'Alcatraz': 'Pilot' & 'Ernest Cobb'
JJ Abrams. An island. The man behind Hurley. And, at least for the better portion of the first episode, not a clue what is really going on. Sounds kind of like the second coming of Lost, but no, that ship has sailed. FOX's new mystery thriller Alcatraz premiered with a two episode block that, at the very least, revealed just enough to pique interest and get people coming back.
The show begins with a boat arriving to Alcatraz Island in 1963 and the two officers who come ashore find the prison completely empty. No explanation, just that everyone is gone.
In the present day, Alcatraz is a tourist attraction. A little girl on a tour decides to completely disregard authority and ventures down a hallway that's off limits to the public. She opens a door to a cell and screams, getting the attention of everyone else on the tour. A man looks like he's sleeping in the cell, and is told to leave. Walking around very confused, he gets on the boat back to the pier, and while on the boat, picks up an "Inmates of Alcatraz" book out of someone's bag. He opens to to page showing Jack Slyvane. The man in the book and the man looking at it are one in the same.
We meet the show's main protagonist, Rebecca Madsen, as she is attempting to save her partner from falling to his death while they chase an unknown suspect. Fast forward a bit, her lieutenant tries to get her a new partner when a call for a homicide comes in. The victim is the former Deputy Warden of Alcatraz and Federal Agent E.B. Tiller. Before Madsen can being her investigation, a man identifying himself as Emerson Hauser takes over. Madsen sees a smashed picture frame on the mantle, and swipes to to take a print, finding one belonging to Slyvane.
Madsen investigates Slyvane, seeing that he was an inmate of Alcatraz in the 60s. Her internet search leads to Tiller as well, and then to a Diego Soto, a Ph.D who is an expert on all things Alcatraz and who runs a comic book shop. She enlists his help in looking into Slyvane, and when they get to the Rock and break into a room with all the inmate's possessions, they are gassed. Re-enter Hauser and somewhat of an explanation of what's going on.
Hauser eventually tells Madsen and Doc (as Soto is most commonly called) that 302 prisoners and guards up and disappeared in 1963 and are now starting to reappear. Madsen realizes that Hauser isn't surprised, and that he's been expecting this for some time. Madsen also sees that her grandfather, Tommy Madsen, is on the wall of inmates, and the man who killed her partner.
After watching the first two episodes, it seems like each is semi-stand alone, if that makes sense. There's the ongoing storyline of why are these inmates coming back now, and more interestingly, why haven't they aged a day in 50 years. Also, based on Jack Slyvane having money, a boat ticket and a locker key immediately after waking up, who sent these inmates back to carry out whatever it is they're doing stands to be the biggest question needing an answer.
Each episode also seems to focus on a single inmate. There's backstory for each inmate set in the prison in 1960, and their violent outbursts in present day San Francisco. In the first episode, Jack kills multiple police officers and a man named Barclay Flynn in order to get an odd looking key (which we find out in the second episode seems to be a master key that was used in the prison).
Episode two focuses on Ernest Cobb, a serial sniper with some serious family issues. This episode seemed more like a police procedural than the first one. Cobb killed a group of people, Madsen, Doc and Hauser investigated, and then repeat. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining, as the episode was more action packed than expected. There were some nice character development moments with Doc. He begins to question if he is cut out for this type of homicide-detective type work. Hauser's assistant, Lucy, did take a bullet at the hands of Cobb, and in a nice little twist, we find out she was a doctor at the prison in the 60s along with the returning inmates.
The end of both episodes were very similar. After being caught, both Jack and Ernest were brought to a bunker off in the woods, and once the elevator doors opened, it looked like a futuristic replica of the cell block on Alcatraz. It might get a little repetitive if every episode ends this way, but at least the bulk of each of the episodes was different and entertaining enough to keep me coming back.
Knowing JJ Abrams' track record with Lost and Fringe, we're not going to really know what's going on for a while. The pilot and followup episode got good ratings, so hopefully FOX keeps this one around. In a day and age of constant remakes, this original idea was the promise of being one of the more entertaining and though provoking shows of the year.