[January Meme] January 7

[grimorie]

“How do you think S5 of PoI would have been different if they'd got a full twenty-two episode order?”

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I think the seasonal arc would have more time to breathe. We really needed an episode or two before the events of The Day the World Went Away with Shaw and the team, because while Shaw had one of the more fascinating arcs in the season post-Samaritan escape it felt like there was no consequence for Samaritan when Shaw left.

I don’t think Greer even mentioned Shaw, and it’s just… really, Shaw’s going around killing your agents and being a general nuisance to your on the ground operations and not even one mention?

The show also didn’t have time to explore the Team’s complicated reactions to having Shaw back— we know what Shaw and Samaritan thinks the Team’s reactions was but we saw the difference in how Real!Root responded to Shaw putting a gun to her head was. Also, it seemed like Shaw had a cathartic journey with Sim!Harold from resentment to having Sim!Harold apologize to her but I want to know how their real dynamic would’ve been. Harold and Shaw barely had a scene together after 5x10. Fusco at least showed he felt iffy with Shaw around, but we never got anything about how real!John felt about Shaw’s return because he quickly went to caretaker mode after Root in 5x10.

Speaking of, I feel like there would be more time to explore our Team’s reactions to finding out the magnitude of Samaritan’s plans, which I think Shaw had special insight over— Samaritan and its Agents had pretty loose lips around Shaw about their plans.

I’d like to think learning about all that Samaritan set-up would have also contributed to Harold pulling the gloves off so it would have felt a lot less like Root had to die just so he would do that.

Also, I think if they had a full 22 episode order, we could have had a whole episode AU rather than the ‘I will tell you about your AU lives’, imagine if it played out like RAM and The Wish from BtVS. I love AU episodes, and yet somehow POI managed to make their POI episode so. damned. boring!

I’m also bothered that 5x09 is more action packed than 5x12. If they had a full 22 episode season they’d also have a 22 season budget, so they don’t have to blow all their budget in the 5x10 car chase, which was awesome but you can see in the three episodes after that they barely had any money left for anything else. Post-5x10, I could tell that they were trying to make do with what little money they had a storyline about saving the President should’ve been more exciting but it was getting evident that they had little money to spare at that point.

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Comments

[grimorie]

Yes! If I remember correctly, Nolan was still holding out hope but Greg Plageman (a veteran to the TV network shenanigans over Nolan's movie experience) was trying to get Nolan to see that they might not get a back nine.

Plageman was actually the one who convinced Nolan to release the news that season 5 was the last season of POI after they received word about CBS's schedule for POI.