Person Of Interest - Part 3

[Man in the Suit]

Maybe I was a little too hasty with my season ranking. I love season 5 for the individual episodes, but now I'm thinking about S3 and S4's cohesion and seeing the whole team together. 3 and 4 also had the advantage of a bigger budget and time where characters could pop in at any time. Dammit, I don't know. I love the last three seasons so much.

This is the only show that could make me emotional by [BLACKOUT]having a character touch PS3 wires while saying goodbye.[/BLACKOUT]

 

[Batmannerism]

Maybe I was a little too hasty with my season ranking. I love season 5 for the individual episodes, but now I'm ]

You know, I feel like season 5 should have been the second half of season 4.

To me season 1 and 3 were absolutely perfect (both have absolutely killer endings) , season 2 was great, season 4 I felt a bit too drawn out around the whole Samaritan story, which they could have wrapped up in a single season).

Anyway, as finales go it was still great.

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

Ranking the seasons will probably be the most divisive things to do for fans. Mostly because the fanbase seems to mostly fall one way or another on the direction the show took. I know there's alot of people who loved the procedural stuff from the first half (I loved it), and wound up missing that structure in the later half. While other (like me) really liked how they changed things up, pretty much starting with what happened with Carter and Samaritan.

It's going to be one of those things, where some might just have preferred the beginning and other will have loved the ballsy final half.

 

[Man in the Suit]

So, I'm probably just reading into this too much, but... did Sarah Shahi and Jonah Nolan have a falling out and/or is angry about the direction the show went? The only time she tweeted about POI this season was for "6,741." Everybody else (except Jim Caviezel because he isn't on social media) tweeted about the episodes and thanked Jonah for the best job ever.

And now she goes online after the series ends and retweets a pic from a guest spot on Ray Donovan, when critics and fans have been praising her performance in POI's final season.

Weird.

 

[Batmannerism]

Ranking the seasons will probably be the most divisive things to do for fans. Mostly because the fanbase seems to mostly fall one way or another on the direction the show took. I know there's alot of people who loved the procedural stuff from the first half (I loved it), and wound up missing that structure in the later half. While other (like me) really liked how they changed things up, pretty much starting with what happened with Carter and Samaritan.

It's going to be one of those things, where some might just have preferred the beginning and other will have loved the ballsy final half.

Ranking the seasons ! Yes ! Great idea, totally have to do it. God, even getting a top 10 of episodes would be really tough.

Who wants to start ? I'll have to go away and think furiously about this.

 

[Snow Queen]

[YT]7I8OeQs7cQA[/YT]

At the start of the season 5 trailer, the machine feeds scroll to 2017. I don't recall seeing that in the show, did I miss it somewhere?

 

[Man in the Suit]

I think it might be from when The Machine was experiencing all time at once in "SNAFU". I could be wrong, tho.

 

[Man in the Suit]

The more I think about Season 5, the more I think they saw the writing on the wall, or heard network cancellation chatter after they wrote 5x08...

Spoiler

• Introducing Reese's CIA bossman in 5x03 who seems like he could've been a future ally. He was looking at the street cameras, too. Nothing ever came of it.
• Root getting the missile in 5x07 that was never used. POI writers never forget things like that.
• Shaw being held by Samaritan for so long. Then she escapes and reunites with Root and the Team in a C Plot in 5x09.
• Root dies right after reuniting with Shaw. Michael Emerson was quoted saying he thought they were just making a regular season and didn't see the true endgame until he got the script for 5x10.
• Bringing back Elias and then just offing him soon after.
• Jeff Blackwell's arc. Dude goes from questioning who he works for to becoming Samaritan God Mode Sniper. I think one of the writers or production staff posted on Twitter that Josh Close got to set and saved the day while making 5x10. Was he called in for an episode he wasn't contracted for? Hmm...
• Fusco's half season search for the missing people didn't really lead him anywhere until Agent LeRoux returned in 5x12.
• The tonal whiplash of 5x11 compared to 10, 12, 13. It was co-written by Jonah Nolan's assistant and the writing was noticeably weaker compared to other episodes. The Machine and Finch conversations, and the Mayhem Twins were great tho. Why give an episode following the death of a main character to an assistant? A leftover episode? This could be the result of Jonah, Greg, & Denise coming up with the best possible ending on a very compressed schedule.
• The VERY late introduction of Ice-9.
• Control's whereabouts are unknown. They couldn't bring her back because they had no time. This doesn't really bother me.

This is just my speculation, but it adds up. They did a great job considering the situation they might've been in.

