Person of Interest For the New Viewer
Sep. 27th, 2015 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sprocketRaspberryhunter: POI or Leverage?
Me: If you catch a couple of episodes of Leverage, you know enough for casual beta. POI has a lot more time-specific character info to track.
Me: S4 is also Fringe levels of hot mess.
Me: And then there is Harold, who... oh.
(Someone pauses to recall the one with the AI learning to be a person and the human/AI interface issues and the flashbacks which everyone in this conversation ate up with a spoon.)
Me: Yes, I think I can talk you into enjoying POI.
Once upon a time a man saw his country rocked to its knees and said, "what we need is an all-seeing artificial intelligence to prevent this from ever happening again."
So he built one and made sure it found its way to the US government, which is well known for its responsible use of surveillance powers.
As plans go, this wasn't quite up there with "and now I will steal my son from another universe", but the burden of these actions put it in shouting distance.
Our somewhat optimistic and often snippy programmer is Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), with a limp and glasses and some unfortunate neck issues, from whose big big brain sprang the Machine. Recognizing that no one could really be trusted with an all-seeing all-knowing AI, he built the Machine to take in all the world's data and spit out one tiny piece of information: an SSN of a person relevant to a terrorist threat to the USA. After that, it's up to the government to figure out the significance and what to do about it. For reasons, it also generates a list of "irrelevant" numbers: all the violence, none of the threat to national security. For more reasons, Harold has decided what he really needs to do with his life is save the numbers (or their victims).
Harold's partner in vigilantism is John Reese (Jim Caviezel), the ex-Special Forces guy certain SGA fandom subgroups desperately wanted John Sheppard to be. Reese shows up with a bunch of unresolved anger andtrust betrayal trust issues, which he copes with by shooting people, punching people, and trying to save other people, since he couldn't save the one person he really, really wanted to save. If you're thinking "it's like POI splits Batman into two people," yes, you're on to something.
Viewers are made reasonably certain Harold Finch and John Reese aren't the names either was born with, but it's who they are now: a billionaire genius anti-playboy hacker vigilante and his undersocialized guard dog. (Why yes, I do have a favorite character. This... isn't a surprise.) In S1 they acquire two NYPD detectives, bad cop Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and good cop Joss Carter (Taraji Henson). The show goes to some pains to keep Fusco and Carter in close proximity while remaining in the dark about their mutual involvement with Reese and Finch, for as long as the showrunners thought they could suspend viewer disbelief. In S2, Finch and Reese acquire an actual dog, in case the show wasn't slashy enough.
This is the slashiest show I have watched in a very long time. This is way past SGA levels of "now kiss! ...or shoot someone, fine." It's probably a side effect of two people dedicated to an all-consuming mission, with a side of Reese gradually unravelling the many things Finch doesn't want to share with anyone. The first season works its way down a list of fic tropes, giving us Finch risking his life to save Reese's against Reese's wishes, a Rear Window homage, and back-to-back episodes with John and Harold and a baby and Harold "I'm a very private person" Finch high on ecstasy.
One of the joys of POI is that, over the course of S2 and S3, it mutates from a procedural with near-future SFnal elements to embrace its cyberpunk dystopian over-surveiled id, in the process picking up Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi), aka girl!Reese, and Root (Amy Acker), a charismatic black hat hacker-slash-assassin (...yep) who believes Finch's Machine is a god who deserves her devotion. She talks to the Machine a lot. After the second season, the Machine talks back. When Root is tortured and loses hearing on one ear, she gets a cochlear implant to facilitate this, which gives those of us who care about things like AI-human relationships something to flail about.
Root and Shaw's very first meeting (2x16) brings a second axis of slashy UST, a mild balm for those bitterly disappointed by Taraji Henson's departure from the show in the third season. (It's not that Carter left, which could have been part of the direction the show took, but the utterly unnecessary fridging. Gross.) While Root/Shaw has taken off as it should, Root/Machine could totally be a thing. Root certainly acts love-struck by her darling's voice in her ear.
POI is serialized TV, which is my bulletproof thing. Alas, it's in what seems to be classic Abrams & Company mode: let's build three seasons of ridiculously intricate character history and connections, then screw it up in the fourth season. Its extensive use of flashbacks to pre-show events lets the writers build a dense story across time. (This also gives us 2x01, where Harold teaches the baby Machine surveillance, blackjack, and ethics, in that order. Harold's priorities are hilarious and weirdly charming.)
