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Person of Interest S02E05: "Bury the Lede"

Last night gave us a pretty nifty episode of Person of Interest in "Bury the Lede," which asked an intriguing question: How can we reverse engineer an episode's story in order to end up with a shootout on a merry-go-round? The answer was a complex case involving a headstrong (and sexy!) investigative journalist, a mayoral race, a bunch of dirty cops, and an awkward first date. "Bury the Lede" hit a lot of vintage Person of Interest sweet spots, combining humor, an ever-expanding mythology, and some incredibly ridiculous circumstances. Whenever an episode does all this, the show is damn near unstoppable.

This week's persona de interesante was Maxine (White Collar's Gloria Votsis), a get-the-story-at-any-costs-even-if-it-means-posing-as-a-prostitute-and-blackmailing-a-public-figure kind of gal who collected scoops like your cousin collects Pokemon cards. She was a bit abrasive at first, but by the end of the episode I warmed up to her mostly because Reese softened her up and helped her seem more tolerable, much like the Brazilian diplomat's daughter in "Masquerade." Hey, at least these damsels who Reese saves from distress aren't completely helpless and have some moxie.

Maxine had been digging up dirt on one of the city's mayoral candidates, and had previously written exposés (well, exposés after the fact) on many cases that Reese and Finch busted wide open, including Elias and the network of dirty policemen known as HR. Naturally, we were led to believe her articles had made her the target, and because she kept sticking her nose in an ongoing investigation to find out who the head of HR was, it was up to Reese to step in and save both the investigation and her. But this is Person of Interest, so obviously the obvious wasn't so obvious.

In a first for the series, the person of interest turned out to be the perpetrator by indirectly causing harm to someone else. When Maxine wrote an article incriminating a mobster's son named Zambrano as the head of HR (which was later proved false), it led other rival factions to take him out and leave Maxine with one giant "oopsie!" on her hands. Turns out he was a good guy who was actually a lead witness in an investigation that would have blown up a whole criminal underground. And in another first for the series, this all went down while Reese couldn't let her know he was protecting her, because she was also tracking leads on "the mystery man in the suit!" So how did Reese and Finch find a workaround to get close and protect her? Match-Heart.com.

I'll never get tired of this show thrusting the cyborg-ish Reese-inator into regular awkward human situations, no matter how ridiculous the means of putting him in there are. Last night, Reese was set up on a date with Maxine through an online dating website after Finch sorted through the algorithms and made Reese a perfect match for Maxine by sharing interests and posting pictures of Bear. Finch did all the legwork with flirty texts and instant messages, and the kicker was that all of this was done without Reese's knowledge. The fact that Finch thought it would work shows how detached these two socially defunct clowns are from the rest of society, and Reese was a glorious disaster on the first date, saying all the wrong things and not knowing any details about Maxine because he wasn't involved in the get-to-know-you virtual conversations. Men, amirite ladies? I just have one question: What would Finch have done if the person of interest wasn't a lovely female investigative journalist? I would pay big bucks to see an episode where Reese gets set up with a hulking, hairy gay man. Hey, he's already fond of bears.

After Reese proved himself to be a worthy gentleman, their subsequent dates involved digging up the truth, dodging bullets, and pancake breakfasts. This all eventually led to the cool carousel shootout, where Zambrano's ledger—which had incriminating evidence on all sorts of crooked cops—was hidden.

While all this was going down, dear old Fusco had his own HR problems. Sensing the truth was ready to come out, Simmons—the dirty cop who looks like Nazi Frankenstein—tasked Fusco with cutting off the FBI investigation at the pass and getting the ledger before others did. We've come a long way with Fusco, and it's always painful to see him dragged back into HR's business after so much redemption, but that's the curse of his character and I don't expect it to end anytime soon. However, it was imperative that Fusco get the ledger, because his name was in that book, too.

