Person of Interest 1x02: "Ghosts" (rewatch)
Was a bit preoccupied with alternately posting on Get Glue live as it happened and perving on Michael during the original airing of the show Thursday, so I'm rewatching this week's episode of Person of Interest ... with the benefit of the pause and rewind buttons so I can perv and pay attention to the storyline!
Woo, I love the opening voiceover by none other than Himself! "You are being watched ..." Way to suck in the viewers!
Heh, I knew right away what Caviezel was up to. Yes, the first time I watched it too.
Oo, that is Brett Cullen! When last we saw them together "in another life," Michael Emerson was sending him to his death!
So in 2002, Finch hadn't been injured yet. (Mmm, he looks hot running on the treadmill in his gym clothes!)
Now it's Brett's turn to boss Michael around.
Remy Auberjonois? Any relation to Rene?
The Machine looks suspiciously like Watson, the computer that famously beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! Although I'm convinced if they'd kept playing, Ken would've eventually beat the computer. (In the beginning, I don't think any of the contestants was prepared for how fast the computer could ring in, but Ken was hitting his stride by that last game! Think maybe Watson's creators were just showing off and weren't seriously interested in testing their computer on the show? Which was obviously doing it for the ratings.)
Michael's sideburns are getting too wide. They looked good in the pilot, but I'm not sure I'm liking them so much anymore. (He should grow them a little longer and straighter--don't like them growing forward like that; it's so ... ew, 1970s. Oops, perving again. Stop it, Michael! Stop being so damn pervable! Flabby tummy and all. Brett Cullen's face seems to be aging faster than his though!)
Four, five more years till the machine is done. So that brings us to 2006/2007-ish ...
Hmm, what's 2012 doing on the timeline already??? "It's the End of the World (and R.E.M.) as We Know It ..."
Yuck, not liking those black glasses on him at all! Yeah, that style is fashionable now and all, but he wasn't wearing them last week (the present or, at least, sometime before he hired Reese), and they cover up too much of his face, making him look like an old man. Those thick sides must really interfere with your peripheral vision too. And I can't see his eyes from the side. Meh. I kinda like the Michael Caine horn-rimmed look, but on Michael Emerson, I'm hating these the more I look at them. Not the least bit flattering on him! (Carrie probably picked them out to keep the fangirls away from him.)
Reese's "friend" in the department? *grab* *slam* Some friend. (Yeah, I get it. Irony. Haha. It's just ...)
Caviezel doing his stoic Christian Bale-as-Batman impression. Not liking his character much at all ... except when he pulls out one of his magical Kwai Chang Caine maneuvers. He's like the Mentalist with fighting skills. But without the personality. I prefer Simon Baker. He can hypnotize me anytime. *melt* (Besides, I can't stop associating Jim Caviezel with persona non-grata Mel Gibson!) Finch is definitely the likable one of this "odd couple."
OK, this reminds me of a question that always nags at me. A good Liberal is against capital punishment because they're afraid an innocent person might be executed. Yet so many of these heinous crimes end with the perpetrator taking his own life ("murder/suicide"). Why? IMO, they know they're going straight to prison for the rest of their lives and would rather die. So it seems to me that spending your life in prison is actually a worse punishment than death and that execution is actually too humane for the people who are deemed to deserve it compared to those may be guilty of lesser crimes. Cold-blooded killers like Timothy McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahmer actually deserve to be rotting away in prison with no chance of parole. Opinions?
*Ding dong* Yeah, ring my bell, Finchy! (And take those damn goggles off!)
So. Finally Finch does some of his own dirty work. And he can "act" too.
Probably a dumb question: Why does it take two years for the Machine to suddenly figure out Theresa was still alive? Yet not say where she was?
This whole Detective Carter-trying-to figure-out-what's-up-with-Reese subplot so far seems like just a pointless distraction to the story. I'm more interested in Finch and Reese. Then again, maybe she's the only way we're ever going to know anything about Reese. Nahhh, that's what the flashbacks are for. She's probably going to become someone's love interest. Pfft.
Washington Square Park? Ooo, I love all the settings! (If nothing else, the show is a feast for the eyes. Well, it would be if Michael would ditch those icky specs.)
