Person of Interest
Nov. 16th, 2012 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI have a leeettle bit of breathing room for the next few days, so time to talk about the new nascent obsession! Person of Interest.
I caught one episode of this last season, and thought it was a POS. It seemed to be a show starring two guys, one who acts by not moving his face, and the other who acts by not moving his neck. I now realize, that was the second episode of the series and trying to be a baby pilot. It's still a crap episode, but not a representative one.
Here is why I like the show.
- Jim Caviezel. HOT! I loved him in Count of Monte Cristo and I still do. Brooding is his business. (No, I have not seen Passion of the Christ and do not want to. I'm not ready for hot Jesus.)
- The show's format is basically Pretender, except that in this show, when the mysterious broody guy in black leather shows up to help the frightened woman, she says WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU YOU CREEPY FUCK rather than instantly trusting him.
- This might just be my interpretation, but the show does not seem to be normalizing how ridiculously unethical and stalker-y surveillance is. Our heroes use it, but there's constant dialogue about the danger of the power behind surveillance, and they both seem to have reached a post-moral, ends-justify-means way of thinking about it, rather than going through lots of rationalization about how it's not creepy when they do it. Cause it still is.
- Person of Interest uses 9/11 as a plot point in a non-appropriative way. What happens is this: Reese (Caviezel) is an Army Ranger who has found the love of his life. She hates it when he's deployed, so he has quit. They're on a romantic get away together when she flips on the TV and you hear an announcer in Spanish. Reese says, "What is it, a plane crash?" She says, "I think it's two planes."
And that's it. That's all you get of 9/11. But from that and where Reese is now, you can fill in the dots: he reenlisted. He got deployed. Something deeply traumatic happened (that I'm sure will get filled in over the season) that caused him to split from the military. So his story is about 9/11, but only in the way that everyone's lives were changed by 9/11. This isn't a CSI:NY type of situation, where the main character's wife was oh-so-tragically killed by terrorists on 9/11 and this wound motivates him. No. This is about a character whose life changed because the world changed. I love the shit out of this. I was a little worried when I realized they were bringing up 9/11, but I thought they handled it subtly and respectfully. (I reserve the right to be pissed when they inevitably revisit it and fuck it up.)
- There is a fridged woman. Only...she's not fridged. I may have tuned out--I don't remember if she's supposed to be dead. (And even if they haven't said, fair chance she dies or he thinks she's dead but she comes back, only she's always been a spy-- I've been around the block for TV spy shows.) But that is not the reason they are not together. They are not together because HE BROKE UP WITH HER because he redeployed and didn't think it was fair to make her wait. HE IS ALONE BECAUSE HE CHOSE IT. He chose to put something else before his relationship with her, and devote himself to that so completely that his relationship ended. So his grief and regret are about choices, not about someone shooting his woman. Maybe she does get killed later, but the fact remains, they broke up and she went on to marry someone else. Even though we only see her in milky flashbacks, she had her own life and made her own choices, too. REFRESHING. OMG.
- There is a main character who is a black woman. She is not one of the two leads, it's true. But she is (for now) the main antagonist, and she kicks ASS.
- When it comes down to it, though, what really makes this show work is Finch and Reese. They're both so completely broken that they're pursuing this thing that will surely kill them because it gives them purpose. So far, they have no other agendas. And even by episode six, they have completely bonded over this shared endeavor. Like soldiers on the front lines--the fact that they are completely isolated and what they're doing is almost certainly fatal makes them very loyal very fast. And the show knows this, and goes straight to the hurt/comfort. Oh, old school. *heart*
I caught one episode of this last season, and thought it was a POS. It seemed to be a show starring two guys, one who acts by not moving his face, and the other who acts by not moving his neck. I now realize, that was the second episode of the series and trying to be a baby pilot. It's still a crap episode, but not a representative one.
Here is why I like the show.
- Jim Caviezel. HOT! I loved him in Count of Monte Cristo and I still do. Brooding is his business. (No, I have not seen Passion of the Christ and do not want to. I'm not ready for hot Jesus.)
- The show's format is basically Pretender, except that in this show, when the mysterious broody guy in black leather shows up to help the frightened woman, she says WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU YOU CREEPY FUCK rather than instantly trusting him.
- This might just be my interpretation, but the show does not seem to be normalizing how ridiculously unethical and stalker-y surveillance is. Our heroes use it, but there's constant dialogue about the danger of the power behind surveillance, and they both seem to have reached a post-moral, ends-justify-means way of thinking about it, rather than going through lots of rationalization about how it's not creepy when they do it. Cause it still is.
- Person of Interest uses 9/11 as a plot point in a non-appropriative way. What happens is this: Reese (Caviezel) is an Army Ranger who has found the love of his life. She hates it when he's deployed, so he has quit. They're on a romantic get away together when she flips on the TV and you hear an announcer in Spanish. Reese says, "What is it, a plane crash?" She says, "I think it's two planes."
And that's it. That's all you get of 9/11. But from that and where Reese is now, you can fill in the dots: he reenlisted. He got deployed. Something deeply traumatic happened (that I'm sure will get filled in over the season) that caused him to split from the military. So his story is about 9/11, but only in the way that everyone's lives were changed by 9/11. This isn't a CSI:NY type of situation, where the main character's wife was oh-so-tragically killed by terrorists on 9/11 and this wound motivates him. No. This is about a character whose life changed because the world changed. I love the shit out of this. I was a little worried when I realized they were bringing up 9/11, but I thought they handled it subtly and respectfully. (I reserve the right to be pissed when they inevitably revisit it and fuck it up.)
- There is a fridged woman. Only...she's not fridged. I may have tuned out--I don't remember if she's supposed to be dead. (And even if they haven't said, fair chance she dies or he thinks she's dead but she comes back, only she's always been a spy-- I've been around the block for TV spy shows.) But that is not the reason they are not together. They are not together because HE BROKE UP WITH HER because he redeployed and didn't think it was fair to make her wait. HE IS ALONE BECAUSE HE CHOSE IT. He chose to put something else before his relationship with her, and devote himself to that so completely that his relationship ended. So his grief and regret are about choices, not about someone shooting his woman. Maybe she does get killed later, but the fact remains, they broke up and she went on to marry someone else. Even though we only see her in milky flashbacks, she had her own life and made her own choices, too. REFRESHING. OMG.
- There is a main character who is a black woman. She is not one of the two leads, it's true. But she is (for now) the main antagonist, and she kicks ASS.
- When it comes down to it, though, what really makes this show work is Finch and Reese. They're both so completely broken that they're pursuing this thing that will surely kill them because it gives them purpose. So far, they have no other agendas. And even by episode six, they have completely bonded over this shared endeavor. Like soldiers on the front lines--the fact that they are completely isolated and what they're doing is almost certainly fatal makes them very loyal very fast. And the show knows this, and goes straight to the hurt/comfort. Oh, old school. *heart*
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-16 06:46 pm (UTC)I think what clinched it for me was the episode where they're ripping off Rear Window. Where Reese is like, Finch! You have to go out and stalk people! Let me teach self defense! And Finch is all :( And Reese has to stay in the apartment and look at computer screens and he's all :(
The fact that you can get depressed, fatalistic, completely broken people, and then they get WHINY WITH EACH OTHER. LOVE.