The dense plotting ties in nicely with POI's deep well of awesome recurring villains. Over four seasons, Team Machine takes on corrupt cops, every stripe of New York mafia, privacy advocates (advocates with guns, who enthusiastically exercise their Second Amendment rights), a shifting cast of shady federal law enforcement and black ops agents, and an AI that makes the Machine's Delphic utterances and (usually, mostly) hands-off attitude seem warm and friendly. Some of these villains are pointed at each other, some become temporary (or less temporary) allies, one or two get taken down by painstaking police work (and shootouts) and some... is the jury still out on the 'war of the gods' arc? POI very rarely does moral absolutes, instead shading through every increment of Gotham City gray available to it, which keeps the antagonists dynamic and engaging.
But my favorite thing about POI is the Machine, who is totally a character in its (her) own right. Finch's enigmatic data source in the first season, the Machine's voice and agency are developed a lot more in following seasons, as are its relationships with particular characters. There's an essay to be written about Finch as an ambiguous parent to the Machine, and another one to be written about Root consistently gendering the Machine as female, especially in the context of her persistent, shameless flirtation with Shaw.
There's a lot of gunfights and exploding cars, so if that's not your thing, well, there's going to be moments when you think, "isn't someone going to sweep up those casings and shells and run some ballistics checks? And how does Reese keep his personal armory in good supply, anyway?"
The first three seasons are good TV. The fourth season is ambitious, if not effective, in its heroic attempt to stuff twenty pounds of plot and character arcs into a five pound bag. Even after writing out Shaw for a big chunk of the season, there's still too much going on to be really effective. But it fails bravely, which is the better way to go. An abbreviated fifth season has been green-lit. One hopes that thirteen episodes would send a message to the showrunners about focusing on plot, but the S4 finale is giving me Fringe flashbacks.
Watching POI
The first three seasons are on Netflix. Picking a handful of POI episodes that will hook someone is like asking for the best intro eps to The Wire. It's ideal to start with the pilot and revel in the unfolding arc, but that's a lot of TV to ask friends to watch.
Here's a tentative set list for The Machine And Root Show. This throws The John And Harold Are MFEO Show under the bus, and also there are only flashing glimpses of the Joss Carter Could Keep Up with Olivia Dunham Show. But S1 sets up everything else, and I am weak in the face of good acting, so I've got semi optional episodes in parentheses.
If I've forgotten something obvious (kerithwyn? Drive-by fans reading this?) please throw in Root- and Machine-significant episodes I've missed. "Significant" as in plot, because yes, it breaks my heart that the Eggs Benedict; and Grace; and Carter reporting Reese to the feds; and the rooftop scene didn't make the first cut.
...okay, I'm putting the roof back in. There are other events in 2x13 that play a part in the Machine arcs.
Season One
It might be possible to skip the pilot (1x01), almost everything in the pilot is reintroduced elsewhere. For the abbreviated viewing list, I'd start with 1x07 "Witness". It's a solid case episode, and also introduces Elias, one of the antagonists who is going to pop up again for the next four seasons. After that:
1x13 Root Cause: The introduction of Root.
(1x18 Identity Crisis: we all have non-arc favorites, and Harold on ecstasy is one of mine. Warnings for roofies played for comedy.)
(1x19 Flesh and Blood: POI and parent issues! Elias versus the New York mafia, which has nothing to do with his mother's death by his mafia father's order. Ahem. Carter has to choose between doing her job and protecting her son. There's a music montage, and Carter gets a really big gun, in the tradition of Aeryn Sun and redverse Olivia Dunham.)
1x23 Firewall: The case of Caroline Turing intersects with Fusco and the "corrupt cops" arc, a federal investigation zeroes in on Carter's Man in the Suit, and an ex-CIA operative's investigation into the mysterious creator of the Machine, with fatal consequences.
Season Two
2x01 The Contingency & 2x02 Bad Code: ROOT IS BACK. Warnings for kidnapping, torture, drugs.
(2x06 The High Road: Remember what I said about non-arc favorites? To solve this week's number, John and one of the recurring tertiary characters have to get married and move to suburbia. OH NO.)
2x13 Dead Reckoning: For reasons, Reese winds up in a bomb vest he can't disarm, is forced to set a nasty computer virus loose on the world - and the Machine - and Finch has to save Reese from a ticking bomb literally strapped to Reese's chest. Over Reese's protests, because Finch clearly is great value and shouldn't be wasted trying to save his - Reese's - life. Oh John.
2x16 Relevance: Enter SAMEEN SHAW, stage right.