Eventually the ledger (nothing makes for a more exciting key to a case than a business ledger) got into the right hands and then into Fusco's hands, and the real culprit was outed: the young handsome mayoral candidate! When will you ever learn, handsome politicians? But that too turned out to be a misdirection, because there was another puppet behind the scenes. Young handsome candidate's opponent's campaign manager Quinn, played by The Wire's Clarke Peters. He's the actual head of HR, a man who makes a living planting powerful people in powerful positions while he stands in the background with his fingers in everything.

Can I just say how much I love the way Person of Interest has layered its bad factions? Root was cleverly disguised for half a season, Elias's true identity was hidden well after we knew he existed, and now Quinn has emerged as the head of HR long after we first tangled with HR's many lieutenants. There have been plenty of Batman comparisons with Reese, but the hierarchy and tangled web of villains and factions is just as Batman-y. This really is a superhero comic come to life, minus the tights and silly names.

"Bury the Lede" was another fantastic episode of Person of Interest, which effortlessly mashed up humor, an intriguing case, and a big reveal in the overall mythology. I hope this how goes a million seasons.

– There was some funny Cyrano de Bergerac stuff going on as Finch did all the flirting and developed a crush on Maxine (she quoted Orwell? Swoooon!) while Reese played the handsome exterior. And Reese wearing glasses to look smarter? Too funny. Jim Caviezel played that date perfectly.

– More laughs as Finch hid in Reese's closet, which doubled as an arsenal any supporter of the Second Amendment would be proud of.

– Carter continues to descend into redundancy. Girl needs something to do other than be gofer and show up in time badly.

– Maxine on the man in the suit: "He shoots a lot of kneecaps..." Reese: "Sounds like a great guy." So nice to see this show is very self-aware.

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TO QUEENS BOULEVARD, BRO! NEWS

... The much-talked-about Entourage is closer to actually happening as studio Warner Bros has given the project the official green light. Creator Doug Ellin is attached to direct from a screenplay he wrote, but there's no timetable in place yet. Remember when Entourage used to be good? Me neither. The burn center is thattaway, Entourage. Meanwhile, HBO is looking at a Bored to Death movie but it isn't looking at a Deadwood movie. [Deadline Hollywood]

RENEWALS AND PICKUPS

... Comedy Central has picked up a second season of its new sketch show Kroll Show starring Nick Kroll, because it's funny. Look for 10 more episodes next year. [Comedy Central via press release]

... Katie Couric's daytime talk show Katie has been renewed for Season 2. Katie owns the market on closeted athletes who fall in love with pretend women online, so she should be good. [Disney-ABC via press release]

... ABC has finally found a use for babies and has given a series order to Bet On Your Baby, a game show in which parents wager on their toddlers' ability to accomplish tasks against rival tykes. The winner gets $50,000 to put toward their kid's college fund (a.k.a. Mommy's drinking habit). If it's successful, expect Babies in Danger: Baby High Diving to follow. [ABC via press release]

... Not challenged enough with working with just babies, ABC will also try partnering with an even more difficult and childish group: Canadians! (Canada, follow Entourage to the burn center.) The network will import the 13-episode Canadian series Motive for the summer. The procedural has a bit of a twist: The killer and victim will be revealed at the beginning of each episode, and the rest of the time will be spent discovering the motive of the crime. Only in Canada! In America all we care about is who and what, because we need to spend the extra time figuring out 1) how to pay for hospital bills and 2) the rules of hockey. [Deadline Hollywood]

WILL PILOT SEASON EVER END?

... Fox is in final talks to commission a pilot from 50 Cent that's animated and wait a second that doesn't sound right. [Double-checks story] Yup, that's right. The show would be loosely based on Fiddy's childhood and follow a goodnatured kid who gets into trouble around his neighborhood. [Deadline Hollywood]

... Add two more pilots to Fox's development slate. Wild Blue comes from the very busy Graham Yost (Justified) and is a drama set on an aircraft carrier. Gang Related is a gritty drama about a gangster who infiltrates the San Francisco Police Department's gang task force. Wait a second. Something is wrong here. These both sound good. Fox, are you feeling okay? [EW]

