Okay, this LTTP has been a long time coming. I've caught up on PoI a week ago and have been trying to mull over everything this series does right in my head. If you want the short version, it's nearly everything.
To start off with, the premise itself is a unique twist on the typical crime procedural. By having the machine give them the numbers of people who will be in trouble, the set up is about discovering the crime that is going to happen to the person of interest rather than discovering the person of interest by figuring out the crime. This allows a good deal of character development to happen to the PoI of the week, making a lot of one off characters memorable and fully developed. I still wonder if certain characters like the judge he helped out with his kid or the billionaire that gave Reese the watch is going to come back, because a lot of them have the potential to be explored further. Not to mention the villains like the Most British Accent In The World or the Ghost guy that were extremely entertaining one off villains.
What strikes me here as particularly good is how those interesting PoI's are often used to develop the main characters in an awesome way, which adds to them not feeling like worthless one-offs. A really good early example is when Reese has to convince a lady not to go through with murdering a date rapist and then has to be confronted with the same decision himself. It is an episode about how the act of killing people is something that hurts and lessens you, even if it's for a 'good' reason. The murky, uneasy effects of vigilantism is that it is easy to make the show about 'good guys kicking bad guys ass' and go too far with that to the point where you just dehumanize criminals. The fact that the show always keeps this in the forefront of it's mind, where even in the latter seasons, the life and death of 'bad guys' is taken as a serious moral issue is something that makes PoI shine compared to it's contemporary superhero shows that have no problems just writing off the murders the main character commits as 'well, those guys were assholes, so who cares." Most of Reese's kills are absolutely necessary in order to save other lives. There are times when they aren't, but those are usually when he's so immensely pissed off that he isn't thinking straight. The point I'm making here is that any vigilante story is about one man going above the law to right wrongs, as that's the basic premise of the genre, but Person of Interest could have taken the very easy way of just being a revenge fantasy on the 'evils' of the world but it rises above that. It takes the ideal of the value of life pretty seriously, and it's a better show for it.
Another point of intrigue this show has is it's varied nature. Most of the episodes will have atleast one shootout, hacking, etc. This is again due to the premise of the show, where whoever's number comes up is by definition in danger of being killed. But how creative the writers get with the plot and characters really impresses me. Episodes or plot points that surprised me were a suicidal teen suffering from survivor's guilt, a wife and husband trying to kill each other because they can't admit they love each other, a woman who incapacitates Finch by injecting him with ecstacy...I especially enjoy that last one, because Marvel's monopoly on the superhero genre has kind of made every superhero film have a wacky, rapid comedy sense of humor. Person of interest's humor is usually sly and sardonic, but when it does get silly, it goes the extra length to justify it in universe so that it's funny but also fits the series. But the episodes can and will surprise you in their diversity for how they approach a lot of subject matter and get clever with certain plot points or themes. At any point, you can either get a "shit just got real" episode where they introduce some new major character or twist or one that examines some fundamental part of some part of the cast or a switched perspective, or just a fun episode of the cast being badass because sometimes we just need a break. For a show going on 20+ episodes a season, I guess it has go to these lengths to remain good, but it's surprising they manage it. I should also mention that this is one of the most well produced shows. Like, it has pretty much movie quality action sequences. I don't remember anything looking cheap and they have some impressive set pieces.
Whats really interesting about this show is it pretty much changes genre's later on. From a modern day crime procedural to post cyber punk. I've heard there is some fan discrepancy over when the show was better. For my part, it's a give and take. The earlier episodes I felt were more poignant and meaningful in terms of character development, while the latter episodes make it more of a cool serialized scifi action story. While it might seem obvious that being about meaningful character moments might make the episodic stuff 'better' the fact is that at least Reese's (and Finch's, to a lesser extent) character seems to have hit a dead end in terms of development after the first season. We learn exactly why it is they do what they do, and that they're happy with being the people they are, so all the big points have been hit. They've changed in a few ways since then, but the long character strides are mostly done it seems. So I don't mind them being static as the other main characters get more in terms of development, and having the plot gain more focus in the face of the current big bad. Besides, neither Reese nor Finch have stopped being fun to watch. They're both still faced with dilemmas and crisis and have lots of fun moments, and they are still developing in smaller ways. So for me, it's a give and take. We lost some really interesting episodic miniarcs, but we gained a really awesome scifi plot. And hey, maybe in another few seasons, the structure will change again. You can never tell exactly for sure with this show.
I've mostly talked about structure and themes of the show, but what about the characters? Well, I love them all very much. I can't really go into depth here because I don't want to spoil too much for anyone who hasn't seen it, and going into depth with any one of them could be an essay by itself. Reese is the best Batman-that-never-was. Finch is awesome. But Lionel Fusco is amazing. The character development that guy goes through is one of the best in any series. Carter is the same. Her last seasonal arc was the stuff of legends. They won't be your favorite character at first, but they really grow. And then later on we get the really awesome Shaw, and Elias, and Dominic, and....well, it'd be easier to list the characters I don't like. Control and Kara and Snow. That's pretty much it. They're nearly universally handled very well. Root is too, but I feel I am diverging from the popular opinion by saying that I find hers to be the least believable of any of the main cast. However, just because I say that I should point out that even Root is still pretty good, just the weakest relative to everyone else.
I could go on and on about the things this show does right, because there is more stuff, but that edges more into spoiler territory and I feel I've covered the big points anyway. There is a LOT to like about this show, and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it.
