'Person Of Interest' Jim Caviezel & Greg Plageman Talk Reese's Season 5 Premiere! INTERVIEW

MStars News: Where is Reese's mindset when the fifth season begins?

Jim Caviezel: The Machine is the lifeline to our team. It is the brain. The soul of the team. His job now is to do very little but complete the operation. He has to get Finch to believe in the cause again. I have to do much more with much less.

MS: The final scene with Team Machine walking out to Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine, was just phenomenal! How are you going to top the fourth season finale?

Greg Plageman: [Laughs] It really worked out great! Chris Fischer did the finale. He's doing the premiere as well. We pick up in real time. We just shoot out of a cannon. Each one of our guys has been hunted down. It's a desperate team.

What's going to happen is, the premiere involves a lot of self-examination from John and Finch. Finch has to understand the state of the Machine, where it is now and the mistakes he's made that led up to this point.

MS: Has the mission changed for Reese from saving innocent lives to saving himself?

JC: I have to assemble the team. Try to reach and get Shaw back in the group. What has Samaritan done? The power of Samaritan is 20 percent or else it's exponential; going into everything. It leaves us no choice but to attack it.

MS: What is the relationship like now between Reese and Finch, who have survived a brutal attack by Samaritan?

GP: We're going to see some flashbacks, how Harold made some of these decisions. I think it's up to Reese's character. When Harold is losing faith, his ability to see light at the end of the tunnel, it's his friend who picks him up. He says we can do this. And find a way to reconstitute this thing. Finch thinks even if we have a heartbeat, we don't know what happened to the brain. So what good will it do? We're so far behind.

MS: Can Reese and Finch survive on their own without the guidance of The Machine?

GP: I think it's in those moments when a friend can pick up another friend, and say, "We'll figure it out." There's a really cool scene that I love, when the two characters meet up in the premiere. I don't want to ruin it! [Laughs] It's reminiscent of the last time Harold saw Ingram. It's very bittersweet. But there's also a lot fun in this one. It's really almost straight action!

MS: How much of a threat is Samaritan in the premiere?

GP: The challenge for all our guys, how do you go up against something that has its tentacles in everything. We've seen Samaritan mess round with general elections, Wall Street, the food supply. It's almost insidious the way it's operating. Everything we do on the show, we try to ground it in reality. How would that happen if it really happened? I think that's what makes the show unique. At least I hope so, because there's at least 3 shows ripping us off. [Laughs]

MS: Reese learned a valuable lesson from Carter (Taraji P. Henson)'s return last season in Terra Incognita. Will we see that growth continue?

JC: The lesson learned in that was...many times, we don't tell the people we love, we don't realize how much we love them until they're gone. I think that it hit him the hardest. He has to make that up by reparation and save as many lives as he can. For her, and the others, he has to be a better man.

He's a revenge guy. Every time he shoots someone in the knee, he wants to put a bullet in their head. He's capable of not missing most of the time. The show does a great job dealing with that. At this point, Carter's death inspires him reinvigorate Finch. We can do a lot more with a lot less. There's so much at stake here. If Finch isn't in, we're lost. But I'm willing to carry mine at this point because that's how much it reinvigorated him.

MS: Reese isn't the lone wolf anymore like in the first season. He has Fusco, Root, and Finch looking out for him now.

JC: In terms of NFL, the best teams are the ones that come together. The closeness of that means more than money and anything else. The togetherness is worth fighting for. That's a good analogy of what Team Machine needs to be, wants to be. But the Machine has to say "I can't do everything. You created me but you have to say who you say you are. You have to have that faith in yourself to carry on."

MS: Because this is the final season, what's the first thing that strikes you when you look back on the show?

JC: We did things nobody else did. If I was a student at Stanford, if I was a forger, I would say that was flattery.

GP: I think our legacy is when Samaritan finally makes Donald Trump president! [Laughs] People will realize what has finally happened with artificial intelligence! [Laughs] No, what I think is really cool about the show for me is being able to pull off a serialized, larger arc on broadcast television. I think a lot of people disregard broadcast TV because if you miss an episode, you can catch the next one. You really can't do that with our show! The last person I thought who did it really well was Aaron Sorkin and it almost killed him! I know how hard it is to keep track of the larger story and trying to top yourself.

Don't forget, we have 7 reasons why you should watch Person of Interest's Season 5 here:

Season 5 of Person of Interest premieres on CBS Tuesday, May 3 at 10pm.