Report: PERSON OF INTEREST Season 5 to be 13 Episodes

The recently-renewed PERSON OF INTEREST will only have 13 episodes in its upcoming season 5, Deadline reports. (A network rep had no comment.)

While fans may be (understandably) disappointed to have less hours of the show — and given what executive producer Greg Plageman teased about the fifth season, it’s hard to imagine that in a shorter season — the producers have mentioned their desire to have a shorter season before.

“We keep trying,” Plageman told me in early 2014 about doing less episodes per year. “It never works.”

“It’s an ongoing conversation for us every year,” executive producer Jonathan Nolan said. “Second season we made 22, because that was what we thought we were capable of doing…it’s a glorious problem to have when the network and the audience wants more of what you’re making. It’s a great problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless.”

“And to safeguard the production value and our own sanity, we can’t do 24,” Nolan continued. “We can’t often do 23. 22 is a reasonably good number, where you’re unlikely to have episodes that are dog shit. But the nice thing about the blended approach of having a procedural in a serialized story is you don’t have to burn through story for the stake of it.”

But as of now, this is all speculation — until CBS confirms things, anything is possible. But if it does end up being correct, given the showrunners have expressed a desire to do less episodes in the past, I’m curious to see what they’ll do with a shorter run.

Related:

PERSON OF INTEREST Post-Mortem: Greg Plageman on Season 5’s ‘Greatest Mystery,’ Rebuilding the Machine, Exploring Backstories, and More
PERSON OF INTEREST Finale Thoughts
PERSON OF INTEREST: Jonathan Nolan Teases Deaths, ‘Messy’ A.I. War in Final Season 4 Episodes
PERSON OF INTEREST Post-Mortem: Jonathan Nolan on Bringing a Bit of Closure to Carter’s Tale
PERSON OF INTEREST: Jonathan Nolan on Carter’s ‘Return,’ the Mystery of Reese, and More

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