Check in again after 2x16 for what to watch next.
Useful links:
Person of Interest IMDb page
The Person of Interest Crack Van summary is dated, but includes character pics.
Me: If you catch a couple of episodes of Leverage, you know enough for casual beta. POI has a lot more time-specific character info to track.
Me: S4 is also Fringe levels of hot mess.
Me: And then there is Harold, who... oh.
(Someone pauses to recall the one with the AI learning to be a person and the human/AI interface issues and the flashbacks which everyone in this conversation ate up with a spoon.)
Me: Yes, I think I can talk you into enjoying POI.
Once upon a time a man saw his country rocked to its knees and said, "what we need is an all-seeing artificial intelligence to prevent this from ever happening again."
So he built one and made sure it found its way to the US government, which is well known for its responsible use of surveillance powers.
As plans go, this wasn't quite up there with "and now I will steal my son from another universe", but the burden of these actions put it in shouting distance.
Our somewhat optimistic and often snippy programmer is Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), with a limp and glasses and some unfortunate neck issues, from whose big big brain sprang the Machine. Recognizing that no one could really be trusted with an all-seeing all-knowing AI, he built the Machine to take in all the world's data and spit out one tiny piece of information: an SSN of a person relevant to a terrorist threat to the USA. After that, it's up to the government to figure out the significance and what to do about it. For reasons, it also generates a list of "irrelevant" numbers: all the violence, none of the threat to national security. For more reasons, Harold has decided what he really needs to do with his life is save the numbers (or their victims).
Harold's partner in vigilantism is John Reese (Jim Caviezel), the ex-Special Forces guy certain SGA fandom subgroups desperately wanted John Sheppard to be. Reese shows up with a bunch of unresolved anger and
Viewers are made reasonably certain Harold Finch and John Reese aren't the names either was born with, but it's who they are now: a billionaire genius anti-playboy hacker vigilante and his undersocialized guard dog. (Why yes, I do have a favorite character. This... isn't a surprise.) In S1 they acquire two NYPD detectives, bad cop Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and good cop Joss Carter (Taraji Henson). The show goes to some pains to keep Fusco and Carter in close proximity while remaining in the dark about their mutual involvement with Reese and Finch, for as long as the showrunners thought they could suspend viewer disbelief. In S2, Finch and Reese acquire an actual dog, in case the show wasn't slashy enough.
This is the slashiest show I have watched in a very long time. This is way past SGA levels of "now kiss! ...or shoot someone, fine." It's probably a side effect of two people dedicated to an all-consuming mission, with a side of Reese gradually unravelling the many things Finch doesn't want to share with anyone. The first season works its way down a list of fic tropes, giving us Finch risking his life to save Reese's against Reese's wishes, a Rear Window homage, and back-to-back episodes with John and Harold and a baby and Harold "I'm a very private person" Finch high on ecstasy.
One of the joys of POI is that, over the course of S2 and S3, it mutates from a procedural with near-future SFnal elements to embrace its cyberpunk dystopian over-surveiled id, in the process picking up Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi), aka girl!Reese, and Root (Amy Acker), a charismatic black hat hacker-slash-assassin (...yep) who believes Finch's Machine is a god who deserves her devotion. She talks to the Machine a lot. After the second season, the Machine talks back. When Root is tortured and loses hearing on one ear, she gets a cochlear implant to facilitate this, which gives those of us who care about things like AI-human relationships something to flail about.
Root and Shaw's very first meeting (2x16) brings a second axis of slashy UST, a mild balm for those bitterly disappointed by Taraji Henson's departure from the show in the third season. (It's not that Carter left, which could have been part of the direction the show took, but the utterly unnecessary fridging. Gross.) While Root/Shaw has taken off as it should, Root/Machine could totally be a thing. Root certainly acts love-struck by her darling's voice in her ear.
POI is serialized TV, which is my bulletproof thing. Alas, it's in what seems to be classic Abrams & Company mode: let's build three seasons of ridiculously intricate character history and connections, then screw it up in the fourth season. Its extensive use of flashbacks to pre-show events lets the writers build a dense story across time. (This also gives us 2x01, where Harold teaches the baby Machine surveillance, blackjack, and ethics, in that order. Harold's priorities are hilarious and weirdly charming.)
