I have an interest in seeing things as they were intended. Imagine that!

Today I wrote to WGN, the former superstation out of Chicago, concerning their broadcast butchery of the series Person of Interest. Now, I missed this program on its first run because I avoid “the Networks”, due to their inability to recognize quality programming and to unceremoniously cancel such programming, based on some idiot’s interpretation of statistics based on a very narrow slice of potential viewers. That, however, is a rant for another time.

So, anyway, I wrote this to WGN:

“Recently you incorrectly broadcasted several episodes of Person of Interest.

The one that is supposed to be the Season 3 finale, “Deus Ex Machina”, was skipped completely, as was the Season 4 premiere. This has created a major discontinuity in the story. The error seems to have stemmed from skipping a title from the Season 3 sequence (but not the episode itself, resulting in Episode 22 being shown as Episode 23.

I also see that, not only have you skipped Episode 1 of Season 4, instead showing Episode 2 in its stead (which messes up the Brotherhood story line), but that you have skipped Episode 3, 7, and 11. Considering the great pride WGN displayed when it acquired the rights to broadcast this quality show, I would have hoped that it would exercise equal pride when actually broadcasting the program, and hope this will be rectified in the second pass through.”

We await the typical form letter thanking me for my interest in their station, blah blah, blah. You may ask, “If you knew that is what you would get, why did you write?” Well, I had to do SOMETHING. After all, they skipped the last episode of Season 3 AND the first episode of Season 4, essentially buggering two story lines – the end of Season 3 and the beginning of rht current story line. Additionally, I see that they have skipped THREE episodes. For the record, I haven’t caught up to them yet. I mean, come ON! They blasted through 100 episodes of Person of Interest and Elementary combined in some dorky “crimefest” that lasted two weeks. I was recording the latter, as well, but had to stop and delete when my DVR was nearly full. No one watches 100 hours of television in two weeks except the unemployed or retired.

Discontinuity disturbs me. It really used to bug me when a network, back in the days before DVRs, would move programs all around the schedule, sometimes without an announcement, skip an episode they considered “inappropriate”, or rearrange the order to reconstruct the plotline to something that some suit thought better for their own sinister purposes. I mean, who knows better than the showrunner what order the episodes need to be shown in? Some wanker with a liberal arts degree from some snooty private school, followed up with an MBA? Bleh.

So, now the waiting game begins.