Deus Ex Machina episode commentary Michael Emerson
Not mine just borrowing it. it can be found here https://www.personofinterestdiscussion.com/content/deus-ex-machina-episode-commentary-michael-emerson-transcript-added
Transcript:
Hello, this is Michael Emerson. Most of you know me as Mr. Finch. And we are watching Episode 3.23, Deus Ex Machina, the last episode of the the third season. And I am now seeing it for the first time.
Leslie Odom Jr. as the leader of Vigilance. What a great TV villain he has turned into. He lives in my neighborhod, in Hells Kitchen in New York. I run into him sometimes.
These are strange bedfellows. Boris McGiver as Hersh, now working alongside Reese and Shaw. He's a wonderful New York stage actor. Scary guy with a gun though. (Hersh shoots the Decima guys. Michael - "Hee hee hee hee") I like the cool take on acts of violence that we get from the professional killers on our show.
John Nolan playing Greer. Jonah's uncle, how good is he? And Camryn Manheim, whom I've known for many years in New York. She was on the Practice, when I had my first TV job. The Judge is played by Diane Davis, a friend of my wife Carrie's. She lived in our apartment for many months one time.
One of the great things about working on POI are these strange buildings that you get into. The Library at night or the Guggenheim Musem or all these crazy nooks and crannies of the city that we end up working in.
Nolon is such an interesting actor. He's a lot of fun. There's John Doman. He played the arresting officer on my first episode of The Practice, which was my first TV show.
They've shifted the sympathy system around Control very nicely. Camryn was so terrifying when she was interrogating Root, but now we kind of like her. Or she seems to be one of us.
He's such a provocateur, Greer is.
(Reese, Shaw and Hersh on the streets) More of our patented walking the streets of New York City scenes.
The weather was very cold for what seemed like the entirety of the third season. Everybody was begging for more clothing. Scarves, gloves, stocking caps, which were not originlally in the sort of design scheme of the show. I think the concept was weather "lite" or seasons "lite".
I really miss Detective Carter, but we now have two such extraorinary actresses on our show, Sarah and Amy, playing these funny, fierce, super skillful women. What's great about Sarah is how funny she while being deadly at all times.
(Collier questioning White House Counsel in courtroom) Northern Lights. The show has been more than usually topical this season. Real world events. Stories of Government Surveillance, have outraced us.
(White House Counsel tells off Collier) You don't really want to get too angry here. (Collier shoots Counsel) Ok!! Everybody is rather shocked. Wow. And Mr. Finch knows so much...
(commercial)
And we're back. Here's a little backstory on our villain, Peter Collier. Or is he a villain? Even the bad guys get flashbacks on Person of Interest. He has good cause to be angry about the government.
New Graphics, from Samaritan's point of view rather than the Machines. Interesting technical challenge for Visual Effects.
(Collier being recruited to Vigilance by onscreen texts) Who will we meet? Ah there we go. Unsung heroes of our technical staff, how everything gets up on screens perfectly timed. A little deep conspiracy here...
The end of this season has a lot of to do with the uber-story. We stray a little bit from the one subject, one episode format.
A true patriot.... This is how people get enlisted, I suppose. Also Peter Collier is not even his real name. I guess I should have known that. Well of course it isn't because they are all named after characters from the American Revolution. .... They've won him over.
I love the timeline super graphics. Where we go from place to place and time to time. And it gets better and more complicated every season I think.
(Control's line to Collier in the courtroom- "You don't get to cherry pick the law") I always liked that line . And it's cool that she calls him on constitutional rights and proper trial order.
There's Bear. Hee hee hee - that's Fusco. It is a great formula that we love Fusco so much. And he has a way of showing up just in the knick of time. I guess that's why it's a TV show.
Bear, whose real name is Boker, is a grand champion dog. super smart and very eager. Very eager to get going. You know he always wantw to do the scene faster and harder than any of the human actors. I have a dog at home that weighs about a tewnteith of what Boker weighs.
(Root darts a guy in Samaritan warehouse) Ooops. It's always good when Shaw has your back.
What kind of a wrestling hold is that? Nicely done! I'm so glad thatI don't have to do the hand-to-hand on the show. The limping is enough.
Sometimes at work I forget how really beautiful these two actresses are! Oh my goodness...
I like how we do so many improved field medical procedures on the show and it always goes pretty well and it's almost always effective.
It's hard to play the jury or the assembled journalists in a scene like this. This scene, this courtroom stuff took two full, long days to shoot. And they always have to be completely gripped by the scene. Giving believable human reactions. That's some hard acting.
(The Senator under Collier's questioning) Somebody's gonna crack here . Mr. Finch feels bad because he knows the answers to all of these questions. But his whole life has been about hiding the Machine.
(commercial)
And we're back. Flashing back in time 2 years. Scenes of violence that I'm grateful I didn't participate in.
