You’re being watched — again. But not for much longer.
Person of Interest returns for its fifth and final season on CBS Tuesday (10 ET/PT), with twice-weekly episodes due Mondays and Tuesdays for its shortened 13-episode run.
And judging by the first two installments — “Blue Screen of Death” and ““Situation Normal, All (Messed) Up” — things aren’t exactly looking up for the Machine or its defenders, who use the special computer's ability to predict (and help prevent) crimes. They appear to be losing the battle against an artificial intelligence known as Samaritan that wants to destroy them.
As last season ended, “Our guys were sort of up against it with the machine's source code compressed into a briefcase,” says executive producer Greg Plageman. “And so they're headed out into a blaze of glory, it looked like. We thought there's really no way we could cheat that moment. We sort of had to pick up right where we left off. The band has been dispersed. The Machine is down. They're now living in a Samaritan world.”
On the bright side, all five members of the Machine’s squad are back for the final run: The brains (Michael Emerson’s computer programmer Harold Finch and Amy Acker’s hacker, Root), the muscle (Jim Caviezel’s Reese and Sarah Shahi’s Shaw, both former CIA operatives) and their inside man at the NYPD, Fusco (Kevin Chapman).
Emerson, who plays the crime-fighting supercomputer’s architect, calls Season 5 “an intersection between Harold Finch’s growing realization of the humanity of what he’s created and his growing realization that something desperate has to happen if Samaritan is to be stopped.”
It’s worth noting how computer privacy has moved from pure sci-fi fodder to front-page news since POI premiered in 2011. Two years later, Edward Snowden leaked National Security Agency documents. And this year, Apple and the FBI waged a high-stakes court battle to determine whether the government can compel tech companies to to remove security features on their customers’ mobile phones.
“A show that is always a little bit ahead of technology and some of these ethical issues that we're going to be grappling with as a society — that sticks with people," Plageman says.
Emerson says the show's prescient premise has resonated: “I think more about it and on a darker note than I ever would’ve before the show. Part of what worries me is there’s little to be done about it. I’m not going to separate myself from these devices," he says, referring to technology such as smartphones. "I don’t know what to do, except to be aware of it.”
After showing restraint the past four seasons, the POI writers have finally made a few more jokes about Lost, the ABC mystery that won an Emmy for Emerson. (Both shows share executive producer J.J. Abrams). As he filmed scenes involving liquid nitrogen canisters reminiscent of the Lost finale, he thought to himself, “Is it inevitable that a show with high ambitions starts to look Lost-ian at the end?’ And maybe it is.”
Emerson’s been idle since POI finished production last December, and says he has no idea what’s next. But after spending the last 10 years on network dramas, he’s enjoying the uncertainty.
"I was tired and felt a little wrung out. I couldn’t even think about getting right back on the treadmill. I wouldn’t mind getting back on the live-theater stage, though in what play or character, I don’t know. But it would be fun to do some lighter material.”
Would a spinoff featuring Finch and his canine sidekick Bear qualify?
Maybe. “It would be a post-POI landscape, so they’d have to shift gears. It would be interesting if they adopted some much quieter and more normal life, and yet were always being tugged back into the world of supercomputers and crime-fighting,” Emerson imagines. “I don’t know what it would look like, but it’d be cool.”
