The third season of Person of Interest turns things up. While good portion of the season is more of the same that you’re used to seeing, the rest of season three gets things going with a little bit of scramble, complication and a great setup for the impending fourth season.
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That’s the rub, though, three-fourths of season three goes through the same type of formula that the series has lived off of from year to year. The group gets a number sent to them to investigate, a mystery unravels before their eyes, action ensues and they end up saving someone in need and press forward with a lesson to learn (or at least the person they saved learns a lesson). Sometimes the group is significantly affected by the story, most of the time not. It’s not a terrible formula by any means, but it has a hard time breaking from that formula. Before we move on to the best part of the third season, let’s talk about a few of the episodes that stand out:
The Perfect Mark — Reese and Shaw pull a number for a corrupt hypnotherapist, who puts his patients under to gather their personal information. What should be an easy case solved against an obvious thief, ends up being more than expected (and why not). While I wasn’t thrilled with the shallow plot point of a hypnotherapist stealing information (and not bluntly stealing it — actually figuring it out with pieces of jibber-jabber from his patients), how this episode ends is twisted enough to make me like it and include it as one of my favorites from season three.
4C — Reese boards a last minute plane to Istanbul, trying to escape from his past and recent team tragedy. Regretfully, The Machine has other ideas of how his plane trip is going to go. He is put into a situation where he has to save an innocent programmer (well, innocent enough) from getting killed before he can testify in a major international drug trafficking case. The entire episode thrives because Reese’s situation is so tightly packed. He has to deal with hired killers in a small airplane environment without panicking the passengers. Love the feel of this episode. It’s intense, constantly rolling and the ending draws some sort of conclusion for Reese’s feelings.
Last Call — Speaking of ‘intense’, this is the most intense episode for the third season and my favorite, sans the last four episodes. A 911 operator is called by a boy saying that his apartment is being broken into by some thieves. The 911 operator soon is forced to get involved in the boy’s kidnapping and in a city-wide emergency. The antagonist is threatening to not only kill the boy, but also destroy some buildings/people along the way. Your palms will sweat with this one, as it’s that intense. Love it, hate it a bit because of how the kid is threatened, but it makes for great television.
RAM — I won’t give too much away in this episode, but it’s a huge flashback pre-Reese and Shaw. You get to know the backstory of Finch and his first employee, Rick Dillinger (don’t you just love that name). It’s a very good episode and it gives a bit more depth to Reese and Shaw’s beginnings, as well as Finch. It also sets up later episodes of season three, or at least adds a bit more emotional value to Finch’s plight with The Machine.
Most Likely To — While the topic of death is serious, this is one of the more playful episodes in season three. Reese and Shaw are sent to a high school reunion where the death of a girl wasn’t resolved — or at least resolved well. Again, this is a bit more playful than any other episode in the third season of the show and that makes it a nice break.
Beyond these episodes, which are fantastic, as soon as you hit the fourth disc in the Blu-ray group and you get to episode 20 (Death Benefit), things start to change significantly in the story. You’re introduced to the beginning of the end of The Machine as we know it and the situation with Samaritan (a duplication of The Machine) starts becoming a real issue. In other words, season three of Person of Interest shifts into an entirely different gear from this point on. The remaining episodes of the show really start hitting their stride and the story becomes amazingly entertaining, even at the end when everything is falling to absolute hell for our heroes.
It’s an entirely different ballgame in the last four episodes of season three. Honestly speaking, there were bits and pieces that led up to these episodes throughout the other portion of the season, but for the most part the quality storytelling didn’t really come into effect prior. I wish the writers and producers of the show would have seen this when they outlined the season. They should have put more beef and build into season three at the beginning/middle, which would make the reveal in episode 20 so much greater than it was. Again, it’s not that the prior episodes were bad or anything like that, but they didn’t have the same impactful feeling that episodes 20-23 brought to the overall story.
While there are some solid episodes prior to the big finale of season three, most of them (sans the above) are pretty formulaic and at times a bit empty in some areas. The characters are driving the entire show, as they should, but some episodes completely depend on the characters, which makes the episodes feel a bit drab. Having said that, the season as a whole is good, and great towards the end.
Overall, it was a good season three.
As for the Blu-ray quality, it was spot on what you would expect from a Warner Home Video release. The show thrives on a colorless feel, which magnifies the overall feeling of the group and the world built by the story. You will see a lot of black, white and gray in this show. Occasionally, when the show wants you to concentrate on things, it will throw in something outside of that trio (like a red dress, heavy blue, etc.). The Blu-ray handles the color scheme (or the lack thereof) pretty well. The blacks are crisp, the whites are sharp and the gray…well, the gray is gray. There isn’t any artifacts or graininess issues. No signs of compression issues or color banding. It’s a extremely nice transfer for a television show.
Moving on, let’s see what you should expect from your special features:
– Person of Interest: The Future of A.I.
– 2013 Comic-Con Panel
– Saying Goodbye to a Friend
– Bear on Set
– Digital Comic One-Shots
– Episode 23: Deus Ex Machina Commentary by Michael Emerson
– Gag Reel
For a show that certainly didn’t have to provide much beef to get the sale, the special features are pretty good for this release. The comic-con panel is pretty entertaining, as is the bear on set. The commentary on the final episode of the season is something you don’t want to miss (the episode itself holds enough merit to warrant the commentary). The Future of A.I. is pretty interesting and gives a bit more beef to the overall package. The gag reel is the cherry on top of this cake.
Again, this is a good set of special features that doesn’t necessarily make the third season better, but it does extend its viewing life a bit.