... ABC has ordered Bad Management, a single-camera comedy from the star of the British series Pulling, Sharon Horgan. She'll play a conceited boss of a department store who has her authority challenged by a young upstart. [Deadline Hollywood]

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS (A.K.A. RUSSEL BRAND STUFF)

... We already knew Russell Brand's BrandX With Russell Brand would be expanding to a one-hour format when it returns next week. What we didn't know is that it will air live. Seriously, I would trade this guy back to England for *gulp* Gwyneth Paltrow IMMEDIATELY. [FX via press release]

CASTING NEWS

... Django Unchained star and fine actor Christoph Waltz will host Saturday Night Live on February 16. He'll be joined by Alabama Shakes as the musical guest. [NBC via press release]

... NBC's straight-to-series Dracula has made a few casting choices, adding Game of Thrones' Nonso Anozie and Merlin's Katie McGrath. Anozie, who played Xaro Xhoan Daxos in the second season of Game of Thrones and is still stuck in a vault somewhere, will play the man who knows the truth about Dracula's darkest secrets. McGrath, who played Morgana on Merline, will play the chatty BFF of Dracula's muse. [TV Line]

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The Voice S03E13: "The Battles Continue"

Night three of the battle rounds played out like the late-season episode of a scripted series that was plagued with questions in its early episodes—and by "early episodes" I mean pretty much the entire series. Whether or not The Voice meant to touch on the points I've been poking with a stick since the season premiere is debatable, but that doesn't make the attention to detail any less amusing.

Exhibit A: Battle Round Song Choices

My favorite moment of the entire night because featured my biggest pet peeve of the entire competition being addressed in a refreshingly frank manner—by a contestant, at least. Terisa Griffin pointedly asked Blake Shelton why he chose to make her compete against Julio Castillo on "Conga" by Gloria Estefan. She rationalized that "Conga" was a song closer to Castillo's comfort zone, and therefore the song was deliberately chosen to eliminate her from the competition. Blake was, of course, the portrait of incredulous innocence, and to be fair, we got plenty of footage of Castillo struggling with the song during rehearsals and voicing his own concerns about his ability to perform, but just to have a contestant SAY IT was utterly vindicating.

Do I think Terisa Griffin was set-up in this case? Not really. Do I think that other contestants have been set up for elimination in the past? Certainly. Last season's pairing of fierce lady-rocker Lindsey Pavao and acoustic-lovin' Bob Dylan-channelin' Lee Koch was hilariously blatant with Christina Aguilera assigning them a Nirvana song. Christina fell back on the old "leave the comfort zone" argument, which seems to be the failsafe justification whenever an artist on this show questions a song choice, but only certain artists ever seem pressed to leave their comfort zones. Judges' pets Juliet Simms and Raelynn were rarely, if ever, asked to sing anything outside of classic rock or country, respectively, genres which they both felt comfortable in and felt showcased their abilities the best. Those two made it rather far in last season's competition... in contrast to Naia Kete, who only wanted to sing a freaking reggae song, but found herself stuck with pop song after pop song in the name of "branching out."

Blake had no idea where Terisa got that idea and seemed a little insulted by the accusation (which, okay, is fair) but frankly, I think anyone who has watched The Voice for more than one season knows exactly where she got the idea.

Ultimately, Terisa Griffin lost her battle with Julio Castillo because Blake didn't think she worked as hard as he did. Luckily, Cee Lo was there to swoop in with a steal. Speaking of Cee Lo, that brings us to...

Exhibit B: Why Team Cee Lo?

County wannabes gravitate toward Team Blake because Blake Shelton is the country expert on The Voice. Divas and potential boyband members go to Christina Aguilera because that's her thing. "Serious" musicians vie for Adam Levine's favor because Adam is a "serious" musician.

The identity of Team Cee Lo is a little harder to pin down. Cee Lo Green dressed up like a peacock that one time during a concert, so he tends to appreciate fellow peacocks, but since he can't see contestants during their initial auditions, he must rely on his ears to determine their peacock potential. This leads to a bit of a mixed-bag team—Cee Lo has divas and he has hipster bespectacled coffeeshop lurkers. Cee Lo has people that I'm not entirely convinced can actually sing but just happen to put on a good show. It's a wildly diverse team that I can honestly say I'm always excited to see compete because there really is no way to know what we'll see from them on any given night.

