The Comic Con 2015 Edition of TV Guide is out and one of the many features is a preview of Person of Interest season five. Among the preview is the “Burning Questions” interview with executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman. The interview takes a look at what we saw in the season four finale and has some small teasers about what can be expected for season five. The below interview is from TV Guide writer Mike Flaherty.
The TV Guide section also has a profile on Root, and a great look at what went into building the new subway station set that serves as the hideout now. It’s a 4500 square foot set that sits on a four-foot platform in Queens, New York. The show’s set decorator, Alyssa Winter, found all the set pieces at auctions and antique sales. It’s quite a fascinating look!
With Person of Interest’s intense season finale leaving malevolent supercomputer Samaritan triumphant, the Machine stuffed into a briefcase, and our heroes on the run, it was time to grill the show’s masterminds – executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman – for a post season debrief and a look at the perilous road ahead in Season 5.
First of all, what was the meaning of the title of the Season 4 finale, “YHWH”?
Plageman: It means Yahweh [the Hebrew name for God]. It’s called the tetragrammation. The ancient Israelites didn’t want to spell out the word [for religious reasons], so they often used YHWH.
Nolan: He who shall not be named.
As in recognition of the surpreme being that, as things stand, is Samaritan.
Nolan: Yes. For the moment, I would say the Machine has been vanquished. Pretty much down, though not necessarily out.
What are the challenges of keeping the Samaritan vs. the Machine story fresh going into next season?
Plageman: Well, it’s pretty fresh insofar as our guys are completely hosed right now.
Nolan: Next season will really deal with the idea of rebuilding the Machine in the face of a superior threat. And assuming they can get it back in the game, how will it fight back?
Plageman: It will explore what it means for Samaritan to have that firm a grip on things. If an artificial intelligence were actually to appear, would humanity even notice?
Did you always envision Samaritan as a multi-season storyline?
Nolan: You don’t build a god and then dispose of it conveniently in one season. A lot of fiction has treated artificial intelligence as a singularity – one mind that absorbs other minds into it. But this show presents AI proliferation as similar to nuclear proliferation – an idea that intelligence begets other intelligences. It’s an arms race that the Machine is currently losing.
This past season, Reese seemed to undergo a bit of a spiritual change. Will that continue?
Nolan: Season 4’s storyline forced our guys into hiding as normal people. And with Reese, it was like your mom telling you not to make a face too often because it might stick. So Reese is maybe starting to enjoy being a normal person and being emotionally involved with other people on a level he hasn’t been in decades.
His hallucinatory experience with Carter in “Terra Incognita” also helped that along. How did that come about?
Nolan: I reached out to Taraji last year. There’s really nobody who can engage with Reese on an emotional level like Carter can. From their first scene together in the pilot, she always had the goods on him in a way that no one else did.
Apropos of Reese’s emotional awakening: Are he and Iris definitely a thing now?
Reese clearly has strong feelings toward Iris, but given his occupation and the activities he’s engaged in, it’s always fraught with peril, so…
So they’re not a couple?
Nolan: It’s baby steps. Baby steps.
The episode “If-Then-Else,” in which Shaw was shot and abducted by the Samaritan operatives, featured a full-on kiss between Shaw and Root. Is there a mutual romantic or sexual thing going on between these characters?
Plageman: Whether it was amorous or more a platonic sense of respect for a friend, we haven’t had a chance to explore.
Nolan: I think there’s definitely an amorous streak between the two of them. Root feels it, and Shaw is maybe a little bit in denial about it.
Have you head from Shahi whether she’s going to come back? [Shahi departed midway through season four on indefinite maternity leave].
Nolan: It’s an ongoing conversation. We hope to get her back on the show sometime soon.
You introduced three new kickass female guest stars this season: Harper Rose (Annie Illonzeh), Dani Silva (Adria Arjona), and Frankie Wells (Katheryn Winnick). Was that a way of hedging your bets in the event that Shahi doesn’t return?
Plageman: Well, yeah. A couple of those ladies are certainly people we brought back because we were interested in them.
Nolan: That said, nobody replaces Sarah. We just love having firecracker women on our show.
[quote]There’s really nobody who can engage with Reese on an emotional level like Carter can. From their first scene together in the pilot, she always had the goods on him in a way that no one else did.[/quote]
:o:o:o:(:(:(:D:D:D
You mean the female lead that you killed off … the single mother and super tough detective. The fantastic role model (now replaced by a psychopath). The moral compass of the show (now missing dearly with all the “kill them” attitude). The female lead with THE extremely rare worth-millions chemistry with the main male lead (now left without a true female counterpart) … Iris can’t substitute for that. Neither does the character have the same amount of chemistry with Reese as Carter did, nor does Iris have any own story on the show, nor did the writers do anything substantial like a proper build-up. They are not investing anything major into the relationship, into creating some magic, 13 episodes won’t be enough to do that anyways and poor Iris (played by a truly talented and nice actress) is unjustly feeling the heat for it and for what was done to Carter/Reese. It’s the main tragedy of POI in different areas of the storyline. Killing what is good / intense character-wise and then trying to substitute it with something way more superficial to which the larger audience can’t relate. Have a talk with Cris Carter and ask him how important the characters that his show was built on initially were and how central the continuation of their dynamic was for the lasting success of his show which correlates to him being able to continue to tell his story. He even goes so far as to say that his show was/is the dynamic between its characters. Now compare that to what was first done to Carter/Reese and is now being done to Finch/Reese (who have been reduced to something on the brink of non-existence). And that’s considering that character-wise the show’s success was build on the friendship between Finch/Reese and the dynamic between Reese/Carter woven into the narration of a very relevant story about AI and surveillance. A story which had a moral code to it through Finch/Reese saving people and through Carter’s moral guide. Now, the first ingredient has taken a huge backstep in the show and the second one was erased completely.
[quote]Next season will really deal with the idea of rebuilding the Machine in the face of a superior threat.[/quote]
[quote]So Reese is maybe starting to enjoy being a normal person and being emotionally involved with other people on a level he hasn’t been in decades.[/quote]
So more of the Finch and Root drama arguing the same things over and over again while Reese and Fusco go bowling with friends? (There is some sort of a misguided worship thing going on among many writers as in “Nothing is as good as Amy and Michael”, rudely forgetting about all the other highly talented cast members. Llistening to some vocal hardcore fans but ignoring the mood of the larger audience.) If that trend of Season 4 is carried over into the next season and even intensifies, with the show’s lead – Reese – being made irrelevant to the main plot, why don’t you just send off the other characters to Hawai or something and see whether you can continue the show with just Finch/Root. So all of us other fans that have not left yet like others but are sticking around for the parts in which the classic POI makes an appearance can stop watching.
[quote]
It means Yahweh [the Hebrew name for God]. …
As in recognition of the surpreme being that, as things stand, is Samaritan.
Nolan: Yes. …
[/quote]
So, you equate YHWH with Samaritan? Wow. And Greer is what? Abraham?
