criminal offence never sleeps , but it does leap out forwards in clip . At least , that ’s the premise of Alcatraz , the latest J.J. Abrams head misstep that debut on Fox last night . Present - Clarence Day San Francisco is in for an intrusion of escape convicts , bringing their brutal 1960s ways to our more civilized namby - pamby epoch . Because the Kennedy earned run average did successive grampus and vindictive wacko right hand .
Last night ’s premiere was like prison house food : solid , but a routine miss in flavor . spoiler onward …
There are really two ways to look at Alcatraz : as a deep bundle of WTF , or as a hebdomadal report of criminal offence and punishment , and the ways in which prison house does the opposite word of rehabilitating citizenry .
If you select to see Alcatraz as a show about mystery , I ’m afraid you might be a scrap world-weary . The mysteries , at least thus far , are kind of slow . And many .
Let ’s see :
1 ) There ’s the over - curve mystery story of why on the nose all of the convicts and guards at Alcatraz disappeared in 1963 , only to re-emerge in the present day without having age . Who ’s bestow them here and supplying them with gear and data ?
2 ) There ’s the mystery story of Emmerson Hauser ( Sam Neill ) , an Alcatraz guard who escaped the time - start and is now round the yardbird up — and who seems to have intercourse rather a slew more than he ’s say .
3 ) And the whodunit of Lucy ( Parminder Nagra ) , Emerson ’s doctor colleague who plain was around in the other sixties , looking precisely the same .
4 ) Then there ’s the mysterious key - shaped detail that our first run away convict , Jack Sylvane , take away from a secure belonging to a back breaker - com millionaire .
5 ) There ’s the fact that Jack Sylvane was having tons of blood draw for no rationality , and then someone claiming to be Rebecca ’s granddad ( inmate # 2002 ) tells Jack that there ’s something worse “ below the mess , ” and that something terrible is number to Alcatraz . And there ’s Hauser threatening to have “ Dr. Beauregard ” jog Jack ’s retentiveness .
6 ) Plus , how does Dr. Diego Soto ( Jorge Garcia ) have two PhDs and a twine of well - regarded books on Alcatraz ’s history , but his main source of income is owning a funny - Quran computer storage ? ( in reality , I believe that one . )
But then there ’s the other facet of the show , which is that we get sort of a window into the fact that Alcatraz was a brutal hell , where tough man were made uncollectible . ( Or in the case of Jack Sylvane , a pretty decent veteran who ’d made some mistakes . ) justly now , at least as of the first two episode , the flashback episode are the most interesting parts of the show , by far , and the most sympathetic persona in the first two hours is Jack Sylvane . By a recollective chalk . ( And this theme is nicely underscored by the “ closing cell door ” sound effect and graphic whenever one of these flashbacks end . )
So Jack Sylvane is a World War II vet who made some mistakes and had a string of tough luck . He rob a grocery computer storage to feed his family , and because it sold tender it was technically a post office , which made this a federal crime . He over - react to someone trying to molest him in the shower bath , and killed the guy – – which landed him at Alcatraz , where he was consistently fucked with by deputy warden E.B. Tiller , who put him in the maw and would n’t let him see his wife on chew the fat daytime . ( E.B. apparently stood for “ Evil Bastard . ” ) And then there ’s the said blood - drawing .
In the present twenty-four hours , Sylvane want to find his brother , who married his wife after he was locked up . But first , he takes retaliation on Tiller , who ’s now an ancient retired fed . And he does a job for the people who bring in him to the present tense , fetching the afore - note Florida key thingy .
Sylvane ’s account is affecting , because he ’s not just a man shoot out of his own time , he ’s also a member of the living bushed . His living was presuppose to be over when he went to Alcatraz , and he was fundamentally supposed to go away . His married woman was supposed to mourn him , and everybody else was supposed to blank out him . Jack wandering around , a free piece , is weird for reasons beyond just the fact that he has n’t aged in 50 year .
