Alcatraz - "Garrett Stillman"/"Tommy Madsen"

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. 

Alcatraz - "Webb Porter"

Season 1, Episode 11 

“I wasn't always like this, you know.” 

Since the beginning – which really wasn't all that long ago, I realize – Alcatraz has relied on an oversimplified interpretation of psychology in order to explain the psyches of it's prisoners. I wouldn't call it a reliance on pop psychology – though there certainly are some instances of that – but rather the one cause, one effect model. Something bad or traumatic happens to a '63 either while they are young or while they are locked up, and that's what causes them to act the way that they do. Tonight, the show tried to mix it up by having an inmate suffer lasting effects from both before and during lockup, and in addition to highlighting the show's use of oversimplified characterization, it also ended up just being one giant, muddled mess. 

Alcatraz - "Clarence Montgomery"

Season 1, Episode 10 

Tonight's episode of Alcatraz was originally meant to air two weeks ago, yet was preempted by a rescheduled NASCAR race, and then for whatever reason, was preempted for the next two scheduled episode, before finally airing tonight. Obviously, the network didn't feel as if the reorder would affect anything, and for the most part they were right, since the events of the episode weren't predicated on anything we didn't know past the third episode, and there were only some slight revelations by the end. So instead of repeating myself again concerning the show's major flaws, I would like instead to discuss something far more troubling: this episode's awful depictions of both racism and race. 

Alcatraz - "Johnny McKee"/"The Ames Brothers"/"Sonny Burnett"

Season 1, Episode 7-9 

“There's no such thing as just doing time. You're either predator or prey.” 

All shows have growing pains in their first seasons, those first handful of awkward episodes where the writers are still tweaking with the formula, the stories, the characters, in order to make the best possible show out of the elements they have on hand. This goes at least double for genre shows that have overarching mythology, as the show has to experiment in order to find the perfect balance between serialized and standalone elements. Obviously, not all shows get through the growing pains period on the right foot, but those that do should be commended. Depending on your overall sense of patience, Alcatraz should have already gone through this phase (and given the declining ratings, most of America seems to be in agreement with this statement), but these past three episodes serve as nice snapshot of what the show is doing right, and what it's doing wrong. 

Alcatraz - "Paxton Petty"

Season 1, Episode 6 

Say, do you care about the central characters of Alcatraz? If you don't, do you care about caring about them? Do you wish that the show would give us more personal stories so that you could get to know them and eventually reach a place where you could care about them? Well, if you're in that small section of the show's audience, then you're in luck, because you got a whole lot of you coming at ya. And just it times for Valentine's Day, it all has to do with love. Awwwww...... 

Alcatraz - "Cal Sweeney"/"Guy Hastings"

Season 1, Episodes 4-5

“Four down, and a hell of a lot more to go.”

Sometimes the best of intentions can go wry. After waiting three episodes and over two weeks to get my first post with all my thoughts on Alcatraz published, I was all jazzed to continue the discussion, by breaking down each of my complaints further, point by point, until I had either exhausted them all or the show had shown a significant uptick in quality. But then grad school did what it always does, and it got in the way. Therefore, I was left to do yet another multi-episode post, which are fun experiment to do when I “get” the chance to do so, but always make me feel like I'm not able to do enough in depth analysis.

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.

Alcatraz - "Pilot"/"Ernest Cobb"/"Kitt Nelson"

Season 1, Episode 1-3 

You're probably wondering why, given my general frustrations with Terra Nova, I would commit to covering another FOX sci-fi series that happens to air on Monday nights, and for all intensive purposes seems just a purposely mainstreamed and procedural-in-nature. The truth is that I find the FOX approach to sci-fi and serialization fairly interesting, given that it makes for some of the blandest television on air, and that it does so much better than than the more creative and ambitious shows that tend to die much quicker deaths. Sadly, Alcatraz exists in that vein, but I think it's still worth talking about, nonetheless.