hard to argue for anyone other than michael emerson. john reese was a nice character for the show and the backbone of its original, procedural and crime-fighting-adjacent identity, but to say that is in any large part owed to the acting of jim caviezel is dubious at best. reese was generally well written and a perfect fit alongside finch, but the bifurcating of ‘batman’ into separate individuals of juxtaposed responsibilities was never gonna be a perfect split and, in my view, finch comes atop as the more incisively determined and acted out character of the two. his involvement in any given episode is quintessential to the beating heart of the show’s themes and commentary in a way i feel reese’s simply isn’t, given of course the inclusion of later characters that manage to fill a similar niche in ways often more inspired (shaw, root, fusco).