To start off with, the premise itself is a unique twist on the typical crime procedural. By having the machine give them the numbers of people who will be in trouble, the set up is about discovering the crime that is going to happen to the person of interest rather than discovering the person of interest by figuring out the crime. This allows a good deal of character development to happen to the PoI of the week, making a lot of one off characters memorable and fully developed. I still wonder if certain characters like the judge he helped out with his kid or the billionaire that gave Reese the watch is going to come back, because a lot of them have the potential to be explored further. Not to mention the villains like the Most British Accent In The World or the Ghost guy that were extremely entertaining one off villains.
What strikes me here as particularly good is how those interesting PoI's are often used to develop the main characters in an awesome way, which adds to them not feeling like worthless one-offs. A really good early example is when Reese has to convince a lady not to go through with murdering a date rapist and then has to be confronted with the same decision himself. It is an episode about how the act of killing people is something that hurts and lessens you, even if it's for a 'good' reason. The murky, uneasy effects of vigilantism is that it is easy to make the show about 'good guys kicking bad guys ass' and go too far with that to the point where you just dehumanize criminals. The fact that the show always keeps this in the forefront of it's mind, where even in the latter seasons, the life and death of 'bad guys' is taken as a serious moral issue is something that makes PoI shine compared to it's contemporary superhero shows that have no problems just writing off the murders the main character commits as 'well, those guys were assholes, so who cares." Most of Reese's kills are absolutely necessary in order to save other lives. There are times when they aren't, but those are usually when he's so immensely pissed off that he isn't thinking straight. The point I'm making here is that any vigilante story is about one man going above the law to right wrongs, as that's the basic premise of the genre, but Person of Interest could have taken the very easy way of just being a revenge fantasy on the 'evils' of the world but it rises above that. It takes the ideal of the value of life pretty seriously, and it's a better show for it.
Another point of intrigue this show has is it's varied nature. Most of the episodes will have atleast one shootout, hacking, etc. This is again due to the premise of the show, where whoever's number comes up is by definition in danger of being killed. But how creative the writers get with the plot and characters really impresses me. Episodes or plot points that surprised me were a suicidal teen suffering from survivor's guilt, a wife and husband trying to kill each other because they can't admit they love each other, a woman who incapacitates Finch by injecting him with ecstacy...I especially enjoy that last one, because Marvel's monopoly on the superhero genre has kind of made every superhero film have a wacky, rapid comedy sense of humor. Person of interest's humor is usually sly and sardonic, but when it does get silly, it goes the extra length to justify it in universe so that it's funny but also fits the series. But the episodes can and will surprise you in their diversity for how they approach a lot of subject matter and get clever with certain plot points or themes. At any point, you can either get a "shit just got real" episode where they introduce some new major character or twist or one that examines some fundamental part of some part of the cast or a switched perspective, or just a fun episode of the cast being badass because sometimes we just need a break. For a show going on 20+ episodes a season, I guess it has go to these lengths to remain good, but it's surprising they manage it. I should also mention that this is one of the most well produced shows. Like, it has pretty much movie quality action sequences. I don't remember anything looking cheap and they have some impressive set pieces.
Whats really interesting about this show is it pretty much changes genre's later on. From a modern day crime procedural to post cyber punk. I've heard there is some fan discrepancy over when the show was better. For my part, it's a give and take. The earlier episodes I felt were more poignant and meaningful in terms of character development, while the latter episodes make it more of a cool serialized scifi action story. While it might seem obvious that being about meaningful character moments might make the episodic stuff 'better' the fact is that at least Reese's (and Finch's, to a lesser extent) character seems to have hit a dead end in terms of development after the first season. We learn exactly why it is they do what they do, and that they're happy with being the people they are, so all the big points have been hit. They've changed in a few ways since then, but the long character strides are mostly done it seems. So I don't mind them being static as the other main characters get more in terms of development, and having the plot gain more focus in the face of the current big bad. Besides, neither Reese nor Finch have stopped being fun to watch. They're both still faced with dilemmas and crisis and have lots of fun moments, and they are still developing in smaller ways. So for me, it's a give and take. We lost some really interesting episodic miniarcs, but we gained a really awesome scifi plot. And hey, maybe in another few seasons, the structure will change again. You can never tell exactly for sure with this show.
I've mostly talked about structure and themes of the show, but what about the characters? Well, I love them all very much. I can't really go into depth here because I don't want to spoil too much for anyone who hasn't seen it, and going into depth with any one of them could be an essay by itself. Reese is the best Batman-that-never-was. Finch is awesome. But Lionel Fusco is amazing. The character development that guy goes through is one of the best in any series. Carter is the same. Her last seasonal arc was the stuff of legends. They won't be your favorite character at first, but they really grow. And then later on we get the really awesome Shaw, and Elias, and Dominic, and....well, it'd be easier to list the characters I don't like. Control and Kara and Snow. That's pretty much it. They're nearly universally handled very well. Root is too, but I feel I am diverging from the popular opinion by saying that I find hers to be the least believable of any of the main cast. However, just because I say that I should point out that even Root is still pretty good, just the weakest relative to everyone else.
I could go on and on about the things this show does right, because there is more stuff, but that edges more into spoiler territory and I feel I've covered the big points anyway. There is a LOT to like about this show, and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it.
