interesting that Elementary and Person of Interest both took on the “powerful billionaire responds to tragedy by developing mass-surveillance technology to prevent violence, does it by enacting violence upon the future perpetrators” and went completely different directions with it.
There are a lot of similarities between Odin Reichenbach and Harold Finch - both powerful men who took action after witnessing an awful tragedy. Both then chose to use their own money, skill, and resources to build a mass-surveillance network that would make a police state drool and use it to prevent crime. Both have people in law enforcement on their side. Both employ mercenaries to enact the violence to prevent that crime. Where they differ, really, are how they enforce their ideals – and how the violence is framed and how the writers justify it.
PoI argued that mass-surveillance technology like the Machine is inherently neutral, or at least not inherently bad; being given a semblance of self-awareness, it can be made to act ethically, can be taught ethics, can even evoke empathy. In the wrong hands (the government), it will be exploited and abused, so Harold makes sure the government can only use it for one designated purpose (preventing terrorism). In the right hands (Team Machine) it can be used to save lives, and that justifies its existence because we’re assured it will never be used the wrong way. While Team Machine definitely use extreme measures to prevent extreme means, the narrative reassures us that they’re the ultimately the good guys. Morally complex, struggling with their own past, making peace with their redemption, but ultimately they are the right people to take on this task of being the watcher and keeper of everyone’s safety.
This, of course, is a narrative decision: Reese’s actions (and later Shaw) on behalf of Harold are just because Harold is presented to be a just character, never acting for his own benefit, and always for the betterment of other people. His character is a fantasy, the kind of tech creator we want tech creators to be - selfless, empathetic, philanthropist who is uncompromisingly kind, so that despite holding so many lives in his hands, we can trust that he will never deliberately abuse it. But this is a way to deliberately justify the narrative thesis; we know now (as we should have known then) that this was never the case. Tech billionaires are never, and have never been, Harold Finch.
And so, Elementary asks a fundamental question that PoI only assumes - who are the right hands? Who gets to decide that? What kind of person would be able to create something so powerful, and how did they amass that power to do so in the first place? Reichenbach comes on the heels of many powerful season-spanning mastermind antagonists - he’s framed to be essentially in the same league as Moriarty, Moreau, and Morland, but with a god-complex kind of self-righteousness. He might have good intentions, but his means cannot be justified. What Elementary tells us is that Odin Reichenbach is not monstrous just because he uses violence and surveillance to prevent crime – but that because in order to get to his position, a certain degree of monstrosity was required.
Person of Interest argues that monstrous people can create monstrous technology, but that mass-surveillance in itself is not evil - this was their thesis behind the battle between The Machine and Samaritan in the last 3 seasons.
Elementary, meanwhile, argues that someone who has the means, resources, money, and will to create a mass-surveillance network would have to be monstrous. Odin Reichenbach might present himself as an ultimate saviour of humanity, but he’s really just another capitalist who kills for profit; he’s not above the other villains of the week who do so, but he’s got an international tech conglomerate.
One reason, I think, is timing. When PoI premiered in 2011, it was before we gained a massive distrust of technology, and how it put us at risk. Person of Interest was developed and came out before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, before Mark Zuckerburg testified in front of Congress, before YouTube algorithms became a recruiting weapon for the alt-right, before helper systems in our home were revealed to be surveillance tools for their manufacturing companies.
Meanwhile, in Elementary’s final season in 2019, we’re constantly becoming more and more wary of how our personal information is being used, who uses them, and how they manipulate what we see. We’ve come to distrust tech conglomerates and start-up CEOs, come to rethink the way they weasel into our lives.
Both shows feature redemption as a key theme in its story arcs, and I think Person of Interest was phenomenal when it premiered in 2011. However, the pace of rapidly changing technology has already made its thesis look outdated as a concept. We can no longer take in good faith that big tech CEOs are out to look out for the little guys - we’ve seen too much evidence otherwise.
Elementary’s last season presents the counterargument for today, together with the central theme that Elementary has always featured at its heart; change and self-improvement. We’ve seen this span character arcs and relationship arcs, we’ve seen this in one-off episodes and season-spanning stories. No one is quintessentially beyond redemption, and everyone should be given a chance. Anyone who assumes it from a distance cannot be trusted to decide the fate of others.
As a detective procedural, Elementary essentially had to rely on a flawed judicial system and asks us to trust an unjust establishment. But in comparison of other detective procedural shows, it’s still beautiful sign-off for its last season, I think.
romaincrisis
gummygunk
snowghoul
germansingergirl
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
pixelskylines
