Simple enough, right? Person of Interest could've run on that premise forever. However, the show didn't stop there. The techno-thriller was also successful because of two additions to Team Machine: Sameen Shaw Sarah Shahi , a government assassin who unknowingly handled the relevant cases for the government until she was blacklisted, and Root Amy Acker , a hacker who chooses the Machine as her new deity.
By the end of the third season, Person of Interest transformed into a show about a secret war between two A. The writers balanced that heady battle for the soul of the world with a grounded storyline about the shifting criminal landscape in New York. Aside: It's truly fascinating that in the s, CBS was home to two thought-provoking and technology-minded dramas that used the procedural format to push challenge the network's brand: Person of Interest and The Good Wife.
And it was not where we were taking the show," says co-showrunner Greg Plageman, who joined the pilot to help Nolan, a first time TV producer, steer the ship. In honor of the show's 10th anniversary, EW hopped on Zoom as one does these days with Nolan and Plageman to look back on some of the show's most memorable episodes. When the series begins, the Machine has been operational for many years.
Finch locates and recruits Reese, who is homeless, to help him handle the irrelevant numbers. Thus, Reese becomes known as the Man in a Suit, a well-dressed do-gooder who shows up when there's trouble, which places him Det. Carter's radar. Looking back at the pilot, Nolan and Plageman recall the disastrous table read that started it all. Michael Emerson couldn't be there, long story, and there was some contention about whether there was even to be a table read.
Foolishly, I agreed to read the stage directions. It's a very high-concept pilot, [and] a lot of it comes down to Michael Emerson explaining what the hell is going on in the show. I though the script for the pilot was fine, but it was pages and pages of Not-Michael Emerson explaining and me stumbling my way through the stage directions. And I think if you went back and polled the folks at Warner Bros.
It was very clear to us coming out of the table read, that the show was not going to go forward. There was talk of recasting. It's just way too long, no one's going to sit for that. Finch and Reese are tasked with protecting Charlie Burton Enrico Colantoni , a seemingly innocent school teacher on the run from the Russian mob.
However, the case isn't all that it seems. While Charlie isn't a perpetrator in this specific instance, he's not just a victim either.
At the end of the hour, the dynamic duo learns that Charlie is actually Elias, a new player in the city's criminal underground who wants to wrest control of the Five Families and tells our heroes to stay out of his way. Written by Amanda Segel, "Witness" broke the show's established format with its downer ending, and expanded the show's world because Elias would go on to become an important recurring character in the ongoing municipal storyline.
TV were during the show's run, they do recall how this episode drew some pushback from the network. Toye] delivered a spectacular episode. It has this beautiful gut punch of an ending where our heroes lose. And we picked the Nina Simone song for the end of this, and we thought that was fing great. And here we introduce Enrico, he's this terrific actor and here's this amazing character. And the network was not happy. They were very distraught to say the least, and it was the first fight we had about the identity of the show.
They said, "Well, they can't just lose. It's like Batman, you got a rogues gallery, and Enrico is going to come back and we'll do more episodes. Eventually, they'll get him, [but] it'll take a while. It did to get a point where they didn't want to air the episode.
And this is what saved us: We said, "Well, we're not changing it. We think it's great. And if you don't want to air it, we don't have another episode.
So you're going to be down an episode for [November sweeps]. And this where we're planting a flag that the show is going to have a serialized component. It's not just a case of we us saying it's vitally important our characters lose at some point, because how do you define victory if there's never loss. Eventually, to their credit, they relented and allowed us to start moving the show, which had always been the plan, towards this carefully serialized format.
When a mid-level NSA analyst named Henry Peck comes extremely to discovering the Machine's existence and leaking it to the press, it falls on Finch and Reese to protect him because the government decides to assassinate him to protect the program.
While it may seem as though this story was inspired by Edward Snowden, this episode aired a full year before the former NSA contractor exposed the extent of America's surveillance program. In hindsight, "No Good Deed" was one of the earlier signs that even the relatively conventional first was working on a different level.
I think we even started talking about it for the pitch packet when we wrote the pilot. There [was] a story arena document [with this idea], and I think the arena got to the network as episode 5 and they went, "No, no, no.