And then in the second hour , we get to know Ernest Cobb — who , unlike Jack Sylvane , is a unbowed - up psychotic person . Cobb has a Twilight Zone - esque desire to be left alone . He went so far as to inject a guard in the leg at his old prison house , so he could get transferred to the Rock and get a private cellular phone . But even with a private cubicle , he ’s not free of other prisoners ’ endeavour to socialise , so he keeps having to go further and further to get some solitude at long last . And this time , it ’s the warden himself , Edwin James , who takes a perverse pleasure in screwing with Cobb .
The opening succession of instalment two , where Cobb is institute naked into the prison while the captive scoff at him and the guards essay to play up his mortification , is downright unearthly and unsettling . Cobb is go out to fulfill the warden , outside , still stark raw — as E.B. Tiller enounce , the Nox air does wonders for your Johnson . But enough about the Vice President . Whatever your biggest weakness is , or whatever make you craziest , Alcatraz will find a way to push on it , making you crazier and more psychotic than when you went in .
It ’s really an interesting spin on the whim of prison as anti - rehabilitation — the years - old theme that prisons often turn one - time wrongdoer into hardened criminals . Here , we sort of get our look chafe in the notion that Alcatraz ’s inhumanity is a big part of what makes these men so incredibly serious when they get out into our nice , cultivated world .
aside from the convicts , and the flashbacks to sixties Alcatraz , the most interesting part of the show is belike Sam Neill ’s Emerson Hauser , who ’s a ware of Alcatraz and its final guardian . Re - look out the two - hr fender a second time ( or a third metre , in the case of the first hour ) , I ’m come upon afresh by quite what a bastard Hauser is . And I have a touch sensation that one of the primary pleasures of this show will be determine him headbutt the great unwashed and shoot masses in the hired hand and snarl at hoi polloi and broadly work like a venomous maniac . He ’s clearly enjoying this role a lot , and there will plausibly be a “ Sam Neill bastard moment of the week ” aspect to future episodes .
Meanwhile , Sarah Jones is not quite working for me as Detective Rebecca Madsen , the show ’s seeming principal character . She just seems too … chirpy . See the clip careen up top , where she watches her grandfather mangle her partner , has a freak out as she tries to wash Julie ’s bloodline off her face and neck opening , and chats with her “ Uncle ” — a former Alcatraz guard who raised her after her parents die . Rebecca ’s character is apparently say to be dealing with a slew of dark squat . She ’s traumatized by her partner ’s death , her grandad is A ) not a sentry go but an con B ) still alive and C ) her partner ’s liquidator , and she ’s up to her neck opening in blood . But she just does n’t seem convincingly nark by any of this . Probably in succeeding instalment , when the show tries less hard to establish her dark side , it ’ll work better .
And then there ’s Jorge Garcia — there ’s been a lot of talk about how he ’s not dally Hurley from Lost , this is a entirely different fictional character . Because , of course , this type would not obsess about the mechanism of metre locomotion ( as Hurley did ) or drop lots of nerd references into average conversation ( as Hurley did ) or say “ whoa , dude ” ( as Hurley frequently did . ) On the other hand , there ’s nothing wrong with this character being “ Hurley with special Alcatraz noesis , ” and Garcia sometimes make enceinte mirthful easing . Like when he declares that dim sum has too much weird shit . Or when he says he ’s getting a “ Second Amendment Contact High ” from being in a hired gun shop class . On the other hand , the lectures about video games and comics ? And the inept “ do n’t look , it ’s a girl ” moment with his risible - store assistant ? Could be dropped .
All in all , Alcatraz works right smart best if you just ignore the giant heaping of “ OMG what ’s with the special key that was in the out of sight safe ” secret , and focalise on the little parables of crime and punishment . So far , this show ’s at its honest when it uses time travel to illuminate the lasting effects of hard time .
J.J. AbramsTelevision
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