The dense plotting ties in nicely with POI's deep well of awesome recurring villains. Over four seasons, Team Machine takes on corrupt cops, every stripe of New York mafia, privacy advocates (advocates with guns, who enthusiastically exercise their Second Amendment rights), a shifting cast of shady federal law enforcement and black ops agents, and an AI that makes the Machine's Delphic utterances and (usually, mostly) hands-off attitude seem warm and friendly. Some of these villains are pointed at each other, some become temporary (or less temporary) allies, one or two get taken down by painstaking police work (and shootouts) and some... is the jury still out on the 'war of the gods' arc? POI very rarely does moral absolutes, instead shading through every increment of Gotham City gray available to it, which keeps the antagonists dynamic and engaging.
But my favorite thing about POI is the Machine, who is totally a character in its (her) own right. Finch's enigmatic data source in the first season, the Machine's voice and agency are developed a lot more in following seasons, as are its relationships with particular characters. There's an essay to be written about Finch as an ambiguous parent to the Machine, and another one to be written about Root consistently gendering the Machine as female, especially in the context of her persistent, shameless flirtation with Shaw.
There's a lot of gunfights and exploding cars, so if that's not your thing, well, there's going to be moments when you think, "isn't someone going to sweep up those casings and shells and run some ballistics checks? And how does Reese keep his personal armory in good supply, anyway?"
The first three seasons are good TV. The fourth season is ambitious, if not effective, in its heroic attempt to stuff twenty pounds of plot and character arcs into a five pound bag. Even after writing out Shaw for a big chunk of the season, there's still too much going on to be really effective. But it fails bravely, which is the better way to go. An abbreviated fifth season has been green-lit. One hopes that thirteen episodes would send a message to the showrunners about focusing on plot, but the S4 finale is giving me Fringe flashbacks.
Watching POI
The first three seasons are on Netflix. Picking a handful of POI episodes that will hook someone is like asking for the best intro eps to The Wire. It's ideal to start with the pilot and revel in the unfolding arc, but that's a lot of TV to ask friends to watch.
Here's a tentative set list for The Machine And Root Show. This throws The John And Harold Are MFEO Show under the bus, and also there are only flashing glimpses of the Joss Carter Could Keep Up with Olivia Dunham Show. But S1 sets up everything else, and I am weak in the face of good acting, so I've got semi optional episodes in parentheses.
If I've forgotten something obvious (
kerithwyn? Drive-by fans reading this?) please throw in Root- and Machine-significant episodes I've missed. "Significant" as in plot, because yes, it breaks my heart that the Eggs Benedict; and Grace; and Carter reporting Reese to the feds; and the rooftop scene didn't make the first cut....okay, I'm putting the roof back in. There are other events in 2x13 that play a part in the Machine arcs.
Season One
It might be possible to skip the pilot (1x01), almost everything in the pilot is reintroduced elsewhere. For the abbreviated viewing list, I'd start with 1x07 "Witness". It's a solid case episode, and also introduces Elias, one of the antagonists who is going to pop up again for the next four seasons. After that:
1x13 Root Cause: The introduction of Root.
(1x18 Identity Crisis: we all have non-arc favorites, and Harold on ecstasy is one of mine. Warnings for roofies played for comedy.)
(1x19 Flesh and Blood: POI and parent issues! Elias versus the New York mafia, which has nothing to do with his mother's death by his mafia father's order. Ahem. Carter has to choose between doing her job and protecting her son. There's a music montage, and Carter gets a really big gun, in the tradition of Aeryn Sun and redverse Olivia Dunham.)
1x23 Firewall: The case of Caroline Turing intersects with Fusco and the "corrupt cops" arc, a federal investigation zeroes in on Carter's Man in the Suit, and an ex-CIA operative's investigation into the mysterious creator of the Machine, with fatal consequences.
Season Two
2x01 The Contingency & 2x02 Bad Code: ROOT IS BACK. Warnings for kidnapping, torture, drugs.
(2x06 The High Road: Remember what I said about non-arc favorites? To solve this week's number, John and one of the recurring tertiary characters have to get married and move to suburbia. OH NO.)
2x13 Dead Reckoning: For reasons, Reese winds up in a bomb vest he can't disarm, is forced to set a nasty computer virus loose on the world - and the Machine - and Finch has to save Reese from a ticking bomb literally strapped to Reese's chest. Over Reese's protests, because Finch clearly is great value and shouldn't be wasted trying to save his - Reese's - life. Oh John.
2x16 Relevance: Enter SAMEEN SHAW, stage right.
Check in again after 2x16 for what to watch next.
Useful links:
Person of Interest IMDb page
The Person of Interest Crack Van summary is dated, but includes character pics.