Review – Person Of Interest

Person Of Interest – CBS – 9:00/8:00pm Thursday – USA

It seems as though every fall TV season J.J. Abrams puts on his producer hat and offers the networks a chance at redemption. In the eyes of network executives, after his success with Alias and Lost, the name J.J. Abrams translated to ‘massive hit the young people will love’. So whenever J.J. suggests a show there will always be a network willing to grab it despite the fact his track record is far shakier then his name suggests. Fringe was supposed to be a massive hit, but survives on a tiny but loyal audience and a surprisingly sympathetic network willing to keep it around (although, presumably not for much longer), Undercovers was supposed to single-handedly save NBC but all it did was push it further into the ground. CBS is not a network in need of saving, but they have given the latest series to have J.J.’s name attached, the timeslot now vacated by CSI and they are expecting great things.

Person Of Interest stars Jim “insert a joke about him being Jesus” Caviezel as John Reese, a man who when we first meet him spends his days as a bum with a crappy looking beard beating up no-good punks on the subway. All of that changes when John is brought before a man known only as Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson) but who may as well be known as Benjamin Linus’s nicer brother, as Emerson has reprieved Ben’s stilted conversational manner but added a limp to his walk. Mr. Finch offers Reese, who we learn is ex-Special Forces, a chance at redemption, a chance to help stop crimes before they even happen. After 9/11 Mr. Finch was asked by the government to build a machine that could stop the next 9/11 but it ended up picking up all crimes, initially the murders that didn’t affect national security were destroyed, but now Mr. Finch wants to use that information to do some good.

It’s a simple, and reasonably interesting, premise for a television series – but what it quickly begins to feel like is a regular crime procedural, only this one takes place in the lead up to the crime and not after the crime has been committed. All Mr. Finch and John know is a single person who is going to be involved and in the pilot that person is Natalie Zea (Justified). “She might be the victim, she could be the perpetrator, all I know is she could be involved,” Mr. Finch explains. John has to set about collecting information, working out suspects, and all the sorts of things usual crime procedurals do after the murder. While it’s always good to have a new take on an ancient genre, Person Of Interest doesn’t break enough away from the confines of that genre to feel all that fresh and original.

Person Of Interest has been written by Jonathan Nolan who co-wrote The Prestige and The Dark Knight with his brother Christopher. The premise of a machine that spits out a series of numbers (this is a J.J. Abrams series after all) is neat but it’s not exactly the stuff of riveting mystery. What works about Person Of Interest is that it keeps the main players to essentially just Caviezel and Emerson, who both turn in solid performances. Emerson is as fun as always, and Caviezel gets to be a bit of a badass. What’s hard to gauge about Person Of Interest is how deep the show will go in expanding its mythology. Fringe was another show that started as a fairly typical crime procedural (albeit one with a sci-fi twist) but it’s mythology has grown exponentially since that pilot, on the other hand Undercovers was ‘new week, new case’ and didn’t deepen much beyond that. Having Nolan on board indicates things could start getting really twisty, but being housed on CBS suggests that things may stay reasonably surface level as the network is known as the crime-of-the-week channel for a reason.

Person Of Interest has buckets of potential and it occasionally shines through in the pilot. Mr. Finch explaining stuff like “the machine is watching us with ten thousand eyes, a million ears…” works because after all that time spent on Lost Emerson knows how to perfectly sell daffy material. What doesn’t work quite as well as is that the exposition in the pilot feels virtually non-stop; it occasionally feels as though John is narrating his every move to us when all he’s doing is talking to Mr. Finch back at base. At this early stage in the game the hook of a ‘machine that can predict crimes’ isn’t clever enough to keep Person Of Interest from being much more than an elaborate crime procedural. Still, as crime procedurals go you could do worse than Person Of Interest’s fast-paced, slickly made, mild-sci-fi take on the genre.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

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