Saturday, October 01, 2011

I Know It's a TV Show, But...


"Person of Interest" Has a Disinterest in New York Geography

I finally caught up tonight to the pilot for "Person of Interest."
I'll be back, and not just to see what other alumni from "Lost" besides Michael Emerson might show up (CBS has become quite the resting place for "Lost" alumni, with Daniel Dae-Kim and now Terry O'Quinn hanging ten on "Hawaii Five-O").
The show hummed along, even taking into account my lightning touch with the FF button on the DVR. Having the likes of J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan at the reins will do that for you. And having Jim Caviezel and Taraji P. Henson in the cast doesn't hurt either.
My beef: the show has the budget to flaunt the fact that it's filming in New York. And with so much of the plot depending on tiny details, you'd think the producers would at least attempt some verisimilitude, even if the premise of the show--a billionaire hires a former special forces op to stop murders he knows will happen--is incapable of same.
That's why we don't want to see a Manhattan D.A. getting out of the subway at Rockefeller Center to go to her office, when the real office is downtown. That's why we don't want to hear about a prison inmate in "county lockup."
County lockup in Manhattan? Fuhgeddabout it.
And when we see Caviezel's character riding the 6 train and is menaced by a bunch of hoodlums, anyone in the Big Apple knows that it's virtually impossible to be alone in a car at virtually any hour. But at least there was a Death Wish-esque payoff to the scene.
I know. It's a TV show, get over it. Well, at least it's not like "Law and Order" habitually giving addresses that would actually be in the Hudson River. At least not yet.
At least try to keep it real, though I'll give them a pass if the Dharma Project shows up in a future episode.

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