When CBS first started airing “Person of Interest” some years back, I didn’y pay it much attention. It was just another “rogue cop doing justice behind the scenes” show, with the mior tweak thay said cop was given heads-up on crimes by some smart coputer. Meh. But then I started hearing that the show slowly became more than that. Rather than staying a one-dimensional Macguffin, “The Machine” turned into something really important… and the show slid into full-up science fiction. It began to deal with the what-if of artificial intelligence that has access to the complete surveillance apparatus of the US, what it could do with that, and whether or not that was a really good idea. And then it got even better: “The Machine” had been “raised” to be ethical. But there was a *second* artificial intelligence that *wasn’t* raised to be ethical. And the two AIs… don’t like each other. Season Four had it’s finale more than a year ago; season five will, at long last, finally return May 3.
The season 4 finale was a damn fine finale. It would have been frustrating had it been the series finale, which it looked like it might be for a good long while; and had it been… it would have still been a really good one. Person of Interest always did a good job of incorporating songs into the show, and the last few minutes of the finale *finally* had the one song that was most appropriate: “Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd. That song, coupled with the fact that the Machine’s creator is under fire (by the enemy AI’s agents) while trying to back up The Machine, and the Machine finally speaks to its creator… it’s kind of a tear jerker. Almost up there with Babylon 5’s finale, “Sleeping in Light.” There’s just something about some depictions of AI that make you sympathetic to the little synthetic buggers.