There are lines you can but should definitely not cross. In fact, this is a new, utter low which makes everything mentioned above look irrelevant in proportion. You have not only used the name of God in vain but you have used it in reference to the evil (!) presence on your show. Good for you that most viewers are unaware of this and still believe the title to be a reference to being the father, the creator as Finch was to The Machine. Shameful.
What has happened to this once amazing show? There are 13 episodes left to correct course. “The question is: Will you?”
Oh great. Everything i absolutely hated about Season 4, like this horrid Iris, Shoot, Samaritan is going to continue in Season. THANKS BUT NO THANKS NOLAN. You have ruined it!!!
I must have missed something, but did they say that Reese had clearly strong feelings for Iris? I never saw that in the 20 (!) minutes she appeared during Season 4!
Sounds great, this show flew under my radar for many years, I watched a few episodes in season 1 but couldn’t get into it but then I saw a season 3 episode with amy acker making an epic speech about an ai computer and I would have never had guessed this show was about that! Or had such a diverse cast! I love Harold Finch and his relationship with the machine, I love root and shaw and I can’t wait to see where it’s all going to go now that the machine has been dismantled.
What the show was, what made it great and successful (#humanity):
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFUQqrDyXgA[/video]
What it has become (#cold-blooded):
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPlIJPfU5o[/video]
^^^^
That’s ridiculous, this show has more humanity and emotional punch now more than ever (or did you not watch that amazing episode with the carter flashbacks? Or the episode where Shaw kissed Root and sacrificed herself for the entire team? Or when the machine called Finch it’s father?)
This show didn’t pack much emotional punch in the first season and half apart from moments here and there – it was mostly about saving numbers, complete strangers. Now it’s about a team that’s become a dysfunctional family that save each other and are trying to fight an evil that’s taking over, also they have grown to care about an all knowing bodiless machine. I get people have different opinions on things, but to suggest this show has ho humanity left is ridiculous (also wake up call! This show has always been cold blooded, most of the characters have killed many people, it’s a show steeped in death – that makes it MORE human not LESS). 😮
Finch and Root’s debates about the ethics of AI makes the show for me. Can’t wait to see more of them in season 5. No more standalones, please!
Love the show and think it’s one of the most amazing well written and acted shows on TV at the moment. I really like the whole AI premise, and the morality debate surrounding them. Look forward to seeing how the whole Machine vs Samaritan continues in s5. Also the show has some of the most unique and awesome characters. Love the strong kickass female characters, especially Root and Shaw, who help save the world. More of them please!
PS Amy Acker is amazing as Root. Truly talented actress.
The first season was good but not enought to keep me interested. Same old procedural type show. But then things started to change for better. It’s and ensemble everyone has a story to tell, there is something for every character, they are still there and still loved. Have you even considered some might have asked for lighter story because they are tired physically… Of course not lets blame the other characters, that is easier. You fear of Amy Acker taking over is laughable, she isn’t even in every episode. And Root is a great character, praised by critics so all of those are wrong too?! Love Shaw and miss her too, hope they can have her back. Nobel laureates like the show, show they are doing something right. Of course Samaritan is not over. Did you see the end, did that look like samaritan was losing? They now have 13 episodes to wrap everything and I only hope they can give us a satisfactory ending all because CBS only cares about money, since the show is not produced by them they don’t care anymore.
As for the person talking about evoking the name of God in vain. Please grow up, this is a TV show. Worry about the amount of times the name of God was used for real things like wars and justifying those.
For new people watching. It’s a great series, has everything for every character fan. It’s a great, actual premise (AI). Nothing is left to chance, great research, cinematography, music and has an amazing cast, writer and crew, very respectful of their fans. It worth the watch.
This show is the best thing that happened to me this year. I binged watched everything after I heard that Amy Acker is in it. It absolutely blew my mind.
It would be a crime if thirteen episodes is all they got to wrap up the show. It deserves better than that, even if it has to be on another platform or network.
@John, thought you didn’t watch until the “epic speech” in Season 3 … It’s funny you would mention the Carter/Reese flashback episode as an indication for humanity and emotion in Season 4. Of course, that episode had all this as it was a hommage to what once made POI. I was speaking about the general direction the show has been moving into. (Take away all Reese scenes from Season 4 and see what is left of humanity towards human beings in general on the show. It basically clinches to that character and storylines affiliated to him.) The Finch/machine scene is emotional. I wasn’t speaking of emotion though but of humanity towards human beings in general. Creating feelings for a machine through effects does not fall into that category. And if it takes the supposed killing of a lead character (Shaw) to get some sense of humanity into the Samaritan storyline, you know something is wrong. Also, I find it fairly interesting that you dismiss the saving of human beings as ‘well, that were just numbers, strangers’ but celebrate people starting to care about a machine.
#HUMANITY is a value. That value has taken a back seat in the main plot with very few exceptions. The team once was a real family complimenting one another. Compare that to the dysfunctional family we have now, whose communication is tension-filled and where people are letting themselves being talked out of helping their friends if convenient as Finch did in the finale. Killing was always a part of the show. Killing is a part of reality and it can be shown on a show. The real issue is, is it depicted as something wrong or something supposedly “cool”. In the past it was depicted as something wrong, unjust or done out of dispair. It came wrapped into a moral package. Now, there are scenes more or less celebrating it. That Root fans are now flooding the comment section after becoming aware of the criticism doesn’t change that.
And since you seem to have seriously missed the humanity in the first season, here are just a few examples out of many:
[video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4nh0ElrIng[/video]
[video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEs5hdn5_20[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qazNA0U0lIo[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDzuwhkIm5s[/video]
[video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKDjuFtGO4[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfoH3laMLI4[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfoH3laMLI4[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEs5hdn5_20[/video]
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKDjuFtGO4[/video]
Of course there were also a few scenes affiliated to Finch’s character concerning humantiy, but they were very sparse compared to previous seasons.
Short version: Person of Interest is great and has massively grown over time. Dive in – if you don’t like purely procedural episodes (fair enough), there are catch up guides on the internet to get you to the increasingly . But really, try it.
Longer additional stuff:
Person of Interest is just amazing television and truly outstanding. I’ve been joining somewhere around mid-season 1, then quickly caught up. It’s impressive how much the show has grown – so much of the procedural element has moved to the background and made space for high quality serialized TV (which doesn’t imply Season 1 was bad, I actually really liked it too).
They put seeds out there from Day 1 in Season 1 but as the show progressed, it is simply amazing how it all grew. From geeky tech to complex philosophical debates about morality, AI and the post-9/11 surveillance world (lots of criticism there, and I love it!), this show has it all. Also, I can’t agree with arguments saying the humanity topic took a back seat, but if others feel so, they are absolutely free to do so. 🙂 I think it’s absolutely there, just a bit different than in the past (you can’t keep telling the same thing over and over). To me, that is clear, if I look at this Season’s (sub-)topics and how they connect to it. Lots of great scenes in that direction.
I know not everyone likes the show’s evolution towards serialized stories – fair enough. But for me, this just took a well done mostly procedural show (with nice dots of other stuff) to the favorite show spot.
I am glad I found this. It’s my favorite show on the air.