So, that's awesome and to be honest, I wish the other judges would make an effort to avoid clinging so fiercely to their pet genres, but at the same time, the lack of a concrete identity on Team Cee Lo resulted to some recruiting difficulties earlier this season; it just seemed like artist after artist chose a different judge over Cee Lo if given the opportunity. Contestants who wanted to work with a mentor from a similar musical background found those needs met by one of the other three, OR, those practical contestants who thought further ahead and saw The Voice more like a networking opportunity than the be-all-end-all of their career, went to Adam or Blake, who both have a history of working with ex-team members after the show ends.

Apparently so does Cee Lo Green. He's just pickier about who he works with. Or maybe less obvious about it. Or something. Regardless, the camera sure went out of its way to document—with subtitles—the fact that after Cee Lo chose bearded wonder Nicholas David over Todd Kessler following their Hall and Oates battle, he pulled Kessler aside and told him to "Give me a call. We'll talk."

Well, okay then.

Exhibit C: Blake Shelton + Florence + The Machine

This one just amused me because Christina made such a big deal when Blake lost Caitlin Michele to Adam during his own recruitment slump earlier this season. Michele auditioned with a Florence + The Machine song and despite an impassioned speech to curry her favor, Michele chose to work with Adam rather than Blake because she didn't want "normal."

Already frustrated by the loss, Blake also had the misfortune of sitting next to Christina, who took the opportunity to point out that he didn't even know who Florence + The Machine was, which may or may not have been sarcasm, but honestly, would anyone be surprised if it wasn't?

As though to make a point, which also wouldn't be surprising, Blake had Lelia Broussard and Suzanna Choffel battle one another to "Dog Days are Over" by Florence + The Machine, complete with a quick monologue affirming how much he just loves Florence + The Machine. Way to tie up loose ends.

Suzanna Choffel won the round, by the way.

Rounding out the rest of our battles, on Team Christina Dez Duron and Paulina faced off and 16-year-old Paulina gushed that she grew up listening to Green Day. This sent the occupants of my home into a pre-mid-life-crisis-crisis when we did the math and realized that she may have grown up listening to Green Day but she definitely didn't grow up listening to GOOD Green Day even though she probably THINKS she did. CHILDREN, gather round and let me tell you about Billie Joe Armstrong and how 16 years ago he wouldn't have been caught dead on a show like The Voice.

Or at least that's what we old-timers like to think.

Dez Duron won that battle.

Team Adam featured Sam James and Benji battling it out to Bon Jovi. I love me some Bon Jovi. I love me some "You Give Love a Bad Name" too and their battle was the most energetic of the night. There was a lot of unresolved sexual tension on that stage, and more than one person in my living room wondered aloud if they were going to start making out. PASSION, MAN.

Adam's fellow judges all liked Benji, but he went with Sam James because Sam has his own style and even though Benji screamed really well (really!), when he wasn't screaming, he was kind of not sure what to do with himself.

Team Christina finished the night off with a diva battle: Joselyn Rivera and Sylvia Yacoub. I thought they both spent an inordinate amount of time trying to one-up each other, rather than actually calming down and just singing the freaking song already. Christina's indecision got us our first appearance of haggard, snippy Carson Daly who snapped at her to make a decision already after much hand-wringing and looking around the set as though someone else might tell her who to choose. I figured that we were in for a steal session since there were still ten minutes left in the hour, so there was no practical need for Daly to rush things, unless he was trying to condition serial-time-waster Xtina BEFORE her endless contemplation made its way to the live shows and forced us to miss the first few minutes of Revolution which would just be tragic. (On a side note, Revolution, I don't care about saving Danny anymore. I DON'T CARE.)

Christina went with Sylvia Yacoub and Teams Adam and Blake immediately buzzed in to steal Joselyn Rivera who, ultimately, went to Adam.