 

[Snow Queen]

The more I think about Season 5, the more I think they saw the writing on the wall, or heard network cancellation chatter after they wrote 5x08...

Spoiler

• Introducing Reese's CIA bossman in 5x03 who seems like he could've been a future ally. He was looking at the street cameras, too. Nothing ever came of it.
• Root getting the missile in 5x07 that was never used. POI writers never forget things like that.
• Shaw being held by Samaritan for so long. Then she escapes and reunites with Root and the Team in a C Plot in 5x09.
• Root dies right after reuniting with Shaw. Michael Emerson was quoted saying he thought they were just making a regular season and didn't see the true endgame until he got the script for 5x10.
• Bringing back Elias and the just offing him soon after.
• Jeff Blackwell's arc. Dude goes from questioning who he works for to becoming Samaritan God Mode Sniper. I think one of the writers or production staff posted on Twitter that Josh Close got to set and saved the day while making 5x10. Was he called in for an episode he wasn't contracted for? Hmm...
• Fusco's half season search for the missing people didn't really lead him anywhere until Agent LeRoux returned in 5x12.
• The tonal whiplash of 5x11 compared to 10, 12, 13. It was co-written by Jonah Nolan's assistant and the writing was noticeably weaker compared to other episodes. The Machine and Finch conversations, and the Mayhem Twins were great tho. Why give an episode following the death of a main character to an assistant? A leftover episode? This could be the result of Jonah, Greg, & Denise coming up with the best possible ending on a very compressed schedule.
• The VERY late introduction of Ice-9.
• Control's whereabouts are unknown. They couldn't bring her back because they had no time. This doesn't really bother me.

This is just my speculation, but it adds up. They did a great job considering the situation they might've been in.

That's exactly the impression I got as well.

[BLACKOUT]I do wish they had managed to bring back Beale. It makes episode 3 feel very superfluous without that. I think it would have been cool if he came back in 12 as the new Control, and realized quick just how bad Samaritan was and helped Shaw and Reese get into the NSA.[/BLACKOUT]

 

[Man in the Suit]

That's exactly the impression I got as well.

[BLACKOUT]I do wish they had managed to bring back Beale. It makes episode 3 feel very superfluous without that. I think it would have been cool if he came back in 12 as the new Control, and realized quick just how bad Samaritan was and helped Shaw and Reese get into the NSA.[/BLACKOUT]

[BLACKOUT]That would've been awesome. I figured Beale had to return eventually because he was played by Keith David when they could've got any actor.

But yeah... Everyone should've been prepared for big things to happen this season. Especially with that Buzzfeed interview where Jonah & Greg said they made a decision to end it and knew they made the right one when CBS didn't give them notes on the scripts.

Or when Jonah released an apology the day 5x10 aired. (Nobody took him seriously. I didn't! I will never doubt that man again... )[/BLACKOUT]

 

[Batmannerism]

I thought of three more characters I wish they'd brought back:

1) I was always hoping they'd bring back Alistair Westley ( season 2 episode "Critical care") the ex MI6 guy who tries to blackmail the Doctor into fatal malpractice.
He would have been a decent adversary for at least one more episode - given that the Yogorovs got plenty of screentime in both season 1 and 3, and they were nowhere as cool.

2) I wish they'd been able to bring back was Judge Samuel Gates (from season 1 episode 5, "Judgment") as a one-off ally.

3) Leon Tao, I mean what else needs to be said ?

Personally, I think season 4's storyline was unnecessarily drawn out - and they could have actually fit in the rise and fall of samaritan in a single season.
Some of the initial "new identitiy" episodes were great, "Pretenders" was my favorite, but it got old after a while. I'm sure they could have squeezed some of the above characters into season 4 if not season 5.

 

[Man in the Suit]

Matt's Inside Line:

You wouldn’t happen to be withholding any Person of Interest scoop from us, would you? —Ashley

Silly Ashley, the series has ended!

(Psst, as a matter of fact…. I found this a bit curious: When I interviewed Michael Emerson to preview the series finale — which I had already seen — he asked for my take on, “Who’s that dark-haired guy that gets on the motorcycle, in the closing montage?” And yet no such scene made it into the finale. When I asked the producers about this “mystery motorcyclist,” they had a good chuckle about Emerson not sticking to “talking points”… and then clammed up. Make of that what you will.)

 

[kvz5]

Matt's Inside Line:

!!!

That's totally[BLACKOUT] Reese[/BLACKOUT]. Jonah's definitely going for the [BLACKOUT]TDKR[/BLACKOUT] ending.