“@John, thought you didn’t watch until the “epic speech” in Season 3″
No, read what I said, I wasn’t interested until I saw that episode (303 I think?), I of course went back and watched from the beginning but it was hard since most of season 1 was boring as hell. It wasn’t until half way into season 2 this show found itself. The rest of your post is nonsense.
[Contains some spoilers]
@Remi: You talk about how bad it is that they used YHWH – or Yahweh – in reference to Samaritan. It’s not bad. In fact, if you compare it to the Old Testament, the described God there is so much more Samaritan than The Machine. A brutal God, ruthless, strong, but not without the capability of doing good work, so to say. Having a grip on his creation(s), demanding his laws to be followed, almost appearing to ‘play games’ with them, forcing them into some behavior, for his reasons.
Does that sound like Finch or The Machine to you?
To me it seems like people choose to ignore that part of the bible because compared to the New Testament, it’s pretty uncomfortable in many aspects (and characterizes God a “little” different).
By the way, I am not a religious person. I respect that others do feel that way, but I don’t get that particular argument there.
I also happen to really like Root and Finch working/discussion together a lot (I think it’s absolutely great and definitely not “the same thing over and over again” – I only get that feeling when “hardcore fans” of Reese/Carter tell us why it is supposedly so bad, over and over…).
So.. to me, POI has only gotten better. I miss Carter, she was an absolutely lovely character, but she died a long time ago now and her presence is still in the show (not many shows do that). She had an amazing farewell episode (The Devil’s Share) and a rich arc over 2.5 seasons. People die, in shows as in real life. I loved having her back, but I personally haved moved on there.
“”You have not only used the name of God in vain but you have used it in reference to the evil (!) presence on your show.”
Crazy fans. 😮
Comments like these make a lot of us realise this show was always on the wrong network, it’s far too intelligent for the general CBS audience to understand (I mean look at the first post on this website, Carter reduced to nothing but a love interest, that’s dumb and offensive). The CBS audience probably don’t know how to work a computer let alone appreciate the intrinsic issues of Artificial Intelligence or appreciate a character like Shaw who is neuroatypical and don’t understand the nuances of her ways of communicating. The older-skewed demographic would have gladly watched the same stories of season 1 over and over and over again with the characters and storyline going nowhere (I’m one of the few who actually LIKED season 1 a lot, but the show wouldn’t have worked in the long-term if it kept repeating saving numbers repeatedly without delving into the machine or adding new characters at all). The show grew beyond it’s first season but still despite that it’s on the wrong network, it needs to reach its genre audience (like Fringe, Lost and many other sci-fi shows managed to do). Which is why I’m sort of glad it’s ending on CBS next year with 15 episodes, I only hope it continues on Netflix or something since I don’t think 15 episodes is enough time to wrap up all the storylines. It seems pretty impossible to do so. CBS are airing Supergirl this year, maybe the network itself is wanting to reach a younger audience but I think it’s too little too late with POI, there has been almost zero promotion and zero catch up services for fans to engage or even KNOW about this show, which is a shame because it is a fantastic show.
I haven’t always agreed with what POI has done, I think killing Carter was a mistake, I think the middle of season 4 was dull and boring especially after the best run of episodes this show has ever had (episodes 9-14) but overall it’s gone from strength to strength and it reinvents itself every season.
I was always a fan of Nolan but after POI I’m a certified fan, I hope there’s plenty more stories to come in this world, and I hope they’re not told on CBS.
I came to regularly watch the show after having seen the season 3 finale by coincidence. I liked the season 3 finale for John Reese portrayed by Jim Caviezel, the topic of surveillance and the clever potrayal of the machinations of Decima. It made me catch up on the previous seasons that I hadn’t seen, before moving onwards. I seldom watch TV shows but when I do, they tend to have a serialized aspect. I found this in Person of Interest from season 1 onwards. I came to love seasons 1-3 with Carter, Reese, Finch, Fusco, Shaw and Root (as a foe or questionable ally). The only real flaw in these seasons was the killing of Carter. It was unnecessary and it had more far-reaching consequences for the whole series as one might suspect. It mixed-up the components of the whole series such as dynamics, morals, etc.
I liked the first two episodes of season 4 and some other of its episodes but the more the season progressed with Samaritan the more the change in the basic premise, the core values and the shifted fielding of the respective characters became apparant. For the first time I found myself not liking various aspects of the show. I do agree with one of the above posters on the topic of humanity. This was indeed one those aspects. In season 4 the Samaritan storyline and the characters that have come into focus with it have been lacking it thoroughly, yet they have taken center stage. Whether it is the drilling of holes into people’s hands by a team member, snapping necks with pleasure or similar scenes, these have made the series colder. There has been humanity in season 4 but it has been mostly limited to the episodes that were reminiscent of previous seasons only that now it was mostly Reese and Fusco helping people. This was the time when Person of Interest came back to its own self. It were these scenes which kept a sense of humanity alive.
Going forward I am looking forward to serialized aspects that contain humanity and John Reese playing a role in the central storyline which as it stands is Samaritan. I am not looking forward to what was written as a psychopath character guiding the team as if knowing it all, torturing and killing people while the creator of The Machine and his Special Forces / CIA agent partner are redelegated to following her around. I am also not looking forward to a repetitive drama surrounding Finch and Root that is excluding the other characters in an inappropriate manner and thereby deconstructing the relationship of the two main characters. This and the bad handling of the Samaritan storyline in relation to the issue of humanity aka saving people is the most frequently named reason by people who have stopped watching this season and which you thus won’t find commenting here.
Root is one of the most complex characters in the recent past of television and she deserves her preminent role on the show. I’m so sorry that some of the old-school POI fans fail to appreciate anti-heroes (especially when they are women). With her moral ambiguity, Root defies all of those simplistic categorizations of good and evil. She has a fascinating character development and I want to see more of her in season 5. I love POI but those misogynistic fans are the worst.
I love, LOVE how the show has evolved. It’s become so much more exciting than it was before. The first couple of seasons were a little bit hard to get into, but once they gave Root and Shaw more prominent roles, the show became infinitely better. Those two are tied into the show’s overarching plot and underlying mythology. Episodes that heavily feature them, like “Relevance”, “God Mode”, “Mors Praematura”, “Root Path”, “Prophets”, “The Cold War”, “If-Then-Else” and “Asylum” are some of the series’ best. My favorite moments of the show are when Root and Finch debate the ethics of AI. They have such a compelling, complex dynamic.
If anything, this show has emphasized the theme of humanity even MORE now than before. An artificial intelligence has been humanized to the point where it made me bawl my eyes out at the end of YHWH.
I hope that Jonah and Greg carry on with their vision for the show and don’t let the haters who are (for some unknown reason) STILL upset over Carter’s death dictate their direction. Just keep doing your thing fellas! You’re very good at it.
