Person of Interest - Pilot - Review

The show follows John Reese, a depressed former CIA agent who's living like a bum until he and a suave billionaire scientist team up to prevent crimes before they happen. The scientist, Finch, is played by the fantastic Michael Emerson. He's created some sort of a machine he had designed to prevent the next 9/11. The machine sends all terrorist information to the government and deletes any other crime information it deems irrelevant.

Now. I was pretty confused here from the get go and I didn't think it was explained that thoroughly. From what I gathered, this thing is hidden by the government somewhere but has sensors and cameras everywhere and anywhere. Finch designed a way to gather the "irrelevant" information for himself. The machine gives information in the form of social security numbers and nothing else. These numbers belong to a person who will be involved in some sort of crime in the future. They don't know if said person will be the victim or perpetrator and Finch is determined to prevent as many crimes as possible. How?? Are we supposed to just assume some machine can predict the future without telling us how? I really wish they had focused more on this particular plot instead of Reese's girlfriend flashbacks. He's depressed, I get it but he's not predicting the future and that's more interesting to me.

As far as the characters go, there wasn't much of Taraji in the pilot so I'm going to assume her cop character will have a bigger part later on. All I got from her was that she's suspicious of the "man in a suit" who's going around shooting people and kicking ass. The man in the suit is of course, Reese, who I would say is a cross between like a gunhappy Macgyver and Steve McGarrett. Finch, is basically a Ben Linus in a spiffy coat. Then again, Ben Linus had a spiffy coat in the later seasons of Lost. I was actually surprised at how similar the characters were. One of his first scenes was literally Reese telling Finch he knows nothing about him and Finch proving him wrong by reciting a handful of personal information. Sound familiar? But let's be honest here, I love Michael Emerson and I'd watch an hour of him reading a book.

Will I tune in again? Yes. I'm going to give it a few more episodes. I'm not that big on crime and I enjoy a protagonist that is a hero without being too gunhappy. I'm hoping they throw in some more banter and jokes between the two male leads to balance out all of the action.