 

[Man in the Suit]

!!!

That's totally[BLACKOUT] Reese[/BLACKOUT]. Jonah's definitely going for the [BLACKOUT]TDKR[/BLACKOUT] ending.

Or maybe... PLOT TWIST...

Spoiler

LAMBERT LIVES

 

[DarkShadow10]

Can someone tell me what happens to Travers please?

 

[Man in the Suit]

Denise Thé is a consulting producer on Gotham now. I really hope she runs her own show next season.

 

[Snow Queen]

Denise Thé is a consulting producer on Gotham now. I really hope she runs her own show next season.

Oh...oh...poor Denise Thé.

 

[Man in the Suit]

I know... I mean, she was made co-showrunner of POI in the final season. Such a demotion. I hope this is temporary. She's gotta be able to sell something or attach herself to another project.

 

[Snow Queen]

Hopefully. She wrote/co-wrote my three favourite episodes, I'd be all over a show run by her. But not even she can save Gotham at this point...

 

[Man in the Suit]

I'm not even sure I'd survive the first season of her own show. There happened to be lots of dust and onions cut in my house the nights her POI episodes aired.

I forgot that she wrote "The Contingency" with Jonah.

Spoiler

"Human beings have come as far as we're gonna go. I want to see what happens next." - Root, 2x01

DAMN. DAMNDAMNDAMN.

 

[Man in the Suit]

Spoiler

Joker: "Do you want to know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the... little emotions. In... you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards"

The Machine: “I was built to predict people. But to predict them, you have to truly understand them. So, I began breaking their lives down into moments. Trying to find the connections, the things that explained why they did what they did...And what I found was, that the moment that often mattered the most, the moment when you truly found out who they were, was often their last one.”

Gaaaahhhhhh... This show has consumed my life. There will never be anything like it.

 

[Man in the Suit]

I watched the rerun of "MIA" and I forgot that Finch called Root "Samantha" a few times. Iirc, that's the only episode he's ever called her that. Soooo weird.

 

[DyeLorean]

I just finished Season 5.

Oh well, there it goes a show that early on was spectacular television, but in seasons 4 and 5, it just got so convoluted, with plot holes, arcs that lead nowhere, lots (LOTS) of boring shooting sequences, that I just didn't care at the end, to be honest.

I say this very sadly because the show did have it's brilliant moments, even in season 5 (some ideas regarding artificial intelligence were quite good), but I think it deviated too much from what it originally was. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. I was more than glad with the introduction of Samaritan but in the end I think it damaged the show.

I liked the episodes that were more like detective stories, like a mystery show, with clues, plot twists, etc. When they turned into action repetitiveness overload is were they lost me. And there was a lot of that in the last two seasons.

Anyway, it had great characters, and it was much smarter than most tv shows, so goodbye Person of Interest, you've been good.

 

[Man in the Suit]

I just finished Season 5.

Oh well, there it goes a show that early on was spectacular television, but in seasons 4 and 5, it just got so convoluted, with plot holes, arcs that lead nowhere, lots (LOTS) of boring shooting sequences, that I just didn't care at the end, to be honest.

I say this very sadly because the show did have it's brilliant moments, even in season 5 (some ideas regarding artificial intelligence were quite good), but I think it deviated too much from what it originally was. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. I was more than glad with the introduction of Samaritan but in the end I think it damaged the show.

I liked the episodes that were more like detective stories, like a mystery show, with clues, plot twists, etc. When they turned into action repetitiveness overload is were they lost me. And there was a lot of that in the last two seasons.

Anyway, it had great characters, and it was much smarter than most tv shows, so goodbye Person of Interest, you've been good.

That's... interesting. Most fans and critics seem to agree that the series got better as it went, except for how some feel about the last four episodes. Seasons 3 through 5 were truly spectacular television. Not convoluted at all, IMO. I don't think it deviated for the original premise (there were always Numbers), it just was a natural progression. The Machine went from a cool plot device with potential to an actual character.

As much as I like the overall arc and flashbacks in the first two seasons, the procedurals were just so... ordinary? "He isn't the perp... he's the victim!" Why do that when Greer could monologue about titans, or have Analog Interfaces conversing? The Samaritan arc made the show stand out from anything on TV. It gave it it's true identity and what makes it a sci-fi classic.

 

[C. Lee]

For us (my wife and I) season 4 was a mess and we didn't watch the last half of the season. We decided to try again at the start of season 5 and it was back to being good so we finished it out.