall would be taken down. That is, however, until season 3. Lurking in the background of seasons 1 and 2 were the big mob bosses of the five boroughs. They provided assistance or disruption time and again with Carl Elias heading up the organized crime unit steering the ship and contributed to the long form stories Person of Interest wove into the mix.
But by season 3, when a rival ASI began to take on a life of its own, so did the long form story. Numbers, belonging to victims and perpetrators still trickled out here and there, but a larger war began pushing them out of the limelight. And honestly, the show became better for it. Other procedurals across the networks tend to operate in the same way season 1 and 2 unfolded. Elementary reserves their B storyline for planting seeds across a season in order to open up three episodes at the end to a serialized story. NCIS and all its spinoffs, also tell narratives across episodes, typically focusing on one or two characters. Person of Interest decidedly turned the show on its head, even changing the opening credits to reflect a greater power taking over their world. Another being inside the show was here to shake things up and the only way to tell its story was to let Samaritan win for a while.
Samaritan, the rival AI built from the scraps of work Harold Finch previously discarded, brought with it a new method of storytelling. In season 3 Person of Interest slowly shifted to a more serialized show, ending a season-long battle against an organization known as Vigilance. Fighting for the right to electronic privacy, Vigilance’s visual leader, played brilliantly by pre-Hamilton superstar Leslie Odom Jr., took the show from Number of the Week into uncharted territory, a serialized drama sci-fi that tackles a war between the underdog ASI – The Machine – against the Super Intelligence and big bad – Samaritan. And that is where season 4 subsequently continued. Once Samaritan went live, there was no kill switch.
So, why should you watch Person of Interest now? Even though CBS sees Person of Interest as an Irrelevant, I see it as being one of the most “Relevant” shows on television. Across the seasons there are episodes that I feel comfortable enough calling some of the best I’ve seen on TV. Not only is the topic eerily relevant to the current technological climate, but the show has some of the strongest actors and performances week in and week out. “The Devil’s Share,” is one of the best explorations of grief and revenge. Watch the cold open to the episode below, but be warned that it does reveal a major character’s death. The slow burn of the more personal stories and skeletons lurking in Reese, Finch, Shaw, and Root’s closet makes for some of the most compelling narratives on TV.
Seeing as the premiere picks up moments after the conclusion of the season 4 finale, I highly recommended that you load up “YHWY” on Netflix before heading into “B.S.O.D.” Person of Interest is certainly worth adding to your TV lexicon, but if you do not have time for every single case, there is an incredible guide that will catch you up without watching all 90 episodes.
The first few episodes of this season (I have seen four) maintain the feel of the previous seasons while also kicking off the final chapter in Person of Interest‘s story.
Watch Person of Interest season 5, episode 1, “B.S.O.D.” tonight at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.
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