Here's a quick summary of the wins, losses, and steals for Monday:

Sticking Around:

Julio Castillo (Team Blake)
Dez Duron (Team Christina)
Sam James (Team Adam)
Nicholas David (Team Cee Lo)
Suzanna Choffel (Team Blake)
Sylvia Yacoub (Team Christina)

Going Home:

Paulina (Team Christina)
Benji (Team Adam)
Todd Kessler (Team Cee Lo)
Lelia Broussard (Team Blake)

Steals:

Terisa Griffin (Team Blake to Team Cee Lo)
Joselyn Rivera (Team Christina to Team Adam)

What'd you think of Monday's battles?

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This week, NBC's two big new comedies Go On and The New Normal premiered in their Tuesday timeslots. However, the episodes that aired were not the show's pilots but instead their second episodes. Of course, that's because NBC spent the last month trying to get everyone on the planet to watch the pilots for Go On and The New Normal—and Animal Practice as well—first airing Go On and Animal Practice during the Olympics, then putting both pilots online soon after. Later, the network posted The New Normal online, and then aired and re-aired The New Normal and Go On pilots, respectively, on Monday night after the Season 3 premiere of The Voice.

Although the post-Olympics and post-Voice move isn't new—putting an important pilot behind popular "event" programming is straight out of the broadcast network playbook—making the episodes available so early online is a much more recent phenomenon. And NBC, which also posted new J.J. Abrams drama Revolution, is not alone. Fox made the Ben and Kate and The Mindy Project pilots available soon after NBC pulled the trigger, and ABC made Last Resort available earlier this week. There are 21 new shows debuting on the broadcast nets this fall, and as of now, with some time to go before certain premieres, a third of those premiere episodes are already online.

Networks have been releasing chunks of episodes early for a while now (I vaguely remember watching a few minutes of a Lost premiere and ABC definitely released the opening 12-15 minutes of FlashForward online early) but the dissemination of full pilot episodes has really picked up over the last three years. In 2009, both Modern Family (Amazon) and Community (Facebook) were made available before their first television airing. Fox also released a director's cut of the Glee pilot that aired on the network at the end of the 2008–2009 season on Hulu before the proper season began. I've been told that Lone Star and No Ordinary Family were out there well before the 2010–2011 season began.

Last season, Fox made New Girl available literally everywhere before its premiere, NBC did similar things for Whitney (for some reason) and Grimm, while both Grimm, while both The Secret Circle and Hart of Dixie were up on iTunes a few weeks early. In the midseason, you couldn't escape the Smash pilot, and Awake's was available, too.

Surely, there are a number of episodes and shows I'm forgetting—we haven't even talked about cable—but that only serves to reinforce the point more: More and more, pilots are being made available before (and sometimes WAY before) their official television airdates. The biggest question with this trend is also the easiest one to ask: Why do it?

For the viewers, pilots being available early is nothing but a plus. Seeing things early is cool. Early releases give us time to watch a pilot we might otherwise skip because of the oppressive bombardment of new shows and episodes in late September and early October.

But I can't imagine that the networks and studios are giving us premiere episodes four weeks before the "real" premiere just to make us happy. That's silly. Yet, in an era when good Nielsen ratings are hard to come by and the competition is at a very high level, it does seem somewhat wild that the networks would be willing to chance losing a big first-episode number during the real TV season (when ad dollars are higher) just so that they maybe convince a few more people to sample a show they would have ignored otherwise.

Nevertheless, this move toward early access to episodes tells us something crucial about the changes within the television industry: Buzz is more important than ever before. Maybe not more important than ratings—which aren't going away despite just about everyone's frustration with them—but it's inching closer in importance.

While the networks still hold on to the Nielsen ratings to rake in the ad dollars, they are smarter than we give them credit for. They are very aware of how much people love to talk about television... and how they tend to do so in very public, shareable ways. Not everyone live-tweets The X Factor, but the social aspect of television has translated masterfully to social media. The networks have figured that out and in recent seasons, we've seen more promotions keyed into Facebook and watched the networks start pushing hashtags on-screen in hopes of trending on Twitter. We are talking about and interacting with shows on social media anyway, so it's smart for the networks to try to guide or supplement that discussion and interaction.

