A few TV shows instantly come to mind whenever we think of amazing television seasons. Breaking Bad Season 5 perfectly sums up the “fall” part of the traditional rise-and-fall narrative. Game of Thrones Season 4 stands tall thanks to its pacing and political intrigue. We also can’t forget Season 1 of True Detective, which has the most likable cop duo since Detective Mills and Detective Somerset in Se7en. However, Jonathan Nolan also made a great season of TV, and it wasn’t Westworld or Fallout.
According to average ratings compiled from IMDb’s episode scores, the fifth and final chapter of Jonathan Nolan’s sci-fi masterpiece Person of Interest (which premiered on May 3, 2016, on CBS and ended on June 21, 2016) is the 14th best TV season of all time. With a 9.1/10 rating, it beats seasons from many more popular shows, including The Sopranos and The Wire. Every other season of the series is highly rated, but there are a few reasons why this one stands out more.
‘Person of Interest’ Season 5 Has a Satisfying War-of-the-Machines Contest
Person of Interest is more relevant now than when it aired because it’s built around themes of morality and privacy, thanks to the current super-intelligence boom. At the beginning, reclusive billionaire programmer Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) develops a system known as “the Machine” that is capable of predicting terrorist acts. Finch hires former special forces operative John Reese (Jim Caviezel) as his field agent to prevent crimes that aren’t considered threats to national security.
The shorter fifth season (13 episodes) is one extended war, propelled by dread, despair, loss, unpredictability, and sacrifice. It discards the villain-of-the-week format. These episodes focus on Samaritan, a rival mass surveillance system created by Decima Technologies. The Samaritan can eliminate whoever it wishes, which raises an important question about sentience and control. Even worse, Finch’s “The Machine” has become weaker, and the protagonists are mostly in hiding.
Person of Interest Season 5 is one of the greatest television chapters and one of the best TV finales. It beautifully pays off five years of setup. As uncomfortable as some of the early central ideas are, the show brings them to satisfactory conclusions. And with a tighter 13-episode format (other seasons had 22 or 23 each), there is less filler. Every episode propels the main conflict forward. The Machine also becomes a character after years of absorbing large amounts of information. This also gives us an idea of what superintelligence could look like in the future.
The season isn’t just rated highly on IMDb. It has a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, which suggests universal acclaim. It’s a pleasant outcome, considering that Nolan promised one of the best conclusions ever. “We’re going to make 13 kick-a** episodes, and drop the microphone,” he said at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con. And that’s exactly what happened.
‘Person of Interest’ Wasn’t Supposed to End With Season 5
Person of Interest could have lasted for more seasons if the business climate had been different. A shorter fifth and final season was more of a corporate choice than a creative choice. Interestingly, the outcome was positive. A 22-episode fifth season — or a sixth season — might have made the cyberpunk thriller series less interesting, considering that there wasn’t more room for the story to grow (unless Jonathan Nolan and his team reverted to the villain-of-the-week format). However, there is a reason why it ended sooner.
While attending the Needham Emerging Technology Conference in 2016, former CBS CEO Les Moonves revealed that the network didn’t benefit much from the Jonathan Nolan series because it was produced by Warner Bros. Television, with profits split between the two companies. At the time, CBS wanted to change its business model to full ownership. Person of Interest had to be sacrificed, despite the critical acclaim for the series.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moonves said, “The value of content is so much greater than it was before. Having ownership is a huge, huge difference, and it does affect everything we do.” He added, “A show that’s 100% owned will generally get a better time period.” Some might be disappointed to learn that this was the real reason for the early ending, but there’s a reason to smile. It’s still impressive for a TV show to reach 103 episodes. Many shows never last that long these days, or have one season that still stands out, several years later.
- Release Date
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2011 – 2016-00-00
- Network
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CBS
- Showrunner
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Greg Plageman
- Directors
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Chris Fisher, Richard J. Lewis, Fred Toye, Jeffrey G. Hunt, Stephen Surjik, Kenneth Fink, Stephen Williams, Helen Shaver, Alrick Riley, Charles Beeson, Kate Woods, Kevin Bray, Stephen Semel, Jeff T. Thomas, Sylvain White, Alex Zakrzewski, Brad Anderson, Clark Johnson, Colin Bucksey, David Semel, Dennis Smith, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, James Whitmore Jr., Jeffrey Lee Gibson
- Writers
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Jonathan Nolan, Denise Thé, Greg Plageman, Amanda Segel, David Slack, Melissa Scrivner-Love, Dan Dietz, Sean Hennen, Lucas O’Connor, Patrick Harbinson, Michael Sopczynski, Nic Van Zeebroeck, Tony Camerino, Andy Callahan, Ray Utarnachitt, Sabir Pirzada, Ashley Gable, Amy Berg, Jacey Heldrich
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
