It's been a few years since I've watched something on CBS that wasn't sports, an awards show, or Letterman. 2007, to be exact, when I watched Jericho because I thought that surely all those fans sending nuts to the network execs in order to save the show couldn't possibly be wrong (they were). However, Person of Interest stars Michael Emerson, whose Ben Linus was one of the best things about Lost for several seasons. His presence merits at least 44-minutes-plus-commercials of my time, if only for one night.
It's probably going to stay at one night. While Person of Interest has some sci-fi intrigue and decent action scenes, it's a police procedural at heart, and that's a genre I've never taken to. Even then, the particulars of the show don't work for me. It tries to create vague uneasiness about the surveillance state while claiming that eavesdropping is okay when done by the right people - for instance, the heroes hack into somebody's phone without qualms. Jim Caviezel, the show's lead actor, is portrayed as a badass but also a white hat good guy, which means he shoots a lot of people in the leg. By the eighth person, it becomes comical (the fate of one antagonist is left ambiguous, probably because the show is chickening out). It's also ludicrous how Caviezel's character goes from suicidal bum to Bruce Wayne/Batman hybrid in the span of a few hours, and one of the episode's plot twists is telegraphed a mile away because otherwise the story would be too straightforward.
Person of Interest isn't without merit; the action scenes are good, Caviezel is a convincing asskicker, and Emerson can play the role of the mysterious man pulling all the strings in his sleep. But as long as the stories lag behind the production and acting, I have no time for this show.