By releasing pilots or season premieres (or really any episodes) early, the networks are able to foster conversation early and during a theoretically less crowded time, allowing for fans and social media to do a big part of the opening promotional push for them. Instead of pushing the content onto the audience on television and with television promotion, the networks have learned to step back and let the very interested and active viewers pull it from them. You'll notice that Fox hasn't been running primetime promos telling viewers that they can watch The Mindy Project pilot online right now. Instead, it just put the episode up, sent out a press release, and let the online media machine—yes, including TV.com—and social media do the work. If you want it, you can go get it.

One curious side effect is that, in a way, this approach is creating two distinct groups of viewers. Networks have learned to use social media or put content online as a way to cultivate a certain discussion or fandom online, but they haven't stopped using traditional methods of promotion like quick clips during a sporting event, trailers, or what have you. And neither technique directly addresses the other. The networks know they're going to pull in some "traditional" viewers and some viewers who love social media, but both methods work to get more of each group. (However, a problem might arise in instances like NBC airing the second episodes of Go On or The New Normal in their supposed "series premiere" timeslots. It's possible that the viewers not keyed in to the online discussion or these sneak peaks might be confused when they are presented with the second episode first.)

In the best-case scenario, the networks hope that those of us who "go get it," so to speak, spread the word in some way—maybe we tell our friends at lunch, maybe we share the availability on Facebook, maybe we talk about how The New Normal is a mess on Twitter. It seems like the networks are willing to bet that the losses they might accrue in pilot ratings are worth the possibility of much larger gains in general interest, which could turn into full-time investment. They're taking a chance on sacrificing the short term to improve the long term. And it's even possible that the word-of-mouth works well enough that more people end up watching live that first night anyway, or that the buzz translates to higher ad rates later (so cha-ching).

In theory, then, what seems like a weird and stupid decision is actually kind of smart. And as we've seen already at the outset of the season, certain media outlets are already reporting on which shows have the most buzz. At the end of August, The Hollywood Reporter published a report on the shows that are dominating the social media chatter, and wouldn't you know it, many of the shows that top that list were made available online (or after the Olympics). And doing a story on what shows are the most-discussed only further stokes the fire of that discussion. It never stops.

Even though allowing the viewers to do some of the marketing heavy lifting is smart and perceptive, it's still tough—especially for us on the outside—to determine if this tactic actually works. Modern Family and New Girl debuted strong in 2009 and 2011 respectively and went on to anchor their nights for the whole season. Community's pilot is still its highest-rated episode, but that's mostly because it aired after a season premiere of The Office. Whitney and Grimm didn't light the world on fire for NBC last season, though their pilot ratings were decent. Lone Star was a dud, Awake didn't do that much better (sorry, Kyle Killen), and even Smash, a show that also had an annoyingly expansive promotional push on television, debuted to lower-than-expected ratings.

So, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. There's no way to prognosticate what would have happened to New Girl had it not been available early, even if common sense tells us that it was probably going to be a nice performer no matter what. Maybe Smash lost a million young viewers who watched the pilot early, or maybe it gained a million viewers who were convinced by other people to watch. The networks have some idea of who's watching these episodes online early, and they're certainly sharing those numbers with advertisers, but we will probably never know.

Yet, the fact that we're continuing to see pilots go up online early is probably the best proof we're going to get that this methodology works. Internally, if NBC, Fox, ABC or The CW* saw that the numbers or the money wasn't lining up, they'd stop. The additional wave of buzz—and ad money they make on places like Hulu, of course—that these early-debuting shows can ride must be enough for the networks to stick with it. Money still rules, but perhaps buzz is closing in.

* It's really curious to see that CBS hasn't done this yet, to my knowledge. That definitely says something about the network's audience—or at least who CBS thinks the audience is—and their habits. Also important to point out: CBS kills in the ratings. Maybe they are on to something?

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