See there's never any beer drinking in any of my scenes. (SO NOT TRUE MICHAEL - LOL!)
(Collier looking at text messages from anon) Who could those messages have come from?
This whole season has been leading up to a kind of a war between two powerful forms of artificial intelligence. Set up so nicely in the middle of the season with Arthur, Harold's old friend, and his creation of Samaritan, which was thought to be lost but now it seems it's going to be resurrected. An even more fearful prospect for Vigilance.
It puts Harold Finch in a bad spot. So many things are going wrong. So much of the orignal plan seems to be going off track. And yet he has no one to share the news with or to share his concerns with. Most of it I I think he could have predicted as one of a number of possible outcomes, but now everything is coming at him so thick and so fast. And he HATES to let other people suffer on his behalf.
(Collier asking Control if Research is an automated system, a machine) Research.... Now this is all getting very close. He's warm, he's warm...
We'd all like to think that we could state our case as plainly and courageously as Control has just done!
(Root and Shaw in Samaritan's warehouse). Maybe the best two-girl action team on television? Certainly very resourceful, with Shaw on weapons and Root on electronics. (Shaw says, "Computers can bite me" - Michael laughs loudly!)
(Reese and Hersh in masks taking down Vigilance dude) It's hard to create a sense of chaos in the streets on a television show. Never talk to guys in hockey masks.
There goes Bear! Bear gets a workout with the finale. It's interesting to work with an animal costar. You can't really talk with them. And it takes more time because they're doing things that they don't fully understand. But it always ends up looking good and I think the audience surely adores Bear.
(Courthouse scene) Mr. Finch is shocked, stupefied, that the jurors would vote for a convinction (of Control).
One of the good things POI does is it gives a voice to both sides of an issue like this. The people who fear surveillance and the people who fear our vulnerability if we don't have it.
Well she rather told him!
I don't know how much longer Mr. Finch can stand this line of questioning. Mr. Finch wants to take responsibility.
(commercial)
And we're back. Moving a little ways back in time. How many episodes have we done where we're inside some sort of storage unit?
This episode is directed beautifully by Chris Fisher , who is our sort of show running director/producer on the New York end, and the most dapper director that I think I've ever worked with. I like how he dresses. Even in the dead of winter he'll be out here in a smart suit and tie and some cool hat and maybe just a scarf tossed jauntily over his shoulder. He seems impervious to the weather. I wish I could say the same. I spent a good bit of Season 3 freezing my rear end off.
See despite the show being a fiction, this business of an all-seeing artificial intelligence is a little bit troubling. The way that Mr. Greer describes Samaritan's powers and his vision for a future in which our society is run by an omniscient artificial intelligence, and he seems to be able to justify it philosphically or practically or logically, is a little terrifying. And when you think how fast things are developing, you just wonder, where will be in 10 years or so? It's kind of fearful and we aren't fully in control of it.
I'm so glad that Leslie is the one holding the gun and not me. I don't do that well with firearms, or with horses, either. Fortunately, there probably won't be any horse riding for Mr Finch. Although never say never! But with guns, even the unloaded kind, hell even the rubber kind, I'll find a way to hurt myself with it, I swear.
It's nice to do scenes with a really good stage actor. It's very real with Leslie.
I'm always amazed at the way that things cut together. Because we do long, long takes of these scenes and after a while you can't remember what the goods were. But then you see that the writers and the people in post(production) know exactly what their mission is, they know how to move the camera around and keep the pace going.
It's fun to do confessions like that, or courtroom testimony, when it's been set up right. When you're talking about something mind blowing or earth shattering and you're talking about it in an everyday tone of voice. "Oh by the way, I built the most powerful surveillance system known to man. I felt like I should."
(Reese and Hersh watching the testimony on the van monitor) So you see the division of labor here was Jim and Boris out in the cold streets at night with guns and vehicles, and the rest of us in this courtroom.
(Finch courtroom testimony) And you wonder when you make a speech like this, you wonder, is there someone in the real world who could truthfully say the same thing? Is there some unknown government employee who has made a system with similar powers?
This whole kangaroo court scene, it's kind of a portrait in miniature of the extremes of political debate and sloganeering. The way good intentions can be made to sound bad if you use the right language.
I guess it's nice to be shot in close-up? But (he thinks) it's a little hard to look at for a long period of time. You know, because it doesn't really look like the "you" you see in the mirror in the morning, because it's flipped. And you don't see yourself, I don't know, talking like that. And the mirror in the bathroom doesn't show you the shape of your head in profile or the odd way that you mouth moves. (Laughs) I get it when actors say," I just can't look at myself on screen."
(commercial)
And we're back. Ahh we're out doors. This is a money shot on Person of Interest. You get to see the new York skyline at differnt times of night and day , different weather, more fabulous buldings, more creepy stairwells and computer rooms and dripping basements.
