Season 1, Episodes 12-13
“In any Faustian tale, a Devil is often needed. However misunderstood.”
At this point, it would be unwise to pretend that Alcatraz is going to come back. I mean, in this current anemic-ratings television market, I suppose anything is possible (just look at how the network brought Breaking In back from the dead for no real reason), but given how far its ratings have slipped since the premiere, it's more likely to go away than not. This reason alone seems to give the season's/series' last two hours an undercurrent of desperation, as if they are just daring FOX to cancel the show, what with all this cool shit that happens. But there's also a far more depressing sort of desperation, as the show tries to tie everything together from the previous 11 episodes, because while not everything works, it shows a version of the show that works a lot better than what we had previously.
“Garrett Stillman” opened up on a positive note that I had never even considered when it finally gave us out first good look at Lucy. Last week, I was dismissive of the show leaving us on the cliffhanger of Lucy waking up, because we knew so little worthwhile information about the character and her place in the larger narrative for it to hold any real impact. And yet Lucy, as played with aplomb by Parminder Nagra, is a real treat, plucky and charming in a way that I wouldn't have guessed from her two earlier, conscious appearances on the show.
I know, I know – we have seen a lot of Lucy, but it was always in flashbacks, where she was constrained by the official rules of the job and (in the narrative sense) the need to help us learn...something...about the prisoners and its various inmates. However, Lucy in the present day is a much more noticeable present, as she is allowed to have an actual personality*, is allowed to be funny and proactive and have interactions with others that actually mean something, at least on a character level. She and Doc compliment each other when it comes to finding the unleashed '63s, and her back-and-forths with present day Hauser do a lot better job of finding the chemistry the two characters have than all of the flashbacks combined ever did. What's more, Lucy is finally able to add some gravitas to the situation of the '63s, as she gives a fairly heartfelt confession of what it was like to unwillingly jump through time and lose the life she used to know far more effectively than any of the other '63s have.**
But if Lucy was so awesome, the other '63s weren't quite as interesting, for a varying level of reasons. I'll admit that I was excited when I learned that Stillman was supposed to be something of a master thief, who comes up with brilliantly complex plans that always kept his enemies guessing, because characters like that usually result in stories that do pretty much the same thing, and I'm a sucker for a well-crafted crime drama. However, apparently the writers of Alcatraz didn't have dictionary in their offices to look up the word "complex" while this script was being crafted, because Stillman's actions rarely progressed passed a series of double crosses, and while he was in many ways a smart character, his actions didn't live up the original description given to him.***
Yet the one thing that I did enjoy about Stillman's appearance was that it was the first Inmate of the Week case that was actually relevant to the overall plot, and not is some sort of half-assed ending sort of way, or through a vague thematic connection, but through tangible bits of plot. Now, I'm still not entirely sure why (or even how) The Warden had Simmons go and form a security company in order to keep the key safe, or why Tommy Madsen was so desperate to go after it (more on him in a minute), but it was a least a step in the right direction, as the large chunk of the show that's usually filled by action that mean little in the long run actually became relevant. Now, I get the feeling that the only reason this was so was because the writers realized that they had spent the last eleven episodes fucking around with useless storylines, and they had to cram a whole into these last two hours for everything to make sense (which would explain why not everything seemed to track), but it was appreciate nonetheless.
One of the ways in which the show tried to help create this sense of increased serialization was through the introduction of Joseph Limerick (who I'm pretty sure the other '63s called “Ghost”, though maybe I just misheard that), a two-and-done character who helped to bring the actions between “Stillman” and “Tommy Madsen”. Using Limerick as a way to comment on how the '63s would be perceived by the world at large – that is, crazy enough to be admitted to a mental institution – but considering that was part of Limerick's actual overall plan, it was an element that quickly fell flat, much like the character himself when it became apparent that he was nothing more than a tool to move the story forward.
And that brings us to Tommy Madsen, a character that the writers probably wanted us to be invested in far more than we actually were. Much like Lucy, most of our perceptions of Tommy were filtered through the flashback scenes, which never really went passed the idea that the prison was stealing his blood, and though we had often seen him acting menacing in the present day, none of his actions really meant anything since they were so devoid of context. Obviously we were supposed to think that he was evil, since he had a role in killing Rebecca's partner, but we were never entirely sure.
It was this doubt, or at least lack of concrete proof, that the show is trying to play on in the final minutes when Tommy delivers the standard “everything you know is a lie” speech, and it's one that's supposedly meant to keep the story moving forward, were there to be a second season. But the problem with this reveal is the same problem with the reveal about what's behind the three-keyed door below Alcatraz: they're so viciously vague and lack any context to mean anything other than a generic game changer. Rebecca doesn't know the truth, and people connected with Alcatraz found a way to track their inmates using their blood. So what? None of it means anything without any glimpse at the end game, and it's clear that the writers have no idea what that is.
