Why Person of Interest Matters to Geeks

                Please excuse me if I am a little lightheaded from the recent third season finale of the CBS show Person of Interest. Not giving away spoilers, the episode was centered around a mock trial of several individuals linked to an omnipresent machine whose very existence invaded the privacy of every identifiable thing on the planet. How it ended could rival The Terminator franchise in believable paranoia.

                Person of Interest is a show about the intrusiveness, dependence, misuse, overabundance, and misunderstanding of technology. It uses a format that closely resembles the legendary comic book crimefighter Batman. It stars the likes of Michael Emerson of Lost, Jim Caviezel of Frequency (yeah, I know he played Jesus but I won’t blame him for that one) and Amy Acker of practically anything Joss Whedon-involved. So why is it that when I talk to my geek friends, none of them are watching this show?

 It’s not like there isn’t a fan base considering it’s one of the most-watched dramas on network television. It’s not like the show is diminutive or insulting towards geeks considering that they are the heroes of the show. And the show isn’t primed towards non-geeks considering it was created by Jonathan Nolan (who gave us The Dark Knight and the upcoming Interstellar, brother of Christopher) and produced by Geek God J.J. Abrams. And it’s not like CBS doesn’t court the geek demo considering that it’s the home of The Big Bang Theory. So again, why is this show not talked about on par with Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead?

Person of Interest, for those who don’t know anything about the show, centers around a mysterious tech master named Harold Finch (Emerson) who has created an artificial intelligence that he calls “the machine” in the interest of sifting through the endless digital databases to look for potential terrorists in the wake of 9/11. In the process, his machine wasn’t just picking up the trails of terrorists but also street-level criminal acts such as premeditated murder.  While the overseers of The Machine (aka the federal government) weren’t interested in these particular crimes and deemed them irrelevant. Finch’s conscience forced him to create a clandestine operation to save these would-be victims or stop these would-be criminals (Minority Report anyone?), but due to his physical disabilities has to find a partner to do the leg work. Enter John Reese (Caviezel), a former CIA assassin on the run from his former employers. Together they foil the bad guys while constantly running up against even bigger foes with vastly superior resources.

This is a show that is tailored to geeks and yet doesn’t seem to get the respect that it deserves from the community. It has the big action moments that are near movie-quality with characters that would be considered superheroes if only they donned some sort of costume. Yet the show is also incredibly smart, dealing with relevant current issues as well as timeless science fiction themes in regards to the role and impact of A.I., shadow governments created by technology, and even religion as a particular character practically worships The Machine. And while these are all heavy elements, the show also have cunning humor and more than expected laugh out loud moments thrown in with the explosions and the tech speak.

And while we’re on the subject of tech speak, the use and understanding of both current and next-generation technology is impeccable. The show tries it’s hardest to stay within the realms of the possible, with the exception of the superhuman ability of these characters to heal from combat wounds.  The larger villains of the show feel real because they also follow rules of the possible, therefore allowing their threat to have genuine stakes. Also fascinating is how each villain group, like Batman or X-Men, feels unique to one another, making them memorable and exciting when either on their own or mixed together.

I know that CBS is notorious for having shows that feel like a one-trick pony because they usually are. Even Big Bang Theory recycles the same joke over and over again. And while there are persons-of-the-week episodes, in many cases these cases usually have a significance in the grand scheme of the season or the show. Some will return to give a hand in another case, others happen to have a clue to the overall problem. And yet as the show has progressed, these episodes become more central to the mythology, more tied to events reaching the finale. And going back to the season three ender, let’s just say that the show’s procedural elements are unlikely to continue as the show evolved into something naturally different from where it started. And not since Breaking Bad has a season finale been both exciting and terrifying in its implications both to the characters and to the show itself.

Person of Interest doesn’t really need geek support to sustain itself, but it’s surprising that geeks haven’t gravitated towards it as they have with other shows. In my humble opinion, that needs to change. Geeks have complained constantly about not having fun smart shows that deal with things that interest them. Yet here is a show that does all of that and on a constant basis. What more could you ask for?

And for the record. Jim Caviezel isn’t Jesus. He’s Batman. In a suit.