Oh yeah, run like hell, Reese. That won't attract any attention. What happened to his ability to magically appear and disappear like he did last week?
I wonder if Michael's using the pebble-in-the-shoe trick to make him limp convincingly?
He has a first name and it is Harold! Yay, no gimmicky mystery name to guess throughout the series.
Meh. I hate office work! Work faster, work faster. (Having more PTSD flashbacks to my Nazi ex-boss.)
Are his sideburns getting thicker as the show goes on or is it my imagination? (Yeah, my imagination's getting thicker.)
OK, so say they all find out that Finch is their boss. What good is reassigning or firing everyone going to do? They're still going to know--and be pissed.
"So ... who's your friend, Harold?" she asks suggestively. Are we to take it that he's gay? Or he's not allowed to have friends? (More office politics, phooey.)
Reese can't go anywhere without people getting shot. Is he trying to get caught by the (real) cops??? (As opposed to his "friend," Lionel?)
Hard to understand why Michael was waxing so "rapturously" (ahem) the other night about Jim Caviezel. Is he schmoozing or what and why? This guy's been playing one note for two weeks now. No facial expression, no vocal intonation ... How hard can that be? Oh! Oh! I know! It's going to turn out that Reese is an android! (He may as well have a Batman cowl on his head. At least then we could imagine he's having facial expressions.)
"Guys who kill kids aren't popular in jail." Wow, such a, ahem, "Revelation."
OK, at this point (halfway through), quite frankly, I'm finding this episode quite boring--and disappointing in terms of all the things we were supposed to learn about Finch's past--"so soon" into the series. (Let's see, he used to run on a treadmill in 2002, had the same sideburns, only more flattering eyeglass frames! And he hadn't finished La Machine yet. Big stuff!) This show is way too much Nolan, not enough Abrams. I don't even know why Abrams's name is in the credits. It's dragging along, just like a Batman movie. Is it time for The Mentalist yet?
Ugh, more Batman-style action scenes too. Something about that digital camera work makes it harder to see what's going on; it ends up looking like a pixelated blur!
Reese has been on a shooting spree for the past two episodes, and the NYPD aren't even close to him yet???
Oo, can I be next? I want Michael to babysit me!
I've got it! Caviezel's doing a prolonged Clint Eastwood impression! Let me guess. His next line is going to be, "Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?" Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. How does he maintain that monotone with all those other people around him emoting and, like, acting and stuff???
OK, once again, Finch tells us he lost someone. And that he wanted to disappear. Back to 2007 ... La Machine should be up and running now.
Ah, back to the good glasses. He's got the limp now, but he can still turn his head. (Degenerative disk disease like mine???) He hasn't taught the Machine to tell the difference between "relevant" and "irrelevant" yet. (Better get to work on that. Faster, faster!) Exactly eight people in the world who know the Machine exists--minus Finch and, um, "Goodwin," that makes six. And if anyone else knew there'd be an outcry? Come on, we all know we're being recorded wherever we go! I see the signs telling me so everywhere. And George Bush was personally listening to all my phone calls. (Even Bugs Bunny always had that feeling he was being watched back in the 1940s!) We just didn't know how anybody could monitor all that info. Well, that was another revealing scene of Finch's past. Not! (Is there something I'm missing here? How much longer???)
Wow, a squealing subway train! I have to say, this show does a great job of capturing the real New York so much better than shows like Lawn Dorder where you can tell they blocked off a street to film the outdoor scenes with hired extras.
Time for the obligatory car crash scene. Oh my, what a big truck you have! (Oh, brother.) *closes eyes till it's over*
Back to Babysitter Finch. Wow, he's smart! (Gawd, he walks just like I do these days! Unless you're coming over to, um, "babysit," quit watching me, ya copycat!)
Hiding behind the couch together. This is so much more romantic than that wrestling scene in the apartment with Cary Elwes's wife in Saw. Yeah, baby, snatch my cell phone!
So altruistic sending her down the fire escape. And she's staying with him, just like I would do, how sweet!
And finally! The deux ex machina! (Oo, was that on purpose? The "god from the machine"? Finch's machine??) Clint Eastwood-- I mean Reese catches up at exactly the right moment and saves the day.
