“Come Monday…” is aweekly series that will involve a review of, or commentary about, websites, movies, documentaries, televisionshows, sports, music, and whatever else may tickle my fancy at the time. Be assured that these reviews will begenerally positive, as in accordance to the Jimmy Buffett song “ComeMonday.” This is subject to change,however. In fact, I would be mostderelict in my duties to neglect going on a rant every once in a while. For rants promote change, and change can begood—right? Therefore, since good isgenerally considered as being a positive force in 99.3% of the parallel universesthat I am aware of, even a rant could be considered as being somethingpositive, and a genuine hissy-fit would be even better (so I’m told).
Whenwe first heard about [Person of Interest], my wife and I thought that itsounded real interesting. For it touchedupon the appealing (at least to us) themes of working in the shadows to bringcriminal activity out into the light of justice, redemption and just plaintrying to right as many as wrongs as possible.
Well,at least that is what we thought the show was about, and the pilot episodeshowed a great deal of promise. For itstarted out with a bunch of punks hassling a bum on a subway car, and gettingtheir teeth kicked in for their trouble. From there, we are introduced to a really pathetic/creepy (dependingupon the script) Mr. Finch, who used to be Mr. Linus when [Michael Emerson] wason [LOST], who fills us in on the details about Mr. Reese, who is being playedby [Jim Caviezel].
Ona personal note, I just noticed on the IMDB profile of Caviezel that he grew uparound [Mount Vernon, WA], which is in the immediate vicinity of where my son andhis mother lives. I wonder if sherealizes that she has had at least some contact with such a big star? For with her spending most of her life in thearea, it is highly unlikely that she has not had some contact with either himor his family.
Ofcourse, she may not want to admit it now. For Person of Interest never really comes out of the shadows when theplot could easily be having Reese and Finch working with the authoritiesinstead of despite of them.
Theclip at the end of this explains it better than I can, but the premise of theshow is that we are all being monitored in a number of ways by thegovernment. All of this information isfiltered by a special computer program to find terrorist threats, and itignores all of the other stuff that is deemed to be of no great significance.
Ah,but what may not be much of threat to national security can be a great threatto the individuals involved. This iswhere Reese and Finch come in. For Finchwas the one who developed the surveillance program for the government, and heleft in a secret backdoor that allows him access to what it finds. When he sees someone in imminent danger, hesends Reese out to eliminate the threat by any means necessary without exposingtheir little operation to the authorities.
Theirdefinition of “by any means necessary” is what bothers me. For that has Reese stealing arms from illegalarms dealers, gathering information through crooked cops, and generally wreakinghavoc on both persons and property before slipping back into the shadows beforeDet. Carter, who is played by [Taraji P. Henson], can take him into custodywhen they could have them working with each other in the same way as Batman andthe Gotham City police do.
Yeah,Batman is a comic book character, and the producers of Person of Interest aregoing for a more realistic feel. So,does this mean that our society has become too jaded to accept that good guyscan actually be good?
Link: [On YouTube]
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