Person of Interest
It’s a procedural series about a vigilante hacker and a spy he hires to save people. They are supported by an artificial super-intelligence that eventually gets unleashed, turning the series into a scifi thriller. Created by Jonathan Nolan, the lesser known director/writer brother of Christopher Nolan.
Started watching the series Person of Interest (2011).
I like how the protagonists think themselves the good guys but with their methods are actually not far from being the bad guys. Vigilantes.
The corrupt cop Fusco now works for them and infiltrated the police — would be cool if there will be more characters like him. So many shows feature secret organizations that are elusive to capture, but they are almost always the villains. Some exceptions that come to mind: Dexter, Death Note, maybe Alias.
Also I love Fusco because he’s also good at his work. Somethin interest a MC said about him: “Why did you become bad? I don’t think you do it because of money. I think you are just loyal.” Implying he would become loyal to them as well. Turns out there were a few bumps about that… In general, I find bad guys who just have different morals are the best. For example when they want to fix the world but think the government is on the way.
The side characters are pretty good in this series. I want to see almost everyone again.
Reese is quite the stereotypic hero and Finch acts quite stiff. I expect there will be more regulars in later seasons, and with that maybe better chemistry.
Watching Person of Interest. Reese gets injured bad enough to be stuck in a wheelchair, so he and Finch change roles. Reese is holed in an apartment watching screens while Finch goes to do field work. I love episodes like this.
Reese arrives at a crime scene where someone is lying dead, shot, and asks “What happened here?” to which Fusco deadpans: “Lead poisoning. It’s going around the neighborhood”.
The last episode of the first season was great. Way to bring everything together and create an uplifting cliffhanger.
Watching more Person of Interest. I notice this series has a surprising amount of variation. At least compared to those police shows that all start with a murder. I’m in the first season and I happened to see some spoilers that later this will become more sci-fi.
Still watching Person of Interest. The protagonist duo has this interesting, repeating trope I’m not sure I’ve seen in any other work: When a “friend”, usually Fusco, is in trouble they just ignore it for a while, see if it will sort itself out. In the most recent case it pushed Carter over a pretty big limit to cover for Fusco. And earlier there was a case where Reese was caught and Finch kept telling Carter it would be fine, but in the end Carter saved him before Finch was ready to execute his “plan” (played for laughs).
I thought Root was a bit weak character before, but then she turned into a “fanatic” supporter of the Machine, which was great. I’m having trouble remembering examples of the rather narrow trope I have in mind here. Maybe Mikami from Death Note. And from “real life” Roko’s basilisk.
Jotting down notes for the silly attempt at AGI I started yesterday. I just wanted to quickly get to a point where I don’t know how to proceed so that I can get back to working with other things — things with a realistic chance of succeeding.
I have to admit I was partly inspired to try the whole thing after watching Finch in Person of Interest.
Watching Person of Interest, and losing interest. It’s the final season and while in some ways it’s at its peak, it also means I’ve seen all it can give and I wanted something more. In the end it was quite an orthodox show, only the subject matter was a bit more intersting than usual.
Whenever the series manages to be unpredictable, I also get this nagging feeling that they did something wrong, like they were just randomly shaking up things because they were afraid viewers would get bored. And I’m not even saying it’s bad being orthodox or predictable, but being orthodox and predictable at the same time is rather bad.