Earlier this week, Fox premiered its new winter series, Alcatraz, adding another entry to the canon of lore surrounding the decommissioned San Francisco prison. Despite a lukewarm score of 63 on media critic amalgam site metacritic.com, I felt that Alcatraz's two hour premiere, consisting of two distinct episodes, made a decent showing of itself.If you missed the half-hearted publicity campaign and/or are too busy for Wikipedia or IMDB, Alcatraz explores a supernatural cause of the island prison's shutdown, complete with mysterious disappearances and government coverup. The show's premise is that 302 prisoners (and, presumably, guards) vanished from the island one evening in 1960 (or possibly 1963- the characters and subtitles seem to disagree on this point), leaving two patrolmen from the mainland to discover the facility entirely vacant. Fast-forward to the present day, when the missing prisoners have begun to resurface, committing their crimes in the modern world.
The containment of “the sixty threes” falls to Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), a gnarled federal agent who was part of the team that initially discovered the disappearances. In a fairly predictable jurisdiction battle, he unwillingly recruits San Fransisco detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), who in turn (and somewhat less conventionally) enlists the aid of an Alcatraz historian and comic book enthusiast, Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia... yes, that Jorge Garcia). Joining two stock law enforcement characters, Soto seems somewhat out of place, though for now there is enough awareness of his awkwardness among the other characters to prevent it from becoming comical. Soto also serves as an advocate for the audience, with quips such as “Is anyone else's brain exploding right now?” inserting the incredulity for the situation that seems to be lacking from Madsen and Hauser.
Alcatraz appears committed to naming each of its episodes after one of the missing prisoners or staff, establishing a fairly procedural approach that is comfortable but boring for fans of that genre. Each week, we will get a new criminal, and presumably new evidence to suggest where they've been and on whose orders they appear to be acting. One significant departure from this pattern is the show's tendency to provide “flashbacks” to the prison as it was in the 1960s, generally to provide backstory on the Criminal of the Week. We have, by the end of the second episode, also begun to become acquainted with the Warden, Edwin James, who may or may not be among the missing. The transitions between past and present, a horizontal wipe reminiscent of a closing jail cell, are a nice addition to the ambiance.
Much like the prematurely terminated The 4400 (which aired on USA Network from 2004-2007), Alcatraz may have given itself an expiration date by tying its plot to a mystery and a number. The 4400, a show that also centered on mysterious disappearances and returns, began to burn itself out once the mystery began to be dispelled and was put out of its misery without any real resolution for its characters. One wonders if Alcatraz is in line for a similar fate, especially on the precarious FOX Network with its reputation for murdering promising shows in their infancy.
Alcatraz is worth a look, with a slightly unconventional premise and some potentially interesting characters, but it didn't knock me off my feet, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Fox drop the ax sooner rather than later on what feels like a rather half-hearted procedural trying to tap into the success of Lost and X-Files, to say nothing of internal competition with the ongoing Fringe. My guess is that Detective Madsen and Dr. Soto will go the way of the Alcatraz prisoners... one day we'll remember to check in on them, and they'll be gone.
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