“I mean look at the first post on this website, Carter reduced to nothing but a love interest, that’s dumb and offensive”
Yeah … because when someone writes “… the single mother and super tough detective. The fantastic role model …. The moral compass of the show …”, that is what they usually mean …. the reduction to a love interest. (???) Right …
“@Remi: You talk about how bad it is that they used YHWH – or Yahweh – in reference to Samaritan. It’s not bad. In fact, if you compare it to the Old Testament, the described God there is so much more Samaritan than The Machine. A brutal God, ruthless, strong, but not without the capability of doing good work, so to say. Having a grip on his creation(s), demanding his laws to be followed, almost appearing to ‘play games’ with them, forcing them into some behavior, for his reasons. …To me it seems like people choose to ignore that part of the bible because compared to the New Testament, it’s pretty uncomfortable in many aspects (and characterizes God a “little” different).”
Fringenos, there are different reasons why equating YHWH with Samaritan is utterly wrong.
One reason is the lack of respect it is showing. Do you think people drawing the Islamic prophet Muhammad in cartoons is provocative to Muslims and asking for negative reactions? No matter your or my personal opinion on the matter, a lot of people do think it offends and provokes. And that’s only about a person. Neither has Allah been drawn nor been equated with evil in the course of those controversies. Now, equating the God of Judaism, YHWH, with a most evil artificial intelligence … Can you see how that is offensive?
The even more important reason why this is a low though is the following: YHWH is not just the name of the God of Judaism. It is the literal reference to the One Who Is (the one who has always been and the one who caused you to be). Since Christianity is more or less the reform of Judaism and Islam has borrowed heavily from its narrative it has come to be accepted as the name of God in all the monotheistic religions. And even beyond that, it is the name associated with God. The name itself is accepted as the name of God in general. Therefore, equating YHWH with Samaritan in itself as a consequence means ascribing to God an evil nature. That is utterly and completely wrong in the worst sense. Your description above reflects the picture of God that stands behind such comparison. You do so in referring to content of the Old Testament. I can only speak for what the literature suggests concerning the ancient Christians. They didn’t ignore the parts of the Old Testament because it was “uncomfortable” but because parts of the original scripture had been tampered with by rulers and high priests to establish laws for their own profit. From the Christian perspective of that time, it was Jesus to correct what was falsified in that understanding and to confirm what contained truth, reestablishing the will of God. What you have as a result was the correction of the understanding of God’s nature. God as a father, God as a healer, God wanting you to value the other like you value yourself, God wanting you to do to others as you would have them do to you, God wanting to bring you home once you leave this earth, God as the Light containing no darkness. That is the very antinomy of evil and the opposite of what Samaritan stands for in this piece of popular culture.
@Salerno Killing has been shown as something cool in the past seasons too, like John blowing up a car full of HR thugs in Firewall after making a glib remark. And there are examples of humanity in season 4 too, for example Finch/Root in Panapticon, Finch/Claire in Nautilus, Fusco/Andre in Wingman, Finch/Root and Finch/Ingram in Prophets, Elias/Scarface in The Devil You Know, Finch teaching the Machine chess in If-Then-Else, Fusco/Silva in MIA, Finch/Emma in Guilty, Finch/Root in Skip, the Machine scenes in Asylum and YHWH. Now you may not find them humane and that’s ok but they are there.
Fantastic show. Unique also in that has gotten better after the first seasons. Where most shows would have winded down Person Of Interest changed gears and got more exciting (and as an unexpected bonus: Root’s one of best fictional character ever).
Drawing on some vocabulary from a previous Nolan project:
first seasons = the Pledge, with teasing at something wonderful (and already with wonderful characters and interesting standalones);
from mid 3rd season to the 4th season = the Turn, when the AI angle was revealed as not a gimmick but impetus for changes on all scales and of all kind;
from 5th season onward = the Prestige, presumably when Person Of Interest really rips into it, pushing even more on morality, loyalty and destiny both on the personal and humankind scale.
Dang it, I just reminded myself once again why this show is so great and what a fail it is that Person Of Interest may not have enough space for the Prestige stage.
@poifan
No, killing has not been something cool, as in conducted by the main protagonists in celebrated cold-blood, in the past seasons. It was either done by the bad guys or out of despair or shown as something terrible from the past but never as something supposedly “epic” committed by a main protagonist belonging to the “good” guys in cold blood. John’s past was always depicted as something for which he needed to make up, for which he needed to find redemption. In Season 1, even the fate of monsters such as the rapist in “Cura Te Ipsum” or the abusive ex-husband that was about to kill his wife in “Manny Happy Returns” was being debated intensively. There was heavy moral input from Carter and Finch. In the end both men were taken care of, rightfully so. But Reese himself chose to take the abusive husband to a Mexican prison instead of killing him. That’s despite his own trauma concerning the death of Jessica through her abusive husband. And if he did kill the rapist whose fate was left open, it wasn’t shown, all the moral inclinations were discussed and there was nothing close to cold-blood in there, to the contrary. Going into Season 2, we have different examples as well one being Reese showing mercy to Hersh despite Hersh having been send to kill him. Season 3 had the Carter flashbacks as one out of multiple examples: “You can’t just decide who gets to live and who gets to die.” When Carter had been killed, Reese was in a state of complete despair and he would have killed Alonzo Quinn but while pulling the trigger he was on the brink of collapsing, he was the opposite of cold-blooded. All the while Finch was reminding him of the morals of the woman Reese loved and wanted to avenge, who would have wanted Quinn to be brought to justice in a different manner. Then in Season 3 we had the debate about whether to kill the senator or not. They didn’t. Not only did Finch argue adamantly against it, but even Shaw was hesitant and Reese who had his finger on the trigger refrained from killing him in the last minute with things weighing heavily on him.
Going into Season 4, we now have “Places to be, people to kill!”, “What do you know. Not a peep.”, holes being drilled into a defenseless woman’s hand or the attempted poisoning of an innocent woman. That’s really not the fault of the character as that is the way she was written from the beginning. But back then, this kind of behavior was rightly identified as being psychopathic. It came in the course of a narrative identifying her as an antagonist. Now it comes without that package. Instead this behavior now comes from a protagonist, a part of the “good” team and, to top it all, it comes from the one who in this season more often than not has led Team Machine around. So, what they need to do is either reform her or put her in the place of a highly questionable ally with explicitly NON-normative morals. Otherwise, the whole show becomes more cold-blooded as it has in parts of Season 4. That’s part of what is meant with the show going from lots of #Humanity to way more #cold-bloodedness. The other part is that the saving of lives, the helping of people has taken a back seat. And this is not arguing in favor of procedurals. You make the saving of lives and helping of people the centre of any serialized structure as well. So, that is talking about the general direction.
And yes, you are completely right in that there were humane scenes involving Reese, Finch, Fusco, … in Season 4 as well. I said so much above. However, these were mostly in the more classic concept of them helping someone. Reese/Carter (“Terra Incognita”), Reese/MMAfighter (“Q&A), Reese/Det.Forge (“The Pretenders”), Fusco/Silva (“MIA”), Finch/Claire (“Nautilus”), Finch/Emma (“Guilty”), Finch/Psychiatrist (“Karma”), Finch/Beth (“Skip”), etc. That’s the reason why many people are still watching! However, if we speak of the general direction the show has taken with its main plot and affiliated characters, it’s a whole different story. There is more or less one exception which would be the really masterful scene in which Finch teaches the lack of morals behind the game of chess to The Machine.
