‘Person of Interest’ is in its final run, but as it faces its ‘blue screen of death’ (hence the acronym), it proves there’s still life left in the hard-hitting hard-drive…
“You can just call me Root, bitch!”
It’s been almost a year since Person of Interest disappeared from the schedules (on 5th May 2015) and continuing concern over its ultimate fate. Through most of 2015 there were murmurings it wouldn’t return at all, it would return mid-season or that it would get a final season. The truth was somewhere in the middle – with the series still missing from US schedules until this first week of May 2016, arriving just weeks after confirmation that it would indeed be POI’s last hurrah – a shorter run of thirteen episodes.
The gap between the final episode of Season Four and the start of Season Five does mean it’s worth rewatching that season finale and remembering how we left things: essentially our heroes were largely defeated. The rival AI ‘Samaritan’ and its acolytes that wanted to launch it as an oversight to everyday humanity, largely won – ironically wiping out most of the mutual antagonists we’ve encountered and leaving themselves as the sole threat to our team. The Machine gave up its assured existence to save the people who created it with Reese (Jim Caviezel), Harold (Michael Emerson) and Root (Amy Acker) trying a ‘Hail Mary’ – compiled down into suitcase-sized package of essentials before our heroes walked out onto a darkened city street full of well-armed enemies and crossfire. If the show had ended there it would have been a nihilistic but not inappropriate metaphor for the age of technology and the way it can help or hinder.
The return largely picks up those threads immediately – the team spreading out into the city and trying to get the suitcase back to their subway headquarters in a last-ditch attempt to revive the machine before its limited power supply is drained completely. This isn’t helped by the fact that we get to see how a connected-monitored society can do the bidding of a singular intelligence. Despite some of the fantastical elements, it’s entirely possible and contemporary that mobile phones and social networks can be used to hunt people down. As an injured Root seeks escape via the underground trains, her carriage is suddenly full of genuinely concerned people who believe she’s a threat because of Samaritan’s version of an ‘Amber Alert’ and see themselves as heroes ready to stop her. Reese remains the hard man – the muscle who now knows his greater purpose but determined not to go down without a fight. Harold remains the most human – a ‘father’ who was rightly wary of how his creation might outgrow him and be a threat but now sees it as mankind’s last best hope. Fusco (Kevin Chapman) is still the flustered cop trying to do his best (and perhaps deserving of more respect than he’s getting) and there’s no sign of Sarah Shahi’s Shaw, but we know she’ll be turning up soon.
It’s clear that though POI began as a template series of procedural do-gooding, its evolved like its central AIs to show just how we define life and humanity. This isn’t a final run for the casual viewer, but a reward for those who stuck with the show through thick and thin. It was never a ratings juggernaut but something of a fan-favourite, a wide demographic finding the appeal in a show that often zigged instead of zagged and gave us truly amazing episodes like the visually-rich, narratively strong and Johnny Cash lyric’d The Devil’s Share in Season Three.
Granted, this establishing episode was a crash-course in rebooting the hard-drive and one dominated by action rather than moving the story, with some flashback to formative moments (Brett Cullen’s Nathan and Carrie Preston’s Grace – Preston being Emerson’s real-life wife – making appearances) but it all feels like it’s been worth the wait…
After Tuesday’s debut, CBS will burn off episodes of this final run on Mondays and Tuesdays from next week, the finale of this foreshortened run scheduled for early June.
8/10
