Going into this, I had pretty high hopes for a new sci-fi show that I could really get in to. It looked so promising.
But it all seems very procedural. 300 inmates disappear from Alcatraz without a trace, and now they’re popping back up in 2012 where they’ll apparently continue to steal, murder, maim, and otherwise wreck havoc on society, just as they had been in the 1960s.
Enter the crime-fighting duo of San Francisco Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and historian/author/comic book shop owner Diego Soto (Hurley–erm, Jorge Garcia), who have to catch these living Alcatraz ghosts. At first, the pair do this vigillante style, with no help or approval from creepy mysterious FBI Agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) and his scientist sidekick Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra). After the first case, however, Hauser offers the pair a job working for him, catching the resurfacing inmates.
It’s sort of a Criminal-Of-The-Week with a Time Travel Twist.
I’m hoping that as the series progresses, it will delve a little more into the mystery of how the inmates disappeared and who was involved in the disappearances/cover-up.
And now, gentle readers, unless you want to read spoilers for the Pilot, stop reading.
Things I Have Issue With:
- Culture Shock. There is none! CotW Jack has no culture shock at all. If you were suddenly thrown from living a pretty much solitary life in a maximum security prison on an island in 1963 into present day San Francisco 2012, wouldn’t you be just a little bit thrown off kilter? Jack seemed to just jump right in.
- Dialogue. It was all very–expected, if that makes sense. It was predictable. It was all, for the most part, a steady Q&A, which I don’t have fun with at all. There was hardly any confrontation in the dialogue and it made it kind of boring for me. That and a good number of Soto’s lines seem like they’re directed more for/at the audience (“Is anyone else’s head exploding right now?”).
- Procedural Feel. This speaks for itself. While the premise is entirely unique, the execution wasn’t really. They basically tell you what’s happening instead of showing it, which takes a bit of the fun out of it. Like I said, I’m hoping that there’s more to what they’re going to show us and what the true mystery of Alcatraz is.
- Mini-Alcatraz. It’s high-tech, it’s in the middle of the woods, it’s underground, it’s an exact replica. I thought that was a great idea, especially since it’s being run by Hauser, who doesn’t strike me as the best of guys on this show. Maybe it’s the eyebrows.
- The overall premise. It’s a very nice, very original twist to the Criminal-Of-The-Week procedural. (the execution was just a little off).
- Soto. He’s a historian who owns a comic book store (and writes comics? If I understand that correctly?) and seems to know all the facts about these living Alcatraz ghosts that Madsen needs to solve the cases (which may be a copout, but hey, it works).
Anyway, I’m hoping they up the ante a little. I usually give a show three or four episodes before I decide whether or not I like it enough to keep watching it.
We’ll see what happens.