And ... back to the boring Carter story. "Do you wanna meet me?" Well, do ya, punk? OMG, this is so anticlimactic, it's stultifying. Get rid of this Carter character! I don't care about her! Or ... oh, better idea! Kill off Reese and hire her instead. Nah, she's too stupid to do the job. Meh. Better get Ashton Kutscher instead. He should be looking for work within the next few weeks the way Two and a Half Men is going. (Kutscher is absolutely wrong for that role! A neurotic character like Alan needs a straight man, not a moron to play off of!)
Oh look, "Harold" (if that is his real name, cliche intended) fired himself.
"The founder, 1962-2010, in loving memory." So loving they couldn't be bothered to put his name on the memorial? And is that supposed to look like Brett Cullen? So Finch is gay, and Goodwin was his boyfriend, who died last year, at which point Finch sustained the injury to his neck. (But we can't say that was when he got the black glasses cuz he wasn't wearing them last week, if I recall correctly.) Therefore ... the death of his boyfriend, presumably recorded and then deleted, is what made him decide to keep the "irrelevant" info. And probably one of the other six people who know about the machine did it.
And again I ask, am I missing something here? I thought we were going to learn all kinds of juicy things about Finch that were so shocking they didn't belong in only the second episode. Thank goodness we didn't have to wait for that! (I already figured from the flashback scenes compared to now that Goodwin was gone. So I guess this is how Finch came to own the company. Still ... where's the shocking, "YOU'RE MINE!!! ... Take as much time as you need." scene? We already knew last week that Finch had Lost someone--yeah, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse--and that was the reason he'd turned vigilante. So what's the big news? That he's gay? *yawn*)
Next week's episode had better be better than this or I don't think this show is going to make it for an entire season! In fact, I almost hope it gets cancelled cuz if it stays on, I have to watch it just for Michael Emerson. (Maybe I'll record it and just FF to the Michael moments for perving and screencap purposes only. If he changes those hideous goggles, that is!!!) Then again, I can't even make it through an episode of NCIS, the most popular show on CBS apparently, so what do I know? If Michael Emerson weren't in this (wearing a T-shirt next week, hubba hubba--yes, I have a men-in-well-fitted-T-shirts fetish!), it would be a Show of Absolutely No Interest to me. :(
Woo, I love the opening voiceover by none other than Himself! "You are being watched ..." Way to suck in the viewers!
Heh, I knew right away what Caviezel was up to. Yes, the first time I watched it too.
Oo, that is Brett Cullen! When last we saw them together "in another life," Michael Emerson was sending him to his death!
So in 2002, Finch hadn't been injured yet. (Mmm, he looks hot running on the treadmill in his gym clothes!)
Now it's Brett's turn to boss Michael around.
Remy Auberjonois? Any relation to Rene?
The Machine looks suspiciously like Watson, the computer that famously beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! Although I'm convinced if they'd kept playing, Ken would've eventually beat the computer. (In the beginning, I don't think any of the contestants was prepared for how fast the computer could ring in, but Ken was hitting his stride by that last game! Think maybe Watson's creators were just showing off and weren't seriously interested in testing their computer on the show? Which was obviously doing it for the ratings.)
Michael's sideburns are getting too wide. They looked good in the pilot, but I'm not sure I'm liking them so much anymore. (He should grow them a little longer and straighter--don't like them growing forward like that; it's so ... ew, 1970s. Oops, perving again. Stop it, Michael! Stop being so damn pervable! Flabby tummy and all. Brett Cullen's face seems to be aging faster than his though!)
Four, five more years till the machine is done. So that brings us to 2006/2007-ish ...
Hmm, what's 2012 doing on the timeline already??? "It's the End of the World (and R.E.M.) as We Know It ..."
Yuck, not liking those black glasses on him at all! Yeah, that style is fashionable now and all, but he wasn't wearing them last week (the present or, at least, sometime before he hired Reese), and they cover up too much of his face, making him look like an old man. Those thick sides must really interfere with your peripheral vision too. And I can't see his eyes from the side. Meh. I kinda like the Michael Caine horn-rimmed look, but on Michael Emerson, I'm hating these the more I look at them. Not the least bit flattering on him! (Carrie probably picked them out to keep the fangirls away from him.)
