An uninteresting hour of television.
If I wasn’t planning on writing something about the pilot episode of CBS’ Person of Interest I would have changed the channel within the first 15 minutes. After seeing promos for it all summer I honestly thought it was going to be good, but this very well may be the first and last time I watch it.
Michael Emerson stars as Mr. Finch, a mysterious man who recruits Jim Caviezel’s character, Reese, into his web of intrigue. Finch has a list of people who will be involved in bad crimes. They may be kidnapped, murdered, or could very well themselves be the one’s committing the crime and he wants Reese to help him to prevent these things from happening.
It takes 40 minutes for us to learn how he obtains the list. Apparently post-9/11 he created a machine for the government that would prevent such an attack again. The machine is everywhere. It has 10,000 ears and 1,000,000 eyes and it takes the information it gathers and breaks them into two groups, relevant (mass loss of life) and irrelevant (social security numbers). He ultimately created a backdoor into the machine to get the irrelevant list so he can help them.
Finch and Reese basically become shadows in their subject’s life. Finch works from a private location while Reese is out following their every move. Reese makes it possible for them to listen to everything they say by compromising their subject’s cell phone. I’ll admit it is a little freaky to see how easy it is for someone to gain access into your daily activities. One thing I did wonder about Reese from his actions was whether he was a vigilante or just a violent individual who is against everyone?
I am wondering if Emerson is being typecast a bit. Last time we saw him he was Ben on Lost and his character was also mysterious and harboring secrets. Apparently Finch, as with Reese, is dead according to records. We don’t learn this until the end of the premiere, but, at this point I am not interested enough to find out what his story is.
Reese also has his own hidden past built into the storyline. Throughout the episode we see flashbacks of Reese with a woman named Jessica. We know she was murdered but we don’t know much else except that Reese feels guilt for not being there to save her.
Someone I was surprised to see as a member of the cast was Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson. It seems like a lot of big screen actors are taking jobs on the small screen these days, Forest Whitaker and Zooey Deschanel are a few that come to mind.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.