Nor or we ever likely to find out, as the final cliffhanger scene ends up serving a meta commentary on the show's status: Rebecca, much like the show, seems dead in the water, and it should probably stay that way. Coming back to life would just make things far too messy.
I know, I know – we have seen a lot of Lucy, but it was always in flashbacks, where she was constrained by the official rules of the job and (in the narrative sense) the need to help us learn...something...about the prisoners and its various inmates. However, Lucy in the present day is a much more noticeable present, as she is allowed to have an actual personality*, is allowed to be funny and proactive and have interactions with others that actually mean something, at least on a character level. She and Doc compliment each other when it comes to finding the unleashed '63s, and her back-and-forths with present day Hauser do a lot better job of finding the chemistry the two characters have than all of the flashbacks combined ever did. What's more, Lucy is finally able to add some gravitas to the situation of the '63s, as she gives a fairly heartfelt confession of what it was like to unwillingly jump through time and lose the life she used to know far more effectively than any of the other '63s have.**
But if Lucy was so awesome, the other '63s weren't quite as interesting, for a varying level of reasons. I'll admit that I was excited when I learned that Stillman was supposed to be something of a master thief, who comes up with brilliantly complex plans that always kept his enemies guessing, because characters like that usually result in stories that do pretty much the same thing, and I'm a sucker for a well-crafted crime drama. However, apparently the writers of Alcatraz didn't have dictionary in their offices to look up the word "complex" while this script was being crafted, because Stillman's actions rarely progressed passed a series of double crosses, and while he was in many ways a smart character, his actions didn't live up the original description given to him.***
Yet the one thing that I did enjoy about Stillman's appearance was that it was the first Inmate of the Week case that was actually relevant to the overall plot, and not is some sort of half-assed ending sort of way, or through a vague thematic connection, but through tangible bits of plot. Now, I'm still not entirely sure why (or even how) The Warden had Simmons go and form a security company in order to keep the key safe, or why Tommy Madsen was so desperate to go after it (more on him in a minute), but it was a least a step in the right direction, as the large chunk of the show that's usually filled by action that mean little in the long run actually became relevant. Now, I get the feeling that the only reason this was so was because the writers realized that they had spent the last eleven episodes fucking around with useless storylines, and they had to cram a whole into these last two hours for everything to make sense (which would explain why not everything seemed to track), but it was appreciate nonetheless.
One of the ways in which the show tried to help create this sense of increased serialization was through the introduction of Joseph Limerick (who I'm pretty sure the other '63s called “Ghost”, though maybe I just misheard that), a two-and-done character who helped to bring the actions between “Stillman” and “Tommy Madsen”. Using Limerick as a way to comment on how the '63s would be perceived by the world at large – that is, crazy enough to be admitted to a mental institution – but considering that was part of Limerick's actual overall plan, it was an element that quickly fell flat, much like the character himself when it became apparent that he was nothing more than a tool to move the story forward.
And that brings us to Tommy Madsen, a character that the writers probably wanted us to be invested in far more than we actually were. Much like Lucy, most of our perceptions of Tommy were filtered through the flashback scenes, which never really went passed the idea that the prison was stealing his blood, and though we had often seen him acting menacing in the present day, none of his actions really meant anything since they were so devoid of context. Obviously we were supposed to think that he was evil, since he had a role in killing Rebecca's partner, but we were never entirely sure.
It was this doubt, or at least lack of concrete proof, that the show is trying to play on in the final minutes when Tommy delivers the standard “everything you know is a lie” speech, and it's one that's supposedly meant to keep the story moving forward, were there to be a second season. But the problem with this reveal is the same problem with the reveal about what's behind the three-keyed door below Alcatraz: they're so viciously vague and lack any context to mean anything other than a generic game changer. Rebecca doesn't know the truth, and people connected with Alcatraz found a way to track their inmates using their blood. So what? None of it means anything without any glimpse at the end game, and it's clear that the writers have no idea what that is.
Nor or we ever likely to find out, as the final cliffhanger scene ends up serving a meta commentary on the show's status: Rebecca, much like the show, seems dead in the water, and it should probably stay that way. Coming back to life would just make things far too messy.
*When I started writing this review, I was going to take a guess that Nagra had been filming a movie, and that's why she'd been so absent from so many episodes, before remembering that she was in every episode, only in a role that didn't leave any sort of impression in my brain.
**This probably has something to do with the gender make-up of the '63s, which is pretty much universally male, but it's hard to tell how much of that is the show being hampered by “historical accuracy” and how much is there unwillingness to write in more women/emotionally available characters.
***I also find it hard to swallow that somebody so supposedly brilliant was taken out so easily.
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