Reese's "friend" in the department? *grab* *slam* Some friend. (Yeah, I get it. Irony. Haha. It's just ...)
Caviezel doing his stoic Christian Bale-as-Batman impression. Not liking his character much at all ... except when he pulls out one of his magical Kwai Chang Caine maneuvers. He's like the Mentalist with fighting skills. But without the personality. I prefer Simon Baker. He can hypnotize me anytime. *melt* (Besides, I can't stop associating Jim Caviezel with persona non-grata Mel Gibson!) Finch is definitely the likable one of this "odd couple."
OK, this reminds me of a question that always nags at me. A good Liberal is against capital punishment because they're afraid an innocent person might be executed. Yet so many of these heinous crimes end with the perpetrator taking his own life ("murder/suicide"). Why? IMO, they know they're going straight to prison for the rest of their lives and would rather die. So it seems to me that spending your life in prison is actually a worse punishment than death and that execution is actually too humane for the people who are deemed to deserve it compared to those may be guilty of lesser crimes. Cold-blooded killers like Timothy McVeigh or Jeffrey Dahmer actually deserve to be rotting away in prison with no chance of parole. Opinions?
*Ding dong* Yeah, ring my bell, Finchy! (And take those damn goggles off!)
So. Finally Finch does some of his own dirty work. And he can "act" too.
Probably a dumb question: Why does it take two years for the Machine to suddenly figure out Theresa was still alive? Yet not say where she was?
This whole Detective Carter-trying-to figure-out-what's-up-with-Reese subplot so far seems like just a pointless distraction to the story. I'm more interested in Finch and Reese. Then again, maybe she's the only way we're ever going to know anything about Reese. Nahhh, that's what the flashbacks are for. She's probably going to become someone's love interest. Pfft.
Washington Square Park? Ooo, I love all the settings! (If nothing else, the show is a feast for the eyes. Well, it would be if Michael would ditch those icky specs.)
Oh yeah, run like hell, Reese. That won't attract any attention. What happened to his ability to magically appear and disappear like he did last week?
I wonder if Michael's using the pebble-in-the-shoe trick to make him limp convincingly?
He has a first name and it is Harold! Yay, no gimmicky mystery name to guess throughout the series.
Meh. I hate office work! Work faster, work faster. (Having more PTSD flashbacks to my Nazi ex-boss.)
Are his sideburns getting thicker as the show goes on or is it my imagination? (Yeah, my imagination's getting thicker.)
OK, so say they all find out that Finch is their boss. What good is reassigning or firing everyone going to do? They're still going to know--and be pissed.
"So ... who's your friend, Harold?" she asks suggestively. Are we to take it that he's gay? Or he's not allowed to have friends? (More office politics, phooey.)
Reese can't go anywhere without people getting shot. Is he trying to get caught by the (real) cops??? (As opposed to his "friend," Lionel?)
Hard to understand why Michael was waxing so "rapturously" (ahem) the other night about Jim Caviezel. Is he schmoozing or what and why? This guy's been playing one note for two weeks now. No facial expression, no vocal intonation ... How hard can that be? Oh! Oh! I know! It's going to turn out that Reese is an android! (He may as well have a Batman cowl on his head. At least then we could imagine he's having facial expressions.)
"Guys who kill kids aren't popular in jail." Wow, such a, ahem, "Revelation."
OK, at this point (halfway through), quite frankly, I'm finding this episode quite boring--and disappointing in terms of all the things we were supposed to learn about Finch's past--"so soon" into the series. (Let's see, he used to run on a treadmill in 2002, had the same sideburns, only more flattering eyeglass frames! And he hadn't finished La Machine yet. Big stuff!) This show is way too much Nolan, not enough Abrams. I don't even know why Abrams's name is in the credits. It's dragging along, just like a Batman movie. Is it time for The Mentalist yet?
Ugh, more Batman-style action scenes too. Something about that digital camera work makes it harder to see what's going on; it ends up looking like a pixelated blur!
Reese has been on a shooting spree for the past two episodes, and the NYPD aren't even close to him yet???
Oo, can I be next? I want Michael to babysit me!
