Person Of Interest Producers Talk Mr. Reese Cliffhanger: The Next Three Episodes Are ‘Completely Bananas’

“Person of Interest” ended 2012 on a major cliffhanger earlier this month when the FBI finally caught the man in the suit.

Actually, Agent Donnelly (Brennan Brown) and his team (including Taraji P. Henson’s character Detective Carter) captured four of them, which will create some trouble for the authorities when the CBS drama returns with an all-new episode on January 3.

“There’s an interesting dilemma here for Agent Donnelly and the FBI… Four suspects have been rounded up. All four of them are men in suits. And there’s a little bit of intrigue to be played with that,” Executive Producer Greg Plageman told reporters during a recent conference call. “[That’s] not easily resolved. We gotta play fair and honest with our audience here in Reese’s apprehension and incarceration and how long that plays out.”

As fans of the show know, a sometime foe, sometime friend of Mr. Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Finch (Michael Emerson) – Elias (Enrico Colantoni), the crime boss who runs New York City — is incarcerated, which could mean trouble for the real man in the suit.

“Reese is gonna be incarcerated. We know who runs that,” Plageman said. “So I would lay bets that you might see the tentacles of our friend again… We love Enrico Colantoni… It’s amazing when I see him playing a good guy on another show because I think he’s devoured this role in a way that’s just fun… and we definitely want to revisit their relationship with him, which is also a complicated one.

“And what you witnessed [in the final episode of 2012] is that HR is down, but not out, and the tensions between HR and Elias are very much at the forefront of what’s coming,” he added, referencing the name of the group of dirty cops who were just double crossed by Elias.

With Reese on the inside, that will present even more troubles for Finch.

“Just because Reese is locked up — and that is a huge focus for them — as [Finch] said in the pilot, the numbers never stop coming. Watching Finch try to spin [a] plate in terms of, ‘OK, I gotta rescue my friend, but I’ve also got a back log of people who may be in serious jeopardy,’ becomes kind of a focus as it was for Reese in the beginning of the season,” Executive Producer Jonathan “Jonah” Nolan said. “We always love the kind of random access nature of the machine… I would characterize the next three episodes of our show as completely bananas.”

“Not only are they bananas, but they’re pretty much picking up in real time, almost, from one to the next,” Plageman chimed in. “We feel like we’ve gotta play these stakes for real. When he’s incarcerated and the FBI is breathing down your neck and the information that they have, we want to show the audience that Donnelly is a very formidable character in his endeavor to take down Reese and I think we have a lot of fun with that.”

“Person of Interest” returns with an all-new episode on January 3 at 9/8c on CBS.

— Jolie Lash