Season 1, Episodes 4-5
“Four down, and a hell of a lot more to go.”
Lucky for me then that the past two episodes of the show both revolved around my main complaint about the show – the overly procedural nature of it all – while being in contrast to one another with a criminal at the heart of one episode, and a guard in the second. Luckier still was that Monday's episode felt like a significant improvement for the show, as if it had finally found a more entertaining way forward.
In my initial review of the show, I criticized the show's depiction of the Criminals of the Week, saying essentially that they were depicted as a series of quirks or creepy qualities, but they weren't really centered around anything, and they didn't add up to anything even resembling a whole person. (Perhaps the one exception was Kitt Nelson, and that's only because his inherent creepiness overrode any narrative laziness he may have represented.) I also decried the fact that the flashbacks to the time in prison didn't really amount to anything, either in terms of the storytelling, or in enhancing the inmate's characterization.
At the risk of being repetitive, I bring these issues up in order to understand how “Cal Sweeney” and “Guy Hastings” both strengthen and subvert these criticisms. Cal Sweeney, for example, was only a bank robber, and nothing more, with very little quirk about him. The episode feigned this being so when we saw him ask people he had just ripped off the stories behind certain objects, but when it turns out that it's just part of the larger con, that quickly fell flat. In fact, that entire hour played out like the most straightforward police procedural of the first four episodes, and suffered greatly for it. Even the “twist” of having Rebecca help break Cal out of the bank felt calculated, as if the show was checking off ideas on some sort of list of the hurdles they had to put the characters and/or show through during the early run.
Guy Hastings suffered some of the same problems as a character as Cal did. For starters, having the fifth episode centered around a guard feels like another thing that the show has to do, as opposed to something that the writers were really interested in doing. In fact, this is one of the main problems with series that can't seem to find the balance between standalone episodes with more serialized ones, and the sudden infusion of serialized elements tends to upend the normal storytelling rhythms of a show in order to infuse more backstory, again usually based on some arbitrary benchmark. To that end, Guy was a fairly bland character who was merely a tool used to forward the story. But it certainly did help that the story was interesting.
But let's back up, because as intriguing as the moments of “Guy Hastings” were, they weren't technically without precedent. As boring and predictable as Cal was in the present day, he was...well his backstory specifically wasn't that great, either. Frankly, I'm not sure what purpose showing Cal's prison scheme getting upended by his protégé was meant to serve, since nothing Cal did in the present day was done out of revenge against said inmate or his family, or driven by a desire to prove himself as a criminal, both of which would have been legitimate if tired reasons for that subplot to exist.
However, Cal's various dealings with the Warden and Deputy did give us a chance to get a better glimpse of the the show's version of 1960, mostly through the E.B.'s birthday party. I'm not going to pretend that the scene was in anyway important to the overall plot, and it that case it was sort of waste, but it was indicative of the show's sense of place. Even better, it hinted at dissension among the ranks among the Alcatraz hierarchy as to the treatment of the prisoners, which again asks us to question exactly what happened to cause their disappearance.
Playing off of this new found confidence in the past setting, the flashbacks of “Guy Hastings”, which weren't really about Guy, but rather Uncle Ray (who makes his first appearance since the pilot), which again serves the episode's goal of fleshing out the backstory. In tradition of shows such as Alias or Justified, what makes this case work is that it is specifically tied to the master plot, and that allows us to care about it in a far more natural and less strained manner.
In the end, I'm not entirely sure whether it all works; the fact that “Uncle” Ray really is Rebecca's actual uncle isn't all that big of a surprise, nor the fact that that makes Ray Danny's brother. However, it does add another layer to the overall serialization of the show, and when you add the end-of-episode conversation between the two men, it does appear as if the show is moving into a more serialized direction,and I think that's where it will work best.
The question now remains whether or not the show will be able to stick with this increase in serialization, or if it's just a fluke. The end of “Cal” introduced the question of some mysterious keys, which were immediately followed up on at the end of “Guy”. Sure, it seems a bit shortsighted and perfunctory, but any way forward is better than none at all.
Next Week: A bomb maker. Because that doesn't strain believability at all.
At the risk of being repetitive, I bring these issues up in order to understand how “Cal Sweeney” and “Guy Hastings” both strengthen and subvert these criticisms. Cal Sweeney, for example, was only a bank robber, and nothing more, with very little quirk about him. The episode feigned this being so when we saw him ask people he had just ripped off the stories behind certain objects, but when it turns out that it's just part of the larger con, that quickly fell flat. In fact, that entire hour played out like the most straightforward police procedural of the first four episodes, and suffered greatly for it. Even the “twist” of having Rebecca help break Cal out of the bank felt calculated, as if the show was checking off ideas on some sort of list of the hurdles they had to put the characters and/or show through during the early run.
Guy Hastings suffered some of the same problems as a character as Cal did. For starters, having the fifth episode centered around a guard feels like another thing that the show has to do, as opposed to something that the writers were really interested in doing. In fact, this is one of the main problems with series that can't seem to find the balance between standalone episodes with more serialized ones, and the sudden infusion of serialized elements tends to upend the normal storytelling rhythms of a show in order to infuse more backstory, again usually based on some arbitrary benchmark. To that end, Guy was a fairly bland character who was merely a tool used to forward the story. But it certainly did help that the story was interesting.
But let's back up, because as intriguing as the moments of “Guy Hastings” were, they weren't technically without precedent. As boring and predictable as Cal was in the present day, he was...well his backstory specifically wasn't that great, either. Frankly, I'm not sure what purpose showing Cal's prison scheme getting upended by his protégé was meant to serve, since nothing Cal did in the present day was done out of revenge against said inmate or his family, or driven by a desire to prove himself as a criminal, both of which would have been legitimate if tired reasons for that subplot to exist.
However, Cal's various dealings with the Warden and Deputy did give us a chance to get a better glimpse of the the show's version of 1960, mostly through the E.B.'s birthday party. I'm not going to pretend that the scene was in anyway important to the overall plot, and it that case it was sort of waste, but it was indicative of the show's sense of place. Even better, it hinted at dissension among the ranks among the Alcatraz hierarchy as to the treatment of the prisoners, which again asks us to question exactly what happened to cause their disappearance.
Playing off of this new found confidence in the past setting, the flashbacks of “Guy Hastings”, which weren't really about Guy, but rather Uncle Ray (who makes his first appearance since the pilot), which again serves the episode's goal of fleshing out the backstory. In tradition of shows such as Alias or Justified, what makes this case work is that it is specifically tied to the master plot, and that allows us to care about it in a far more natural and less strained manner.
In the end, I'm not entirely sure whether it all works; the fact that “Uncle” Ray really is Rebecca's actual uncle isn't all that big of a surprise, nor the fact that that makes Ray Danny's brother. However, it does add another layer to the overall serialization of the show, and when you add the end-of-episode conversation between the two men, it does appear as if the show is moving into a more serialized direction,and I think that's where it will work best.
The question now remains whether or not the show will be able to stick with this increase in serialization, or if it's just a fluke. The end of “Cal” introduced the question of some mysterious keys, which were immediately followed up on at the end of “Guy”. Sure, it seems a bit shortsighted and perfunctory, but any way forward is better than none at all.
Next Week: A bomb maker. Because that doesn't strain believability at all.
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