TV Forum

This is gonna be my new favorite episode.
I heard the voice of John Reese (James Caviezel) somewhere and when I read the review, it is the actor in The Count of Monte Cristo.
This is gonna be my absolute favorite!

I am giving it a look at it has to better than the american version of prime suspect

I already love this show...

so far a very good show

I have to say I'm enjoying this show

love that Michael Emerson plays a little querky, he fits that kind of character well.

very good

Solid start, lets see how it goes. Has potential to be great ....or fall apart. Depends on the story lines.

probably the one show that has surprised me so far this season

I've been watching since the first episode and have been enjoying it. There have been a few ordinary episodes, but the last few, starting with the Cold War era spy story, have been outstanding.

There was an increase in viewers with the last episode. Good stuff! CBS needs to let us know when it's coming back.

I must agree this show is getting better each week as we learn more the more I find myself wanting to know. Awesome.

A repeat placed in the Top Ten. Good news.

The last new show makes me wonder how they will approach Det. Carter's role in the show.

The show doesn't work for me. The premise is just not very believable.

We had a little debate about that here at home. My daughter recognized that the concept of an all-seeing computer program was in the last Batman movie. See that Jonathan Nolan had a hand in both the movie (writer) and this television series (creator), you can see that he had time to polish the concept.

We find it believable as far as the technology goes. I have never had a great fear of Big Brother using technology to surveil us, because there is just too much information being generated and not enough "watchers" for us to be concerned.

The concept of a computer program called The Machine that analyzes the data and sifts through for signs of imminent danger seems plausible

It's the action that's a little over the top, but we enjoy that style of action anyways.

For me, it's a number of issues. First, the technology would require that virtually all surveillance camera's be networked together into some central system. They're not and most of them could not be.

Another problem I have is that this system is clever enough to somehow detect that something bad is going to happen to somebody. Unless the threat was something very explicit, i.e., person A says I'm going to kill person B, then it seems unlikely to me that the system could figure it out. And what about all the false positives? How many people tell somebody that they're going to kill their boss (wife, husband, neighbor, whatever)?

And, ultimately, we have to believe that this enormous effort is being put forward to protect a single individual from a vague threat. I just can't but that. There must be much more productive things the rich guy and superhero could do with their time.

I know I'm being picky here. I'm willing to suspend belief for a good TV show, but, really, the basic premise of the show has to make sense to me, or it all seems like a joke.

from what I understand, the Machine sifts through e-mails, telephone calls, all manner of electronic information, The Machine was originally created for the government, after 9/11, in order to preempt any organized mass death scenario. From what I understand only New York City is being analyzed by the Machine. It does pick up organized threats to individuals, but it shunts those results to what we can consider a junk file that self-deletes every day. Although he created the Machine, he relinquished control to the government, However, (as my daughter tells me) all programmers leave back doors from which they can enter their programs at will. Mr. Finch only dares to collect the SIN of a possible victim or instigator, for fear that a greater intrusion into the information collected by the Machine would alert the government to unauthorized access and close his back door.

In one episode a friend of Mr. Finch was dismayed to find out that the self-deleting file exited, that no one cared about the individual crimes, including Finch himself. I'm expecting that in some future episode we will find that Mr Finch's friend ended up in that self-deleting file and his murder was not prevented.

After I watched last night's repeat (the one about the Cold War era East German operative), I have this feeling that everything is connected.

I think I have some research to conduct.

First, I think that it's great that all three, Finch, Reese and Carter, have (somewhat visible) mortal enemies. Carter has the the upstart Mob boss, Elias, Reese has Agent Snow from the CIA, and now Finch has Root.


*************pure speculation************

I think that Reese and Finch were connected long before they met. The Machine probably foresaw Reese's pattern of revenge. Seeing as Reese himself probably doesn't have a SIN, some of the victims of his murderous rampage were probably announced. We have had comfirmation that Finch's partner, Ingram, was mentioned by the Machine as a POI. Reese's ex-girlfriend Jessica may have beeen affiliated with Ingram and assassinated at the same time.

In the last couple of episodes I've wondered if Reese didn't already know about Finch and the Machine, and set himself up to look down and out, and found some trouble that only Finch could sniff out. He recovered very quickly from a debauched drinking life. He hit that arms dealer like he had already set it up.

The scene where Agent Stanton gives Reese his new name, when I watched it as a repeat, made me wonder if the Machine spit out those two unfortunate agents' names as co-conspirators in the deed that that got them killed.

There are layers upon layers here.

This show is way smarter than I am.

I keep thinking that I know which way it will turn. Sometimes, I'm right, sometimes, I'm wrong. But I haven't been disappointed by this storyline. I can only sit back and wait for the final few episodes of the season to play out. This show is a chess game. I am a spectator.