Person of Interest is a tv show that ran on CBS for five seasons. Until recently, I had not thought of it as science fiction, but more action/adventure. However, it certainly is, based on the existence of The Machine. The Machine, developed by Harold Finch, watches everyone every minute of every day, looking for signs of potential violence. Every week, in the early seasons, it would identify one person (referred to as a “number”), who was either planning violence toward another person or was in danger of being killed himself or herself. Finch would then send out his operative John Reese to prevent the violence from happening. He also elicited the help of Police Detective Lionel Fusco, a reluctant participant. Coincidentally, they were pursued by Fusco’s boss Jocelyn Carter (played by Taraji Henson, now on Empire), though later circumstances changed so that she joined them.
Along the way, Finch and Reese attract the attention of others, such as the government agency who commissioned the machine and now want to destroy it, and later, another group who is building their own machine. But there is a difference. This new machine, known as Samaritan, is given powers that Finch’s machine does not have — namely, its own volition. This results in the taking of lives it doesn’t see as relevant — for the greater good as it sees it. So, in the later seasons, Finch and Reese, joined by two other operatives, are not only working with the numbers provided by The Machine to save one person, but are battling against Samaritan to save humanity.
I enjoyed this series from the beginning, and although I got a little bogged down in the middle, when the series started adding a lot of new elements, it maintained my attention enough to keep watching and I stuck with it. And the mad dash to the end when they were trying to stop Samaritan was nothing short of amazing.
If you have not seen this series, it’s available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon. Take a look. You might be surprised how good it is.