Title: Person of Interest
Released: 2011
Seasons: 5
Episodes: 103
Streaming Service: Free on Prime, Rent/Buy Elsewhere

The rise of AI, the surveillance state, and authoritarianism in the United States have been on the minds of many Americans as of late. Large language models have become ubiquitous across the internet, and the government funds multi-billion dollar surveillance projects through companies like Palantir, The fear of these two technologies, and the people who control them, grows stronger. For many, this state of affairs is a sudden surprise. But not for everyone. One fantastic show that predicted this world: Person of Interest.

Warning: Contains spoilers for the first episode.

Premise

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system — a machine — that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people. People like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn’t act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us. But, victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up, we’ll find you.” – Harold Finch

Person of Interest’s puts many of its cards on the table in its intro sequence. Ex-CIA operative John Reese is lost and purposeless. Haunted by his past, he returns to New York to drink himself to death. This changes when he’s recruited by Harold Finch, a mysterious tech billionaire that claims to know about violent crimes before they happen. He’s also the creator of the most effective surveillance apparatus the government could ever dream of, known simply as the Machine.

In a typical episode, the Machine gives Reese and Finch a single social security number of somebody who is either going to be the victim or cause of a violent crime. Reese and Finch race against the clock to figure out the source of the danger and put a stop to it. Finch uses his prowess with computers to invade every aspect of the person’s digital life: tracking their phone and communication history. Reese has a more direct approach: he stakes the person out, interrogates them or their pursuer, and finishes with a fistfight, car crash, or defenestration. Sometimes, the people they help persist as allies or enemies later in the show.

Characters

I found Jim Caviezel’s portrayal of John Reese to be passable. Sometimes his acting comes across as too stiff and repressed to play the charismatic James Bond archetype, even a depressed one. But he makes up for it with a dry wit and fantastic action sequences. The backstory we get on his life—both in the CIA and beforehand—is serviceable, but nowhere as interesting or crucial to the plot as Harold Finch is.

Michael Emerson is fantastic as Finch. He comes across as paranoid, reclusive, and a very private person. He’s deeply afraid of what the government would do to him if they found him again after he disappeared off the face of the Earth. He takes serious precautions to prevent his capture or detection, and he has a lot of resources – financial and otherwise—to keep it that way. The first few seasons of the show are filled with flashbacks of him developing the Machine, how he solves various ethical problems, and came to create the decisions and limitations that he did. Michael Emerson does a fantastic job playing him.

Person of Interest’s supporting cast is excellent. Detective Jocelyn Carter, played by Taraji Henson, pursues Reese for his violent interventions across New York. She knows him only as “The Man in the Suit”. She’s intelligent and by-the-books: a capable but sympathetic adversary for Reese and Finch. She’s balanced by her crooked counterpart Lionel Fusco, played by Kevin Chapman. Originally a corrupt cop, Fusco is turned into an unwilling informant by Reese in the first episode thanks to some blackmail. His sense of humor and conflict over his dirty past, make him one of the funniest and most likeable characters in the show.

Worldbuilding

Person of Interest’s worldbuilding is some of the most dynamic in science fiction, for two main reasons. It manages to balance antagonists ranging from petty criminals to international organizations, without any of them feeling like too small or big of a stake. The way the show manages this is by keeping in mind why these forces are a danger to Reese, Finch, and the people they are protecting. Henchmen and hitmen are short-term threats, one defenestration away from being defeated. Local criminal groups are dangers until Reese and Finch can figure out their organizational structures and expose them.

The other reason Person of Interest‘s world is so exciting is because of the paradigm shifts for the characters. In the first season of the show, Reese and Finch are still a relatively unknown force to the movers and shakers of New York, as well as the feds. But as time passes, other factions, local and global, catch on to what they’re doing and make their life far more difficult. Agencies, and rogue individuals get the best of the two at times, and this forces them to operate differently, changes bases, change the allies they work with sometimes.

These paradigm shifts do have some disadvantages. When faced down with some of the larger and more foreboding antagonists, it sometimes feels like Reese and Finch are passive in the face of these threats. Part of that comes down to the show’s unwillingness to abandon its core premise – that of having one person in danger and needing to save that person. This leaves little room for the show to demonstrate what they’re doing to stop more serious dangers. Another is that the later seasons of the show deliver a far higher dosage of science fiction compared to seasons 1 and 2. This means that comes to adore the more grounded detective elements of the show may lose interest later on, whereas the sci-fi enthusiast might be bored by the earlier realism.

Final Score

Person of Interest excels in both the minute and the grand elements. Supported by an excellent cast and strong writing, the show rarely falters across its five seasons and crushes the ending. I recommend it to any fan of a good detective or science fiction show, so long as you tolerate an uneven blend between the two genres.

What about you? What show do you think was ahead of its time about technology? Let us know on the Boss Rush Discord or comment below!