I've got it! Caviezel's doing a prolonged Clint Eastwood impression! Let me guess. His next line is going to be, "Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?" Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. How does he maintain that monotone with all those other people around him emoting and, like, acting and stuff???
OK, once again, Finch tells us he lost someone. And that he wanted to disappear. Back to 2007 ... La Machine should be up and running now.
Ah, back to the good glasses. He's got the limp now, but he can still turn his head. (Degenerative disk disease like mine???) He hasn't taught the Machine to tell the difference between "relevant" and "irrelevant" yet. (Better get to work on that. Faster, faster!) Exactly eight people in the world who know the Machine exists--minus Finch and, um, "Goodwin," that makes six. And if anyone else knew there'd be an outcry? Come on, we all know we're being recorded wherever we go! I see the signs telling me so everywhere. And George Bush was personally listening to all my phone calls. (Even Bugs Bunny always had that feeling he was being watched back in the 1940s!) We just didn't know how anybody could monitor all that info. Well, that was another revealing scene of Finch's past. Not! (Is there something I'm missing here? How much longer???)
Wow, a squealing subway train! I have to say, this show does a great job of capturing the real New York so much better than shows like Lawn Dorder where you can tell they blocked off a street to film the outdoor scenes with hired extras.
Time for the obligatory car crash scene. Oh my, what a big truck you have! (Oh, brother.) *closes eyes till it's over*
Back to Babysitter Finch. Wow, he's smart! (Gawd, he walks just like I do these days! Unless you're coming over to, um, "babysit," quit watching me, ya copycat!)
Hiding behind the couch together. This is so much more romantic than that wrestling scene in the apartment with Cary Elwes's wife in Saw. Yeah, baby, snatch my cell phone!
So altruistic sending her down the fire escape. And she's staying with him, just like I would do, how sweet!
And finally! The deux ex machina! (Oo, was that on purpose? The "god from the machine"? Finch's machine??) Clint Eastwood-- I mean Reese catches up at exactly the right moment and saves the day.
And ... back to the boring Carter story. "Do you wanna meet me?" Well, do ya, punk? OMG, this is so anticlimactic, it's stultifying. Get rid of this Carter character! I don't care about her! Or ... oh, better idea! Kill off Reese and hire her instead. Nah, she's too stupid to do the job. Meh. Better get Ashton Kutscher instead. He should be looking for work within the next few weeks the way Two and a Half Men is going. (Kutscher is absolutely wrong for that role! A neurotic character like Alan needs a straight man, not a moron to play off of!)
Oh look, "Harold" (if that is his real name, cliche intended) fired himself.
"The founder, 1962-2010, in loving memory." So loving they couldn't be bothered to put his name on the memorial? And is that supposed to look like Brett Cullen? So Finch is gay, and Goodwin was his boyfriend, who died last year, at which point Finch sustained the injury to his neck. (But we can't say that was when he got the black glasses cuz he wasn't wearing them last week, if I recall correctly.) Therefore ... the death of his boyfriend, presumably recorded and then deleted, is what made him decide to keep the "irrelevant" info. And probably one of the other six people who know about the machine did it.
And again I ask, am I missing something here? I thought we were going to learn all kinds of juicy things about Finch that were so shocking they didn't belong in only the second episode. Thank goodness we didn't have to wait for that! (I already figured from the flashback scenes compared to now that Goodwin was gone. So I guess this is how Finch came to own the company. Still ... where's the shocking, "YOU'RE MINE!!! ... Take as much time as you need." scene? We already knew last week that Finch had Lost someone--yeah, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse--and that was the reason he'd turned vigilante. So what's the big news? That he's gay? *yawn*)
Next week's episode had better be better than this or I don't think this show is going to make it for an entire season! In fact, I almost hope it gets cancelled cuz if it stays on, I have to watch it just for Michael Emerson. (Maybe I'll record it and just FF to the Michael moments for perving and screencap purposes only. If he changes those hideous goggles, that is!!!) Then again, I can't even make it through an episode of NCIS, the most popular show on CBS apparently, so what do I know? If Michael Emerson weren't in this (wearing a T-shirt next week, hubba hubba--yes, I have a men-in-well-fitted-T-shirts fetish!), it would be a Show of Absolutely No Interest to me. :(