—
P.S.:
This is the scene from Firewall btw in which John blew up the trunk (!) of a car, not the car nor the HR killers: Reese, Carter and Fusco are in a high-speed car chase pursuing two HR killers. Driving through crowded streets, evading other people and cars. Then they approach a deserted area of the city.
Reese: Slow down, Carter.
Carter: Slow down? These two know they are going down for life. They will kill anybody who gets in their way.
Reese: I got this. Trust me.
Carter slows down.
Reese blows up the trunk (!) of the car [not the car nor the people inside] via remote thereby ending the dangerous car chase. He doesn’t make any glib remark related to this incidence before or afterwards.
That was an action movie kind of scene not really comparable to a close-up neck snap complete with a deragotary remark, the close-up drilling of holes into defenseless people’s hands, etc.
—
On another note. I can’t believe fans have to remind of that but, dear Mr. NOLAN, Reese doesn’t need entertainment or a “normal live” to not make a face.
He needs a PURPOSE, remember?!
To add. A purpose as in this fanmade video: Proving Samaritan philosophically wrong as his own life’s journey took him from one (deceptive) to another (just) narrative. He is the one who knows both sides. He is predestined to i. e. turn someone who has been misled like Claire with his CIA skills. Also, we never got to know where Finch knew Reese from when he commented in RAM that “this was a long story”. A backstory in that regard would be great! But I guess the scripts are already being written differently.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiJsCTfQ9Cw[/video]
@Salerno Reese blows up the trunk of the car, flames engulf the car and it flips over twice…completely smashed, we don’t see anybody coming out of it because no one could’ve survived that. Then Reese tells Carter and Fusco…”We should all grab a drink sometime” and then walks out of the car nonchalantly. Also in Last Call Shaw and Reese use pliers to pull out Solano’s piercings to find out the location of the kidnapped boy, although off-screen. In The Devil’s Share Reese burns a guy alive in a car because he was looking for Simmons. So I think it understandable for Root to go to extremes when looking for Shaw. And Leslie Thompson wasn’t completely innocent, those who opposed her were killed off and she knew what was happening and went along with it. And if the HR guys were evil then so was Martine she was about to cut open Root’s head, had possibly tortured Shaw and was threatening to torture Finch. Also they never stopped helping ordinary people, each episode still had a Person of Interest whom they team tries to help…that has never changed.
Instead of inviting all of these random unnecessary ladies and developing Reese drama they could have given more screentime to Acker. After all, she’s the only one female regular they have left now. But no, nothing has changed for her not until the two last episodes.
People attack Joss Whedon for making Widow weaker but no one even noticed this huge problem with Root. The way they treat her character, the lack of character development, the stupid lines they keep writing for her, not to mention all the episodes she wasn’t part of. I do seriously hope something will change in season 5, but they’ve lost their chance to develop Root properly and this is really sad.
@poifan, the car in “Firewall” flips and comes to stand back like normal, the interior front where the HR killers sit not smashed and the car not burning. In POI most people do actually survive those car crashes, not too realistic but that’s how it is and what is being implied most of the time. Take Reese, Carter and Donnelly in “Prisoner’s Dilemma” for instance or Control in “Control-Alt-Delete”. Reese’s comment meanwhile is the mere continuation of the discussion he had with Carter and Fusco before the incident as they had just found out that they had both been working for Reese. Hence, “we should all grab a drink sometime”. Such car chase scenes are made for action purposes, you will find them in any action movie with no actual harm to humans being portrayed. Likewise Reese makes no derogatory comments. If that scene were to look like Root’s killing of Martine, they’d have shown heads hanging twisted and lifelessly out of the car and Reese commenting something like, “What do you know. BOOM and off they go.”
What both the car chase scene and the plier/piercing scene from “Last Call” (that you mention) have in common and what distinguishes them from the Root scenes is among other things the following: 1. Actual physical torture was never shown. Killing was never cold-blooded and celebrated. 2. The implied or actual violence was never after a fact or used without a very good reason. In both cases force was used against one or multiple active aggressors to avert an imminent threat to the life of the innocent. In the case of the car chase the HR killers and their high-speed drive through crowded streets meant an imminent danger to innocent bypassers. Reese neutralized that threat by exploding the trunk bringing the car to a stop. In the case of the plier/piercings a bomb had been strapped to a little boy with the intent to explode him alive. The timer was minutes from going off. The man with the piercing knew the little boy’s location but wouldn’t give it up. After the piercings had been pulled (which was never actually shown, only implied contrary to Root drilling holes into a woman’s hand which was shown close up), they got the location and were able to free the boy of the bomb. Now, for the scene in “The Devil’s Share”. He did not burn anyone alive in the sense as your sentence suggests (actively). What he did was to not rescue out of a burning car the ones who had helped Carter’s killer. He left not thinking about them because he was fixated solely on one goal: finding the killer of the woman he loved. He didn’t actively kill them or parody them. He was going around disorientated, himself critically wounded. He wasn’t cold-blooded but a man with a tunnel vision not noticing much of his surroundigs. Still, and I have no problem saying that as well, this was the only scene that was unnecessary the way it was shown in the very end (the fire). What all these examples still have in common is the following: Killing was not shown as something cool, as in conducted by the main protagonists in celebrated cold-blood. As I said before, if not done by a bad guy or as a bad guy in the past it was either done out of utter despair in exceptional situations or to avert an imminent threat from an innocent person (the latter of which would fall into the category of defense of a third party in a case of emergency).
The same does not apply to the cold-blooded torture and killings conducted by Root as a protagonist in Season 4. When she killed Martine, the neck-snap including a twisted head was shown close-up and in full detail. Root meanwhile was completely unfazed by the situation. The “What do you know. Not a peep.” as well as her facial expression enforced the cold-bloodedness of the deed. The killing of Martine served no other purpose but revenge, it didn’t avert anything. If The Machine hadn’t made a deal with Samaritan, someone else would have just done what Martine had intented to do. If the killing of Martine “at least” still served any recognizable purpose (revenge), the drilling of holes into a defenseless woman’s hand served no purpose whatsoever. The woman had already given in and had told Root what she needed to know. The drilling came AFTER the fact, it didn’t avert any imminent danger from anyone. The woman was not an aggressor threatening anyone at that very moment. The same goes for the attempted poisoning of Beth, an innocent woman far from being an aggressor at all. Obviously, there were other ways to neutralize any danger coming from Finch’s affiliation with Beth. But Root decided to go for the kill. That one like the drilling was purely psychopathic.
To make a long story short:
The examples you mention for Reese and Shaw had violence against one or more active aggressors as a means for averting imminent threats to innocent people. There was no alternative to the use of force to avert the threat to those innocent people presented by the aggressors. This violence wasn’t shown in graphic ways. There was no parody concerning the violence. The exceptional situation of Reese going after the killer of Carter had him in a mental situation of utter despair, critically wounded and on the brink of and eventually collapsing mentally and physically. It was made clear that he was falling back into old, wrong patterns and he was reminded that this was not what Carter would have wanted.
