Thoughts: FOX's Alcatraz

I really should have known what to expect when I was getting into a J.J. Abrams TV show. I'm only familiar with Lost but I still stand by that Lost was god awful. I watched it beginning to end and the show retroactively spoiled all the enjoyment I had with previous seasons by never delivering on mysteries. I don't want things handed to me on a silver platter mind you, I just want the time I invested talking about the cabin and other unsolved mysteries to have mattered.

If you couldn't tell I was very skeptical going into Alcatraz. But hey, it has Hurley from Lost who was my favorite part of that show and Sam freakin' Neill. So I watched the 2 hour long premiere and my mind was mush by the end. Not in the good way.

Sarah Jones plays the lead character. She is a headstrong detective by the name of Rebecca Madsen. She is also one of the worst stereotypes I see in TV and film. The writers don't want to create a female character that is perceived as weak or inferior to the men of the show, which is a great notion. However what happened here and what happens in other instances is that they go far in a way the other direction. They made her super macho to a fault and shove it down your throat that "she's just as good as the guys." As an aside anyone looking to make a strong female character should look to Detective Greggs on The Wire. She was strong, confident, smart good at what she did and didn't shove it down your throat.

Okay so if you can get past the bad lead character you also have Jorge Garcia basically playing Hurley and Sam Neill playing a G-man. They are hunting down prisoners who mysteriously vanished from the Alcatraz prison in 1963. No one knows how said event happened but these inmates have been popping up all over San Francisco and committing the same crimes they did in the past. Apparently seeing smart phones, HDTV, computers and the like doesn't halt their desire to kill and steal.

It seems as if this will be a 'prisoner of the week' kind of show with a new prisoner spreading havoc over San Francisco every week. Which pretty much just makes this a super natural cop show. The mysteries and subsequent action sequences weren't much more than what you'd see on a Law & Order: SVU kind of show. The writing is just as bland as those procedurals too and the mystery of exactly how these inmates vanished doesn't seem to matter either.

If you couldn't tell I was pretty disappointed in Alcatraz and won't continue to watch. If they kill off the girl and make Sam Neill the main character with Jorge Garcia as his sidekick I'd be back in for another episode however. I might check out an episode a bit down the road but if it is as bland as the first 2 I'll write it off all together.

What did you think of Alcatraz?