Person of Interest
The return of Michael Emerson to the television screen will feel familiar, but ultimately, disappoint fans who are looking for another maniacal genius who is as captivating as his motives are opaque.
It’s is a mix of real life post-9/11 American espionage (interesting), and Philip K. Dick science fiction morality, a la Minority Report (nice), and, formulaic Law & Order S.V.U., C.S.I. blah blah blah (damn it!).
Person of Interest show does away with the slow revelation of a complicated plot that made LOST an addictive, evolving journey. In the first few minutes of POI, we meet Emerson, dressed in a suit, retrieving from prison a drunkard with the fighting skill of a Navy Seal ninja jedi.
Emerson — in the role of Mr. Finch — quickly lays out the show’s entire plot. (So much for the slow reveal!) The plot, as Mr. Finch describes it, is this: I built a machine to prevent the next 9/11. It worked. It worked too well, actually, because it’s also able to prevent other crimes, like murders, muggings, you get the idea. The government isn’t interested in those crimes. So, that data gets erased after 24 hours. Unless, of course, somebody can help me.
The mysterious computer spitting out the numbers — not the names or circumstances of the people on Mr. Finch’s list — actually resembles the real-life computer described in a New Yorker article as the Thin Thread. That program is capable of not jus finding a few sensitive pieces of data floating in the electronic transom, but “every fish in the sea.”
Instead of letting the mysterious computer slow come into formation, and before we get to see Mr. Finch become, Mr. Finch, the audience is thrown into his unbelievable world. And from there, the show is a slightly-above-average ‘who dunnit.’ The stand-off by the elevator towards the end of the episode feels tense and is well-done. The scene where he blows up an oncoming car on a desserted New York City at night, is not.
Mr. Finch’s backstory — which maybe they’ll get to later — is blurted out in such a thick chunk that even a skilled actor like Emerson makes it seem cartoonish: ‘I made a lot of money, but after 9/11, none of it mattered.’ He tells us this, but we don’t see it.
And, as the show tells us, we live in a world where nothing important is ever really out of sight.
