Well, I finally blitzed my way through all five seasons of Person of Interest<\/i>. For the last week, I was wondering why I was making that extra push to go through it so fast.<\/p>\n
And then just today I realized why: Tomorrow I will see the friend who had recommended I see it in the first place, and now I will be able to discuss it in toto<\/i>, the way one discusses a novel. Not coincidentally, my friend is a very talented writer.<\/p>\n
For this was a show of ideas. Most TV shows turn out to be mere entertainment, and I often stop watching when I realize there is no meaningful thread running through them. But Person of Interest<\/i> raised and then explored very serious questions about the relationships between technology, free will and responsibility, while wearing the thin disguise of a kind of shoot-em-up cop show.<\/p>\n
There was definitely a strong whiff of fantasy about the underlying premise, particularly in its treatment of what is colloquially known as artificial intelligence. But that’s ok.<\/p>\n
Like Ex Machina<\/i>, or any decent science fiction for that matter, the fantasy version of technology on offer here is clearly not meant to be taken literally. Rather, it’s a metaphor, like time travel or a parallel universe, a literary device to help shine a light on the human condition.<\/p>\n
And on that level the show works splendidly. Also, the ensemble acting is spot on. Even the dog turns in a pitch perfect performance.<\/p>\n
My only regret is that now, having just finished it, I’m going to need to wait before I can see this series again. Not to worry though. I’ll just go back to watching Buffy the third time through. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, I finally blitzed my way through all five seasons of Person of Interest. For the last week, I was wondering why I was making that extra push to go through it so fast. And then just today I realized why: Tomorrow I will see the friend who had recommended I see it in the … Continue reading “Series of interest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18607"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18608,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18607\/revisions\/18608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}