The examples containing Root had violence as an end. The purpose of the violence was simply violence. The woman who had a hole drilled into her hand did not present an active aggressor at the moment when the violence took place. Nor was any imminent threat to innocent people averted through the violence itself. The woman (Beth) that Root planned to poison to death wasn’t even an aggressor in any way. Attempted murder was a choice made by Root. There were alternatives. And when she went after Martine, she killed her mentally unfazed, emotionally untouched, parodying her, celebrating the kill. The actual execution of violence was shown in graphic ways (drilling of a hole into a hand, twisted head during a neck-snap).
@Salerno Especially your take on Root killing Martine is so different from mine that I can’t resist replying. “And when she went after Martine, she killed her mentally unfazed, emotionally untouched, parodying her, celebrating the kill“. Whoah. That doesn’t sound at all like what I saw. Root was triumphant for a moment then folded back into herself – deflated and empty (because guess what, killing Martine didn’t actually make things right). Also your other examples are – as far as I read – probably viewed differently by different viewers. Mainly because fortunately the characters are not B&W.
Plus a reminder that the show isn’t called „The Yes (Wo)men“. Their different morals and limits is what makes it fascinating to watch. There are enough shows where the “good guys / main characters” are a homogeneous group (of course apart from their differing endearing quirks). That POI doesn’t follow that formula is one of the reasons why it’s so great.
@Eva I agree with everything you said and the fact that the different moral choices that the characters make is one of the reasons what makes POI so fascinating. And also if Reese can be given a pass for causing the car crash and letting a man burn alive because he was in utter despair, disoriented and focused then the same needs to be given to Root. Also in MIA when Reese confronts the Doctor working on Delia Jones , he is unarmed, he surrenders and asks Reese not to shoot him which results in Reese promptly shooting him in the leg. He was not aggressive, was not an imminent threat then what was the point of shooting him? To show what a badass Reese is or for the laughs…
It is fascinating how some people chose to remain completely oblivious to the change of tone in parts of the series. A psychopath like Root who doesn’t care for anyone besides Team Machine setting the tone as happened in most of the latest season in the prime plot is one part of it. Root has her strengths, she has her reason to be on the show, she appeals to her own specific target group, she played an entertaining role for most of the first three seasons (she was really amazing as a bad “guy”) but it has simply gone too far this season. If you aren’t a hardcore Root fan and most of the show’s general viewership isn’t, you simply do not want to follow the show down that road of basically worshipping a psychopath that is worshipping a machine while not caring about people outside her team. You can compare non-graphic action scenes like a car chase and the show’s usual non-graphic kneecaps (in the case of MIA against a “doctor” implanting tech devices into a kidnapped woman’s head) to Root’s mindless graphic torture and emotionless brutality (displayed with pleasure!) all you want, you can misrepresent a scene in which Reese had already turned away before the car started burning in a way dangerous to those inside as him allegedly burning people alive all you want, it doesn’t really change anything. Root fans are vocal. Contrary to other even bigger fan groups who just enjoy what they like these fans are organized and they have this specific drive to push this character beyond any limit for whatever reason. But all this is achieving is that it distorts the picture of the actual sentiment among the audience. It is not helping Person of Interest. And to be honest, it is starting to graze on other people’s nerves inside and outside the fandom at times. IMHO.
It would be wise for the producers to listen to the more silent majority that impacts the show’s ratings from time to time as well. The POI fandom and audience is made up of different groups. The biggest such group is made up of those that watch for the original Reese/Finch team, who might have started to watch because of knowing and respecting Jim Caviezel for The Passion of the Christ/other movies and Michael Emerson from Lost. The second biggest group would be the one who watches for the story with the whole team. They like all, enjoy Fusco’s and Shaw’s humor, adore Bear, … Then you have an equal number of hardcore Jim Caviezel/Reese fangirls/-boys (who are mainly preoccupied with admiring the man) 😉 and hardcore Amy Acker/Root/Shoot fangirls/-boys (who are mainly preoccupied with promoting Shoot and Amy Acker/Root as well as organizing their promotion in polls and underneath articles like this one, enforced by enthusiasm for Shoot from some out of the LGBT community). There was a very large Carter fandom second only to the Reese/Finch one, but that one has left for the most part and you should not mention Jonah Nolan’s name in their presence. Speaking of “he who shall not be named” … :p Then there is the Carter/Reese (Careese) and Jim/Taraji fandom from which only parts stayed for Jim/Reese which have now mostly integrated into the Reese/Finch group. Careese was the most active fandom in the past and despite having one character killed off remains largely intact even after all this time.
From these groups, unsurprisingly, you have endless streams of people from the Reese/Finch group being truly fed up with how the show has (mis)treated the Reese/Finch team, how their purpose of finding redemption as close friends has been neglected and how the tone of the show has changed, how Samaritan has taken more center stage. People of this category and the Carter fandom make up the biggest chunk of lost viewership and the biggest chunk of viewership that says it loses the passion for the show if it continues to disrupt the original premise and friendship, though still watching. When the episode Guilty had been aired and Finch/Reese had actually been given a proactive team role together again, the below was the picture shared among the Finch (!) fandom and it read:
“Well, hallelujah! The writers finally remembered that Reese and Finch are people who exist! With minds! And personalities! And agency!”
[img]http://38.media.tumblr.com/6b9ee89569fbf660c36955397c70115e/tumblr_njlbwjmcAQ1rv2uwlo1_400.gif[/img]
As for the other groups. While most of the Caviezel fangirls just want to enjoy watching Reese and any character he plays, the Acker fangirls could easily start their own promotion company … see above. Look for the slogan: “Amy is the most talented actress to ever walk the earth.” “Root is the best character in TV history.” If you read one of these, it’s a good indication AckerPromotions Inc. spotted the article you are on and you crossed their path. 🙂 The Acker and Shoot fangirls mostly overlap. Team Shoot is most enthusiastic and strives for a Shoot reunion in Season 5. They love Samaritan as that storyline involves lots of Root and Shoot. The latter group is highly enthusiastic about the direction the show has been taking and they will play its advocate — until … POI decides to kill off Root epically in Season 5 Episode 7 the way it did with Carter. :p
The Carter/Reese (Careese) fans all the while are highly susceptible to what is going on with the show in general and what happens to the different roles. You really don’t wanna know what people out of this fandom think and have to say about all that has happened. 13 episodes to them equals karma. They rarely give an input on usual POI channels anymore and if they do you will recognize them by their immense disapproval of Mr. Nolan’s decision to kill Carter and of putting Reese with Iris. They see that a racially mixed pair like Reese and Carter with extraordinary chemistry has never been acknowledged properly (over years) by the show’s creator (only by its actors), with the woman eventually being killed. Then they see another woman walking in, taking the place at Reese’s side in a serious non-Zoe manner and in a matter of sharing mere minutes of screen-time with him, with little background story to it at all. Sympathetic to the Finch/Reese group, they also say that “Emerson and Caviezel deserve better.” This groups is still very active out there with fanart and stuff (see below), their greatest wish is for JC and Taraji, their King and Queen of Person of Interest, 🙂 to be reunited in a project:
[img]http://38.media.tumblr.com/68a325778abfe58a069c1aee8a547571/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o2_500.gif[/img]
[img]http://38.media.tumblr.com/287b7e68c489355305f12f1aad26f93e/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o1_500.gif[/img]
[img]http://33.media.tumblr.com/96917ef18a457b8376705924feb4d5d2/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o3_r2_500.gif[/img]
[img]http://38.media.tumblr.com/21b5dced4ce2cb93613846f2fb890022/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o4_r1_500.gif[/img]
[img]http://33.media.tumblr.com/1b38cfec7a3e0c36c0ea47a7edb90bce/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o5_r2_500.gif[/img]
[img]http://33.media.tumblr.com/64b1453aed889bc198cb5bde3f18bde6/tumblr_nkca872nPY1qzniq3o6_r1_500.gif[/img]
😉
As one can see, Person of Interest has resulted in an interesting and highly diverse fan universe.
