Is it possible for a large group of criminals to disappear and return with a hidden deadly agenda? That's the premise behind Fox's new show Alcatraz, which unveiled a new conspiracy that will deliver excitingly good results.
Alcatraz followed San Francisco Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) who was reeling from the death of her partner that happened while chasing a suspect with a strange connection to her. She gets involved in a murder case of a former employee at the long closed Alcatraz prison, but the FBI soon appeared in the form of the mysteriously dark Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) who tried to stop her from looking further. Sarah finds a new partner in comic book writer/Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) to solve why a prisoner who supposedly died 30 years prior was responsible for the crime. Soon Rebecca and Diego are recruited unwillingly by Hauser to join his team in catching former Alcatraz inmates and employees who disappeared mysteriously before they do any harm. One of those casualties turned out to be Hauser's associate and friend Lucy (Parminder Nagra) who had a connection to the 1963 disappearance just like Hauser did. (He was one of the guards to find that the prison was empty.) Rebecca also has to wonder how her family history plays into the conspiracy as well with her surrogate uncle Ray Archer (Robert Forster) avoiding her questions. Can Rebecca remain objective when her family history could help unravel everything?
In terms of plot, Alcatraz has quite a bit of material to go through on a weekly basis. It mixed weekly catching bad guys procedural material with a hint of Sci-Fi conspiracies that threw logic to the wind. Both extreme storytelling tones seemed to be a recipe for disaster, but it somehow worked due to that. The show's efforts to ground each episode in some semblance of reality helped make the conspiracies worth watching. Even though, some head scratching is required to fully understand the slowly evolving conspiracy of why the prisoner and staff members disappeared from Alcatraz. Some of the villains were routinely creepy (the sniper and the child killer to name a few), but the most memorable villain so far had been the unseen one who controlled all the strings without having to reveal themselves just yet.
What also made the show work was the intense performances from a more than willing cast to sell the stories effectively. Jones made Rebecca a mixture of vulnerability and fearlessness to play a live wire of a detective who could either cuff or hurt a suspect if necessary. She had a sense of unpredictability that made her an interesting character to watch, even though everyone knew that Rebecca would always do the right thing in the end. Like he was on Lost, Garcia was the comic relief as he tried to add some levity to the show, but he also got to display Soto's dark past and show off in a way he never did on Lost. The show's biggest revelation was Neill's enigma of an agent who could be a force of good or evil. It just depending on what mood Hauser was in at the moment. Hopefully, the show will make Hauser the ultimate anti-hero, because it's not always fun to watch a good guy all the time always doing the right thing. Mistakes need to be made on the character's part to make Hauser credible. Only time will tell if that's the case.
Alcatraz premiered on January 16th and airs Mondays at 9:00 PM on Fox.
Verdict: Another hour long mystery that will suck viewers instantly.
TV Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Score Chart
1 Star (Mediocre)
2 Stars (Averagely Entertaining)
3 Stars (Decent Enough to Pass Muster)
4 Stars (Near Perfect)
5 Stars (Gold Standard)
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