![]() ![]() But Class of ’09 explores this slippery slope with more nuance than most shows not called Person of Interest. ![]() It may not be plausible that anybody living in a world in which Minority Report exists would be shocked to learn that when you start arresting people for things an algorithm says they’re going to do, erosions of freedom ensue. Watching Mara and especially Henry latch onto specific, small acting challenges - the subtle shifts in Henry’s physicality or Mara’s expressions of empathy over the decades - is less about solving the show’s mystery and more about solving the mystery of what must have drawn them to the project.įor most viewers, the hook will relate to the use of AI, which is at least timely and specific in a way nothing about the show’s political context - non-ideological to a fault - is. Perhaps because their motivations are less wholly telegraphed, Tayo and Poet are the most enigmatic characters in the series and thus the most compelling. That doesn’t give Moafi much of a chance to play more than pervasively concerned or Smith, a very interesting actor only when the material is right (see Sense8), to be more than blandly handsome. Privileged Lennix sees this as a gateway to his political aspirations while Hour, daughter of Iranian immigrants, sees this as an opportunity to feel part of a country that has too often treated her as an outsider. As they learn evasive driving, firearms management and participate in fitness drills, we learn that they each have their own backstories, or backstories borrowed from genre archetypes. The “Past” segment is especially familiar, as we meet our main characters and watch them go through the most basic of exploratory lessons. ![]() The series’ directors, starting with Joe Robert Cole and Sunu Gonera, establish momentum, but struggle to make the individual pieces feel distinctive. This, though, feels like one of those instances in which the trickiness of the split storylines becomes a cover for the sense that, through the four episodes sent to critics, none of the three timelines would be close to interesting enough to sustain interest. It seems like a wholly logical combination of narrative interests for Smith, who made intricate and emotionally effective use of inverted chronology in his American Crime Story season and built his career as a novelist on twisty espionage thrillers. In 2034 - “The Future” - Tayo has become the director of the FBI and it’s quickly made clear that Something Very Bad happened in “The Present,” which led to the proliferation of an AI system that has made people safer. In 2023 - “The Present” - we see the agents at work, including Tayo’s investigation into a Montana separatist organization, Hour’s development of a powerful new database, and a troubling new assignment for Poet. Smith), as well as their instructors (Brooke Smith and Jon Jon Briones). In 2009 - “The Past” - we meet the new prospective agents at Quantico, including Poet (Mara), Tayo (Henry), Hour (Sepideh Moafi) and Lennix (Brian J. And although the series gets a small dose of relevance from its treatment of AI-driven, predictive law enforcement, even that feels like a decently executed remnant from an assortment of broadcast failures rather than something creatively urgent. In the broadest of strokes, that’s the logline for Class of ’09 as well. ![]() Quantico, which ran three seasons, used multiple timelines to introduce viewers to a fresh group of FBI trainees and then, in the future, show that class responding to a shocking attack that one of them may be blamed for. Cast: Brian Tyree Henry, Kate Mara, Brian J. ![]()
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