Person of Interest 1.01 Pilot Review
Person of Interest is the newest bad-ass show from J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan starring Jesus himself, Jim Caviezel. His partner in crime is one of our favorite Abrams' alums, Ben Linus... I'm sorry, Michael Emerson rather. The show doesn't waste any time getting to the point. Software programmer and mysterious rich guy, Finch (played by Emerson), created a machine that tracks every person in New York and alerts the government of terrorist plots. If the threats aren't large enough, however, it deletes the information at midnight. The irrelevant list, as it's called, contains only the social security number of a central figure in the plot. It's up to Finch and newly hired, presumed dead spy, Reese, to find out if this person is the victim or the perpetrator and stop the crime from ever happening. To call this show a procedural drama would be a crime against perfection. Io9 describes it as a "Superhero show done right." Anders claims the super power in this superhero drama is the power to know the future. That may be true. I'm more inclined to believe it fulfills that sweet, sweet niche of spy thriller come vigilante adventure. The delicious espionage drips off the screen with beautiful surveillance shots spliced into every scene, an overuse of cell phone cloning, and various means of tracking their targets. Spoilers ahead, but I won't give away the end.
The central players in this spy-fest are introduced right up front. Detective Carter (Taraji Henson) meets Reese after he's semi-arrested for opening a can of whoop-ass on some mobster kids trying to steal his booze. She's smart as a whip and recognizes him as some kind of ex-special forces guy in need of some help. Carter swipes his prints off a plastic cup and finds out he has a not-so-boring past five seconds before he's swept away by one of Finch's henchmen. An initial attempt at recruitment fails and Reese escapes, regrettably losing his beautiful hobo beard in the process. The first ten minutes is far too early to lose that beard if you ask me. I mean, I know the guy needs to change his appearance. That's standard protocol for spies on the run. But that beard was fantastic and it was all for not in the end. He promptly passes out and wakes up in another hotel room chained to a bed and told to listen to a woman dying next door. It's a dramatic and beautiful scene, and then the game is on.
The "irrelevant" of the week is Diane Hanson played by Natalie Zea. You may know Natalie as Raylan's ex-wife on Justified. She's a prosecutor that finds out the guy she's going after in court, Lawrence Pope, may be innocent after all. Is her co-council and ex lover trying to kill her? Is it Pope's gang? Maybe it's the corrupt cops that set Pope up. This is where we are introduced to the fourth player, corrupt cop and smart ass detective, Lionel Fusco. You're going to fall in love with this guy, but not just yet. The irrelevant story is short and sweet, devoting most of the episode's time to introducing the machine and the set up.
Reese's background isn't all that interesting. It's full of glammy flashbacks of him quitting the army rangers for his lover before the 9/11 attack on New York. There are references to her death in a car wreck while he's half way across the world so obviously the man went back to fight for his country. He tells one bad guy that he travelled the world looking for bad guys while there were plenty right here. The dude is seriously bad ass. When he kicks Fusco's ass, he asks him if he has a vest on, then lays him down with a few shots in the back. Such a beautiful bonding moment right there. I mean, it worked for Raylan and Boyd. Why not Reese and Fusco? Finch claims to know exactly everything about Reese. He said he realized there was a disparity between what Finch knows about Reese and what Reese knows about Finch. He knows Reese will try to fill that gap but he warns, "I'm a very private person." That's foreshadowing to the tenth degree, people. Reese wastes no time trying to figure Finch out.
Finch is the mysterious rich guy that built the machine. His purpose was preventing the next 9/11 and so he taught it to sort future loss of life as relevant or irrelevant. After his guilty conscious and perhaps some personal tragedy not yet revealed, he decided to use his back door into the program to access the irrelevant list and try to save lives. But he couldn't do it alone. He's just a computer guy. He had to find someone like Reese. Finch is presumed dead. He walks around with very little mobility in his neck, back, and legs. His flashbacks reveal complete mobility during his machine building days. I'm just going to throw this out there. Finch finished the machine and the government decided to off him. That's not all, though. Wait for it now. Are you ready? He was IN the car with Reese's ex lover! Yes! Mystery solved! No need to thank me. Okay. So anyways, Finch built the machine, built a back door in to turn it off just in case he felt the thing was being misused, and then got fake killed. Now he gets social security numbers and wants to do something about it. Hence, the hiring of Reese. They also work out of a trashed library that "doesn't exist." All those books on the floor make me sad. *Le cry*
So let me know what you think of the pilot. Spot anything significant I missed? Disagree? Let me know in the comments and don't forget to tell your friends, WATCH THIS SHIT! Mercave out.