@ poifan yes the double standard is quite pronounced. For sure Root has a bigger capacity for cruelty but even considering that some people seem to really view Reese’s actions through rose-colored glasses.
@ Claire I suspect you were trying to sound somewhat impartial but – to use your vocabulary – it’s painfully obvious which “group” you belong to. I’m not going to ridicule that like you tried to ridicule Root’s fans (among whom I count myself). Having different dynamics and different but fully realized characters has been one of POIs strengths from the beginning so naturally people are going to feel invested in, ahem, different characters.
However I’m replying mainly to point out that the 2 characters who clearly had the most screentime were Reese and Harold, so I’m surprised whenever I’ve seen sb complain about Root setting the tone / taking over etc. Perhaps some people feel that Root is such a towering presence that her shadow hangs over everything. Never mind that she doesn’t even appear in a several episodes and in many other episodes she is limited to only a couple of minutes. Not a lot of time to exert influence. Hers must be screen presence on steroids. As I fan I agree but even for me it’s not as overwhelming as to permeate everything on the show. And really, isn’t such … extreme focus … a little offensive to the characters that are actually featured most – Reese and Harold, who in my opinion have plenty screen presence of their own and are thus not left flapping in Root’s tailwind.
Be as it may, I’m baffled why to focus on a character you don’t even like / direct general dissatisfaction toward a character that has possibly the least total screentime (Root having so little screen time is BTW something I hope will be rectified next season). My guess is that it might have to do with a longing for S1&2. Stating the obvious here of course. But there are many viewers who enjoy the new POI much more than in the first seasons and that’s a fact too.
@Eva, so, tell me, what has been the main storyline throughout the 4th season and what is being teased as being the focus of the 5th season. Samaritan and everything revolving around it. What kind of role did the show’s lead character, John Reese, have in the main plot in the 4th season. More or less none. He was for the vast part isolated from it. The few times he was not being occupied with stalled therapy sessions, working police files, appeasing the police captain or similar stuff while the rest of the team was confronting the enemy, he was neither proactive nor leading the way as he should be in that part of the story. Have there been any announcements from the producers or writers pertaining to what different kind of role John Reese, the main character, might play in the main plot in the 5th season? No, there’s been talk of a “normal life” side-story, whatever that is supposed to mean. (It’s again been the actor who at SDCC has put a proper and compelling direction out there for his character. But he doesn’t write the show.) Additionally, there were episodes in the 4th season that barely had Reese on at all. Example: Honor Among Thieves. This was a drastic change compared to Season 1 to 3 and many are upset about it or even stopped watching because of it. Now tell me what kind of role did the show’s other lead character, Harold Finch, play in the main plot in the 4th season. While he wasn’t isolated from it, he, the genuis concerning all things artificial intelligence, was reduced to a clueless puppy most of the time that was following Root around. I don’t know how often Finch’s voice was near breaking when reverently addressing “Ms. Groves”, “Samantha”. Now, in the Season 5 trailer, Root has taken what has traditionally been Finch’s role: being the show’s narrator. That’s although she is a psychpathic character. Yes, characters can and should be diverse. No, a psychopath should not be leading the way. So, it’s not whatever you might perceive to be some sort of natural towering presence whatsoever … It’s been Root specifically and systematically being written as an all-knowing character leading the way in the show’s main plot and having Matrix-like supernatural capabilities while the real lead characters on which the show’s success was originally based have been killed (Carter), isolated (Reese) or robbed of competence (Finch). It’s actually a huge compliment to the actors portraying Reese and Finch that so many people have been sticking around for their mere presence though the role of their characters and the tone has changed so much. As Variety put it, the show has been written into a corner for different reasons. Root is not the reason, of course. The way Root’s character has been imposed, however, is an indication and consequence of what has been changed. It’s a corner they can still come out of but will they? Because if they don’t come out of it, this show will most definitely end after the 13 episodes. It is astonishing time and again how some hardcore Root fans can’t seem to understand that they are cutting into their own flesh by welcoming all of this. If the show can find back to a dynamic and role distribution among the characters as there was in mid Season 3 (in the role Root had during that time she was an interesting addition and added source for success) and put humanity as well as their core values first again, then, with all the relevant and highly interesting story they got to tell, they got a true chance to go further than 13 episodes. But I’d go so far as to say, making that change is the only chance they got to continue telling their story.
(I won’t even comment on the other remarks. Some people really need to start listening to what people have to say instead of falling into and endlessly repeating their same old prejudices. The story Person of Interest is currently telling as such is very interesting but part of HOW they are telling it has been lacking dramatically in the proper treatment of the characters and their relationships as well as in transporting the proper values in the sense of salvaging the core premise of the show.)
@ Claire I’m not even sure where in my quite brief post was room for “endlessly repeating […] same old prejudices”. The reason I replied to you wasn’t even to discuss which SLs are interesting, but (as I even pointed out in that same reply) to remind you that Reese and Harold have the most screentime. But fine, I’ll bite and reply to you regarding some of the things you mentioned now.
I too would have been happy if Reese had been more involved in the Samaritan storyline. My guess is that Reese (for the most part) not being involved in the Samaritan storyline was to appease people who miss S1/S2 and/or don’t like the Samaritan SL. So the show would have something for everyone. Especially since Harold WAS very involved with Samaritan SL.
Having seen how great POI can be I don’t want it to go back to the procedural format of S1 and S2 and all Reese all the time – which was great while it lasted and I liked POI even then, but now it’s just so much better. Ofc I know you disagree about that.
I will not reply to all the things in your post but I can’t resist replying to the claim that Finch was “robbed of his competence”. Really? Dude came up with the first tool to dent Samaritan’s amour, he’s as much of a genius as ever, but I guess that’s not enough for some viewers. At least for me Harold’s competence has related to his brain and not kicking around with a flamethrower, so I’m not sure what competence he could have lost that was on display before but not in S4.