What is this stuff? Actually, it's early. It's early to start to unpacking it and going meta with it. The point afterward where people say, "Oh, it's so prescient. How did you know? Yes, Edward Snowden dragged into light the specifics, but it was hidden in plain sight. You were reading articles all the way back to — this was part of the pitch for the pilot. We'd go around to every network, and at one point you take your cell phone out and put it on the coffee table so it's not distracting you, point to the cell phone, and [say], "You understand the NSA has the ability to listen to this pitch right now?
Even if the phone's off, they can turn it back on and they can turn on the microphone. Yes, proud to happily take the badge of prescience on this one, but it was also kind of frustrating like, is no one else paying attention?
The street-level and slow-burning sci-fi arcs finally converge in the season 1 finale when Reese comes to the aid of Caroline Turing Acker , a therapist HR has been charged with killing. Like "Witness," however, there's a twist: Caroline is actually the ruthless hacker and contract killer Root, whom Reese and Finch crossed paths with in an earlier episode. It turns out she ordered the hit on herself to draw Finch out and find the Machine. The episode ends with Root kidnapping Finch. We knew we wanted to cliffhanger out [at the end of the season], and I think it just kind of always helped us understand that we needed to fill out this world, as Jonah said, the rogues gallery.
We kept coming up with, different variations beyond Elias, and you'd the municipal, you had the more federal, and you have the international. We would just keep building it out and we would be able to go back. Person of Interest is a well made and well acted espionage procedural, though its characters aren't terribly well developed and its intriguing premise yields mixed results.
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Reese and Finch must figure out whether a young prosecutor is a victim or a suspect. Reese and Finch question the machine's reliability when it prompts the investigation of a teenager who was killed years earlier; Finch recalls the origin of the machine. Reese infiltrates a gang to get closer to a former Marine that the machine tagged. Reese and Finch try to unravel a threat to a promising young doctor Linda Cardellini. Reese and Finch must investigate a judge known for his tough sentences, who wants nothing to do with their vigilante justice.
A new person of interest, a beautiful and resourceful woman, leaves Reese captivated. After learning the latest person of interest Alan Dale has connections to Cold War Soviet espionage circles, Reese and Finch learn how covert operations used to be handled. Things get complicated for Reese and Finch when the machine names Detective Carter as the latest person of interest.
Detective Carter faces fallout from her encounter with Reese and Finch; the machine comes up with not one, but four Social Security numbers. More Headlines. Top Box Office. More Top Movies Trailers.
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Please click the link below to receive your verification email. Cancel Resend Email. Want to see. Episode List. Season 1 Person of Interest Critics Consensus Person of Interest is a well made and well acted espionage procedural, though its characters aren't terribly well developed and its intriguing premise yields mixed results.
See score details. You might also like. Rate And Review Submit review Want to see. Super Reviewer. Rate this season Oof, that was Rotten. What did you think of this tv season? Step 2 of 2 How did you buy your ticket? Let's get your review verified. Fandango AMCTheatres. More Info. Submit By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie.
How did you buy your ticket? Episodes 1. Air date: Sep 22, Air date: Sep 29, Mission Creep. The series was owned by Warner Bros. It was said that CBS didn't profit off of Person of Interest as much as they would have liked because a great deal of the ad revenue went to Warner Bros. If Person of Interest season 6 did happen, the events that occurred in season 5 wouldn't have been compressed into a episode arc, as showrunner Greg Plageman has admitted [via IGN ].
The story with Elias Enrico Colantoni and the battle with Samaritan could have gone on longer, and it's quite possible that some of what happened in season 5 may have been reserved for season 6's story. An additional story that could have played out in season 6 relates to comments that were made by Plageman, who talked about the idea that " backups " of the main characters live on in the Machine.
This was discussed in season 5 by Root Amy Acker , who believed that dying wasn't the end. The concept that a character's " memory " lives on forever is something they likely would have explored more deeply, given the chance.
Plageman has said that this could have led to " some fairly loopy quests " in future seasons. He has a degree in journalism from the University of Montevallo, and is the author of the psychological thriller and time travel novel, "A Man Against the World.
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