Person of Interest
John Reese, a former Green Beret/Delta Force operator and CIA operative, is burnt out and presumed dead, living as a vagrant in New York City. He is approached by Harold Finch, a reclusive billionaire software genius who built a computer system for the U.S. government after September 11, 2001 which monitors all electronic communications and surveillance video feeds, in order to predict future terrorist activities. The computer – known as "The Machine" – also predicts other lethal crimes as well, but being irrelevant to national security these were deleted daily. After the death of his partner, Finch decides to act covertly on the non-terrorism predictions, and hires Reese to conduct surveillance and intervene in these cases. To prevent abuse of its capabilities, Finch had programmed the Machine to only provide an identity of a person predicted to be involved in an imminent lethal crime, in the form of a Social Security number, but no details of the crime or whether the POI (person of interest) is a perpetrator or victim. Finch and Reese (and later others) then attempt to understand the case and stop the crime from occurring.
They are helped by NYPD Detectives Lionel Fusco, a formerly-corrupt officer whom Reese coerces into helping them, and Joss Carter, who initially investigates Reese for his vigilante activities. Reese arranges for Fusco to spy on Carter by becoming her partner, but Carter eventually becomes Reese's ally and drops her investigation on him. Nevertheless, for the entirety of season one neither Fusco nor Carter is aware that the other is also working with Finch and Reese and both detectives are kept in the dark about the Machine. Periodically, the team enlists the aid of Zoe Morgan, a professional "fixer" who applies her skills to particularly difficult tasks. The series features several subplots. One significant story arc involves "HR", an organization of corrupt NYPD officers who are initially in league with budding mob boss Carl Elias and later with the Russian mafia; in earlier parts of this arc, Fusco is forced to go undercover. Another important story line revolves around Root, a psychopathic hacker who is determined to gain access to The Machine.
During season two, another organization of powerful business figures, Decima Technologies, is revealed to be attempting to gain access to the Machine. Carter vows vengeance against HR after they have her boyfriend, Detective Cal Beecher, murdered. Reese and Finch encounter Sameen Shaw, an ISA assassin, on the run after being betrayed by her employers. Shaw learns about The Machine in the season two finale and subsequently becomes a member of Reese and Finch's team.
In season three, Carter delves deeper into her investigation of HR, eventually uncovering its leader; but she is killed. In his grief, Reese briefly leaves the team. The team also battles Vigilance, a violent anti-government organization devoted to securing people's privacy. During the second half of season three, Decima Technologies starts to acquire hardware to create a new artificial intelligence called Samaritan, using the code from Harold's old college classmate, Arthur Claypool. In the season three finale, it is revealed that Vigilance was created by Decima to make them appear as domestic terrorists. This allowed Decima to obtain all the NSA feeds to make Samaritan operational. The Machine creates new identities for the Team so that they can fly beneath Samaritan's radar.
Season four covers the team's life in hiding. They continue to work on cases, but must now also evade Samaritan, which lacks the restrictions and human-oriented perspective Finch built into the Machine, and which is seeking to resolve perceived problems of human violence by reshaping society, sometimes violently. Samaritan is seen to change election results and cause stock market crashes, kill those seen as threats, change data to gain results perceived as beneficial, buy useful corporations, and to be building an organization to support its own goals. Samaritan finally decides to find and eliminate the Machine, and engineers a general electrical failure across the entire United States to do so. The Machine apologizes to Finch for its failure to prevent the present situation and ceases to function, just as Finch finishes making a copy of its core systems into a temporary storage system within a briefcase.
In season five, the Machine is reinstated onto a makeshift network of computers in hiding, but takes some time before it works reliably again due to damage sustained from power failures while it was in storage. Shaw is captured by Samaritan operatives and an implant is placed in her brain stem, which is used to run thousands of neural simulations in order to find a means to persuade her to reveal the Machine's location. She later escapes, but is unsure whether the escape itself is just another simulation. Samaritan engineers a lethal infection in order to force people to provide their DNA during vaccination, which will be used to decide who will be allowed to live. Finch is captured by Samaritan operatives. In an attempt to rescue him, Root is killed. Finch is taken into custody for treason, where he delivers a soliloquy via CCTV to Samaritan, in which he states that he feels forced to abandon some long held principles and destroy Samaritan; he is freed by the Machine which has taken on Root's voice as a way to begin to determine its own individuality. Determined to destroy Samaritan, Finch weaponizes Ice-9, a virulent computer virus capable of infecting and destroying Samaritan, although it will also destroy the Machine and much of the global computing infrastructure as well. Samaritan attempts to change his mind and urges him to consider his actions, but Finch responds that he has indeed considered them. Along with Reese and Shaw, he infiltrates the NSA and uploads the virus to its system, allowing it access to all systems the NSA is capable of reaching, as well as destroying Samaritan's backup at the Federal Reserve which they also infiltrate. A final copy of Samaritan, uploaded as a last resort onto an orbiting satellite, is destroyed when Reese sacrifices himself to upload a copy of the Machine there as well. Finch survives and reunites with his former fiancée, and a while later Shaw is unexpectedly contacted by the Machine, which has restored itself from the satellite back to a land-based computer in order to continue its work.
revenge, neo noir, dark, flashback