Nor did I see Harold following Root around. They both got some of what they were arguing for, but if I had to I would say that ultimately Harold seemed to have more power over Root than she over him. Because she adores and admires him and while Harold may have come to respect or even mostly trust her (and has called her a friend) he is certainly not as dependent on Root as she is on him. I thought that was made pretty obvious. I’m guessing because Root was advocating more drastic action and Harold was cautioning against rushing or misjudging a situation, this for some people translates to Root leading Harold. But though Harold was at this point holding back and being cautious I never thought that it was in the sense that Root was calling the shots.
BTW for someone who at least acknowledges that she’s not bothered only by Root but also by the different approach in general you sure get easily distracted by her. She has too little screentime to obsess over her psychopathic self leading Team Machine (which hasn’t been my impression anyway). Unless, as I wrote, you feel she has you in her thrall even for the duration of all the episodes she doesn’t even appear in or where she has only a couple of minutes screentime. Which would be about half of the season. That’s not imposing – that’s playing peek-a-boo and disappearing for a night on the town in between popping up again. Since S5 could be the last season I hope that will change – especially bc the writers don’t have to hold back with the Samaritan story (that Root will have to be a big part of). Lets face it – if there’s the strong possibility the show’s gonna end they are going to make the most of it. That doesn’t include being a dime a dozen procedural (some exaggeration here, but anything to get the point across). So if you think the show is ever going to go back to that you are going to be disappointed. Had they been in it for the easy money while churning out same old stories they never would have “changed the tone”.
BTW you don’t have to answer. Otherwise I too would be tempted to reply. I’ll just assume you disagree about everything.
Your prejudices, that you seem to be unaware of, show when you keep repeating me supposedly wanting something I never even talked about. Such as going back to the format of Seasons 1 & 2 when I never even mentioned these seasons. It means, your perception of what you think “I must be saying” based on your prejudices against people that are criticizing POI keeps you from understanding what I’m really saying. So let me try one more time: The AI/surveillance story arc is very interesting. It would be okay by me if they go all out for it in a serialized way (which they seem to have in mind) IF (!) they were to keep the dynamic and role distribution among the characters and were to salvage the core premise/values (putting humanit first again) as in mid-season 3. If instead they go (and they will probably do that) the way they have done it with the Samaritan story arc in Season 4, this show will even have difficulty surviving the 13 episodes to the end. People watching primarily for Samaritan or Shoot (the most vocal as currently the only ones really satisfied) just aren’t big enough in numbers to come anywhere close of being able to sustain a show on a major network. At the meantime, the Finch/Reese team enforced by Carter and others has always been capable of doing so in the framework of a theme about AI, surveillance and the saving of human beings. There should be an understanding what can carry the show. Unfortunately, now we have a situation in which what carried the show has been either abandoned or redelegated to a side-story. As a consequence many people are saying they only stick around for their favourite character(s) but threaten to stop watching if they keep disrespecting these very same characters — Carter has been killed, Reese has been isolated and Finch has been robbed of competence — and the core premise. This is serious. They are meaning it. If you want to understand why people have been leaving, these opinions present the best indicator.
What made POI so special (with the exception of Carter’s death) before things changed for the worse in the main plot of Season 4 was NOT the procedural aspect of different episodes. It was the amazing chemistry among the lead characters (whose deconstruction has been elavated to an destructive art), the palpable heart & humanity & value in the story (which in the main plot has been increasingly missing for all the reasons people have been mentioning above) and the relevance of the AI/surveillance issue (which still stands but has lost its reasonableness, a fact reflected in all the misguided comparisons going on such as equating a machine with God). When people say “go back to this or that” what many really mean is the above. They just don’t put so much time and effort into reflecting and elaborating on it as we are currently doing. They simply equate “the before” with those positive things and it results in the “go back”. Of course, “the before” could simply be integrated into the current main story. And that is what I am saying.
On some of your other points: As for the lack of Reese in the Samaritan storyline (few exceptions including If-Then-Else or Control-Alt-Delete); one of the reasons why this story doesn’t bode well with so many people. You don’t “appease people who miss S1/S2” and S3 (for that matter) by excluding the lead character from the main plot. To the contrary. You offend them because Reese played a highly central role in the main storylines in Seasons 1-3. POI used to have no problem understanding the very purpose of a lead character in the past, utilizing him in both the serialized and the procedural arcs. That’s like it should still be done. As for Finch being robbed of competence; of course he was. He was running around after Root countless times, merely following her instructions. A low point was her telling him, “Chop-chop, Harold!” while he tried to keep up with her pace. I mean, seriously? (It is almost tragically ironic that Michael Emerson likes that kind of interaction between Finch and Root. Some very misguided dynamics are going on there. I will spare you my further opinion on the matter.)
Last but not least. After all the criticism (which merely shows that people still care for something/someone in there): Person of Interest gave us wonderful storytelling with amazing characters for quite some time. If they now choose to keep going into the wrong direction, many of us will just go back to what the show used to be and revisit that world, its characters and its heartfelt message from time to time. Long after the show will have ended. Jonah Nolan, the writers and the amazing actors bringing the characters to life created something amazing. We’ll salvage all the good and ignore the rest.
@ Claire as I predicted I gave in to the temptation to reply once more.
My prejudices and that I’m repeating that you want something you never even talked about? Only thing I slightly suspect in that regard in my original post to you was this sentence “My guess is that it might have to do with a longing for S1&2.” I can amend that to “S1 & S2 & 1st half of S3” since that was meant as a shorthand anyway and I had in mind pre AI as main arc seasons. Though I have to admit I felt the beginning of S3 was so abysmal I didn’t include that also in part bc I have trouble believing anybody would want more of that (but I’m not aware of that being a common complaint). If you liked the beginning of S3 that’s fine and I meant no offense. But how you make the jump from that to me claiming you prefer the procedural format I have no idea. I didn’t write that, it was quite obvious from your post that going serialized wasn’t what irked you. As you’ve pointed out yourself the switch to serialized isn’t the only difference. “A longing for S1&2” encapsuled all the various complaints I’ve read about latter seasons. Including the ones you mentioned previously and that you proceeded to list now too.
And I’ll point out preemptively that in my next post I didn’t accuse you of missing the procedural format either, but stated that I’m aware you will not agree with my opinion that the show is so much better now – which BTW you’ve proved to be true also with your last post.
From reading other opinions I actually do think that in general the switch to serialized and greater focus on Samaritan has put off some people. I suspect that and the move to a different time slot are the main reasons for the drop in ratings. In addition last season the erratic scheduling made it tough for even fans to follow so no wonder that a lot of casual viewers might have given up. I understand you feel it’s the allocation of tasks, direction of development and screentime. I agree that these things have also had an impact (for me the effect was positive but obviously not for everyone) but not that these are the main reasons for the ratings drop.
Naturally I still don’t agree with your take on dynamics etc pre S1 & S2 & 1st half of S3 and after. But I’m not going to repeat myself. Except to summarize that to me the story has expanded to include an additional dimension and presents a deeper exploration of what it means to be human and what the cost is. So it’s richer on every level, including the interpersonal. Going back to before (whether to the procedural format or the character ratio/relationships) is the last thing I’d want.
So for me the timeframe of when the magic happened is different but I absolutely agree with you that the show “created something amazing”.