(Reese and Hersh in the courthouse stairwell) It's so funny for me because I only know the scenes I do and I watch the show and I'm constantly going, "Oh that's how that works or this is what the script meant! So I think somtimes I'm reasonably good at my work but I'm not fully aware of the big narrative picture of things? I kind of live in the narrow world of my lines and my scenes, the face to face stuff, figuring out what I need to accomplish for my character or for the writers.
(Decima shooting at Vigilance on rooftop - Finch caught in the crossfire) More scenes of violence. (nervous laugh - heh heh heh)
But I do often miss out on narrative issues. Even on my own show, sometimes, my wife Carrie will explain to me why something happened and I'll go, "Oh, oh, god, I see now!"
I'm more the small picture person than the big picture person. People come up to me and say, oh wouldn't you like to direct an episode? And I'd think, absolutely not! That would be ridiculous! I would never even be able to figure out the story I was telling much less tell other people how to shoot it or how to play it!
(Greer to Finch and Collier- "You two, I'm afriad. will be here for the brief remainder of your lives.") Brief remainder... looks like the end of the road.
It's kind of sweet how Mr. Finch continues to be a humanist. He's kind of an open hearted, liberal minded person and yet he lives in the world of all the hard scary people. I suppose at the end of the day we hope that there is someone with his power and inventiveness who also has a heart.
(Bear brings Reese a gun) Good boy Bear.
(Hersh finds the huge bomb) Yikes! Hersh takes off his coat to get down to business!
(Greer quote to Finch about The Machine - "In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god.") A little paraphrasesd quote from Hamlet here from our John Nolan. There's something loveable about highly civilized villains, you know? The kind that are good with words and never break a sweat. They treat it all as a chess match instead of a wrestling match.
Oh there you go. Very bad news for Vigilance. They've been played. It's like peeling back the layers of an onion. And Decima is always there first. Playing the long game. It's like a dagger through his (Collier's) heart.
It's not easy to cast these kinds of roles. To find an actor like Leslie who is the perfect Collier. Or John Nolan to be Greer. You know, an actor like that is not waiting around at the Equity Lounge. He has to be found.
(Reese firefight scene - on walkie talkie with Hersh) Jim is such a great action hero. He's cool and businesslike. And he's very careful about authenticity in the handling of weapons and in the terminology he uses. In the different techniques of combat. You know he trains very hard about those things and thinks them through very carefully.
And then I'll meet service men or special forces guys in airports and they'll come over and say how much they like the show and that they watch it, that they watched it in Afghanistan, and how much they enjoyed it, and how much they appreciated the authenticity of the work. That things happen the way they really do in that world of agents and men with guns.
(Greer about to have Finch shot) Oh no! The dawn of a new world. Is this it?
(Reese to the rescue) Ours is a show of great rescues, nick of time stuff.
It's special kind of acting problem when you play a scene when your life is threatened. How does one experience what one believes to be the last minute of one's life? How is that played? If you don't have anything in your real life to base it on except for maybe some dire situation in which you thought life as you knew it was about to end.
(Samaritan warehouse) Samaritan is huge. Too big to be destroyed. Then what? What if your adversary is beyond your means, your resources, your way of doing things?
(Samaritan going online and reviewing people's histories - "Deviants") Another great New York shot. Who's a real New York civilian this scene and who is employed by CBS? It would be hard to tell.
(Reese patching up Finch - banter) (Michael laughs) We have a good relationship. It's completely accidental. It couldn't be planned for. We're so unlike one another, Jim and I, as actors, as people, and yet yet somehow it's a good fictional relationship. Careful writing I guess and both of us taking our work very seriously.
(Greer - "Eliminate them all") Yikes. Samaritan's first hit list. But Root has done something very smart.
The Library. Home. Finch, Reese and Bear. Everything is broken now. Where to go? What to do next?
How many times have Finch and Reese given people a manila envelope with a new identity and enough cash to get by?
So what becomes of Control?
I guess we won't be using that bulletin board anymore.
Last day of shooting, April 4, every bit as cold as any day in February!
(Root's soliloquy and parting scenes) Wow. I had to stop and watch that. That's a great voiceover narrative. Yikes....
Well that's it. Thanks so much for joining me on this final episode of the season. And I hope that you're intrigued enough to tune in again in the fall when there will be a kind of a new look to Person of Interest.
Apparently the world that Reese and Finch and Shaw and Root have known until now has been broken and something new has to replace it. I don't know. I have so many questions, maybe you do too. I have no idea where they wil live. I have no idea what kind of identities they will assume. What they will do for... How they will get around, or how they can stay in touch with one another, or will they have money, or a million practical questions.
And what about The Machine? Because Samaritan is online, is the Machine defeated, or is it too going into hiding in some way?
I'll be interested in seeing the first scripts of the new season and we'll see you then!
Like Comment?:
Cancel rating
Give it 1/1