Alcatraz or Maybe I'd Rather Watch Castle

    If this were Castle the heroes of this show would have saved one more life in the second episode.  You know these shows...after the chase begins and the clock starts they’re scrambling to solve the puzzle that allows them to catch the killer/mastermind/villain before he can kill again.  They’ll reach him just a bit late and blood spills but not as much as the time before, but the villain escapes them until the last 15 minutes.  Then in the last five minutes there’s a coda, someone says we could have done more.  If they were smarter or quicker all these people wouldn’t have died.  Then the smart ass one says if they hadn’t had been as smart or as quick as they actually were then that poor little girl/boy/coed would have died too.  Then everyone recognizes how human these characters really are.  The makers of Alcaltraz totally failed to lived up to that established cliche.  This show is so very odd.

I’ll admit to being a fan of Lost.  It raises my expectations for this odd odd show.  I wasn’t one of those rabid myth junkies, so I won’t be up in arms and on the streets if I fail to see a single polar bear.  I just don’t understand how people got so into the myth of that show.  I was happy enough to see an engaging story about uncommon characters in harrowing situations.  At times this show follows formula so very well I have to wonder if they’ve been stealing from the slush pile they keep at Criminal Minds, but when they fail to hit a few expected twists I have to wonder about intent.  This show seems so carefully created, I have to wonder exactly what they are doing.  They assemble an amazing ensemble to support a painfully forgettable lead actress...forgive the cliche but I am getting ahead of myself.

Sam Neil and Jorge Garcia wear their characters like latex catsuits.  Neil is especially adept at portraying an incredibly complex character who is at turns the only hope to save us from killers from the past and in other scenes a menacing sadist who would sooner kill you than have to put you into his after action report.  He walks that fine line so well I’m not sure if my confusion is intentional or not.  As for Garcia, he may not have a role so finely drawn as Sam Neil, he does have one that is equally deep and actually far more essential to the whole show.  He is our proxy in that universe.  The quiet everyman who save for coincidence and strange circumstance is pulled into situations none of us could face with such courage and calm.  Feckful and alert he’s a sidekick who might smile if any accused him of it.

Parminder Nagra and the two villains are hits.  Villains are essential to a show like this and they played their parts incredibly well.  There is no question they have done some terrible deeds, but I challenge anyone to not feel some sympathy for them.  A family man sent to Alcaltraz for stealing food for his child kills the guard who tormented him for so long.  A lost orphan whose only goal is peace kills to soothe the madness of the world around him.  I’m not saying I want to live next to them or anything, but I don’t think they should be shut away from the world forever.  At least do them the simple courtesy of killing them.  And I save the best performance for last, I remember her running a soccer field next to Keira Knightley and tending to the wounds of the injured on ER, Nagra for such a small role left me speechless.  In hindsight I should have realized how central her character might prove to be in Alcaltraz Mythology at the end of episode 2.  Forgive me I was distracted by other things.  Frankly for that one last scene alone I’m ready to watch next week.

This show is a mystery.  So many fine performances and then the lead actress who I won’t bother even to identify by name; one google search and I can accuse her by name of acting as if she were simply a Law & Order detective mysteriously transported to an alternate San Francisco.  If she were on the X-Files her performance would suffice for one of those nameless agents in the background.  I do believe that she could play the hell out of that luckless red shirt who dies in the last half hour to remind us that Chris Carter is keeping it real.  She’s missing something.  I want to say she’s just isn’t as engaging as Evangine Lilly from Lost, but what I really want to say is she’s a hopeless hack who will be the death of this show.  I can only hope this is just some strange context thing; everything else is so good that the one bad thing is so very infuriating.  I also want to hope that this is all intentional and that this character will click into place and this actress will be earning her salary soon enough.  Okay I get it I might be as bad as any given rabid myth junkie maybe I understand that a bit better now.

Just one more bit now and I’m done.  One funny thing I note is that you turn Alcaltraz escapees into demons and you have the premise to Reaper.  You change Alcaltraz escapees to cursed objects and you find yourself watching the classic series “Friday the 13th”.  I hope this is intentional.  I hope it says something about formula television and how you can do quite a few things by establishing expectations then either missing or completely changing them suddenly.  I’ll stick around for a couple of more episodes but frankly I don’t see how this show can but fail to disappoint me. I cross my fingers and hope that these people who created Lost are the geniuses that critics and fanboys accuse them of being.   Too much like Lost and I’ll be disappointed that you just didn’t give me one more season of Lost.  If it tries too hard to be conventionally good then I’ll just wait an hour and watch Castle.  That show doesn’t make me think this hard and I like that show just fine.