I’m a little late to the party, just watched tonight’s episode for the first time. Wasn’t really planning on it, just got sucked in after House. A couple things re: JJ Abrams -
[ul]
[li]I liked the new Star Trek[/li][li]I never ever watched even 10 seconds of Lost (saw clips on The Soup!)[/li][/ul]
Going into Alcatraz I guess I was expecting something X-Files-ish. Wasn’t quite that good, kind of clichéd in parts (no detective drives around in a 40+ year old Shelby Mustang, no woman would even more!) but worth another couple looks, I guess. Like I said this was the first episode I saw but perusing this thread I gather that the first two episodes didn’t reveal anything definite? Like is it time travel or suspended animation or supernatural etc.? Is Sam Neil from the past or just the modern G-man assigned to it?
No answers on the method yet (that won’t be coming for a while I suspect). The first guy basically said he went to sleep and woke up on Alcatraz. But he also had money and a boat ticket in his pocket, and he was somehow “guided” to do some thing.
Sam Neil was one of the first guards to discover that everyone was missing, when he was still really young. So, presumably he’s been working on this his whole life.
That first guy was given guidance in some way to get a key whose function has not yet been explained. The next two prisoners simply resumed their pre-1960 crime patterns, which I guess is necessary for “Doc” to instantly identify them, expositionally describe their backgrounds, etc. I find it annoying that the kidnapper’s picture wasn’t instantly smeared all over the city - as though preserving the Alcatraz secret was more important than the kid’s life, and I think that strains credibility. Even if Neill’s character (Hauser) is presented as sufficiently cold-blooded that he’s more interested in finding out how the prisoners disappeared and return more than in stopping them from committing more crimes, I don’t get why Detective Madsen would play along, nor how Hauser gets such ultra-secret Man in Black powers that he can unilaterally cancel an Amber Alert.
Seriously, who cares about having to explain how a convict from the 1960s hasn’t aged? Sort that out later. Just say he looks like the 1960s convict, assuming it even occurs to anybody to ask.
I’ve been working my way through my Brimstone recordings. That show could at least gloss over some of the plot holes by having a premise that was pure fantasy.
Yeah, they were sure taught a lesson when it turned out that only half of the last season was “all a dream” and the rest was a “God (and the Devil) did it, therefore we don’t have to explain anything because, well, mysterious ways and stuff, right? Now go away” ending, which was the Alias storytelling method too.
Some find that satisfactory, I found it infuriating.
I’d missed the first week, but I gave last night’s a try.
Up until the guy who canceled the Amber Alert said “It’s complicated.”
<<click>>
He did? When?
I LOL’d when Sam Neill said “It’s complicated.” It was about midway through the episode when they were standing in front of the kid’s house in Vancouver, oops, I meant Walnut Creek.
And heck, the hatch made a return appearance too!
Those were going to be my exact contributions here. It’s almost comical.
The other thing I noticed is that all the prisoners are white. And I think they’re overdoing the shots of Neil where he’s sort of looking up into the camera with a “very concerned” look on his face.
Also on the Brimstone tip, the Boss man is the Antichrist. Coincidence?
I’m done with it. Yet another guy turns up in the bay area, and they still haven’t thought of just sealing Alcatraz.
And it’s not “complicated” at all, Sam. Putting out pictures of an 11-year old boy is not going to compromise your stupid secret.
The clincher was when it all turned out right at the end. In the first week, at least some people got killed, so there was a chance that things might stay unpredictable. But they wussed out in this one— nobody hurt, nobody even injured. It’s now shaping up like a series of Hardy Boys episodes, with a gimmick that makes no sense. Every week, a serial killer is on the loose in or around SF, and only two people are looking for him, but they know in advance exactly what he’s going to do.
“Every week” being exactly two weeks now. Note next week, it’s a bank robber.
Well, a show like this either grabs you or it doesn’t, and this one didn’t grab me. I can suspend disbelief — I’m still watching “Person of Interest” — but I can’t suspend boredom.
I think last night’s episode with the bomb shelter business was whack. The back yard bomb shelter craze began after the Russians launched their first ICBM in 1957, and reached the peak of its frenzy in 1961. It wasn’t an inexpensive accessory, either.
By that time, penicillin was widely used for strep throat and scarlet fever became less prominent.
If somebody was affluent enough to afford a bomb shelter, I’d think his children would be treated with penicillin for strep and would not get scarlet fever.
Stuff like that bugs me.
~VOW
What makes Person of Interest hold you? My wife and I are watching Alcatraz, but haven’t seen PoI yet.
THANK YOU! I was really wondering how the guy-dead-for-40-years was going to pass the background check based on your current California ID, and manage to skip the 10-day waiting period. I can imagine perhaps he “acquired” a silencer somewhere, maybe, but then I guess he would have acquired the gun the same (illegal) way.
Besides which, hitting crows in flight from 500 yards with unpredictable SF winds? Not so much.
(And to the other person who mentioned the computer stuff, absolutely, all that too… major eye-rollage from me during that.)
This show is so far pretty crap, but I’m going to stick around to see more of the conspiracy / who is sending people back & how stuff. I told my wife “eh, I don’t think you’ll like it, it’s from the same guy who did Lost, and all the Alcatraz prisoners disappeared and are showing up 50 years later without aging.” and she said “Oh, they’re angels then?” I somehow think she just nailed the inevitable shoddy ending we’re going to get after a 3 seasons of meandering low-grade procedurals 
Interesting characters. There is a Bourne-type guy whose past is being given out in dribs and drabs, an eccentric genius whose past is being given out in dribs and drabs, an honest cop who is starting to break the rules, a crooked cop who is starting to help the good guys, and a protagonist of the week — and we often don’t know whether the POW is good or bad until halfway through the show, or even later.
In Alcatraz, it looks like the POW is always bad, always predictable (cherry pie), and I already know all I want to know about the continuing characters, except Lucy, who was in a coma the whole second show. Maybe if they had given her more to do than lie there they would have held my interest, but probably not — she was a very minor character even when conscious.
I don’t know why but this made me laugh out loud. 
Actually, it takes considerably less than a high-powered rifle to do that.
This show seems really amateurish. It has a number of similarities to LOST, like long “filler” biographical flashbacks that have no real relevance to the plot, annoying and repetitive swelling music culminating in a scene end (meant to build suspense I guess but it just looks pathetic done every few minutes), and the conspiracy/patriarch mystery angle that will no doubt be stretched out for as long as the show lasts but never actually resolved.
The lead actress really needs a make-over and some good heels; notice how - similarly to Burn Notice - the camera tries to avoid filming her below the waist. Looking pretty grim down there. Her wardrobe is scary, those trousers and shoes are simply criminal. On the other hand she is cute and looks like she has a nice curvy figure. But she seems really short and the way they dress her and make her run around she just gives me the impression of a kid bouncy ball, not a hard-ass detective (or whatever she is meant to be).
I know nothing about guns and even I spotted the idiocies with the 500/750 yards argument and the gun shop nonsense, not to mention the moronic pawing of crime scene evidence by the investigating party (!).
Still trying to figure out why Hugo Reyes (Doc) spent the entire first episode lingering around for no good reason (before he was eventually offered a job, which is in itself just as ridiculous - maybe someone finally noticed him lingering?).
Sam Neill is usually watchable, the two killers so far have demonstrated some ability to commit to their roles, and the 60s Alcatraz staff are fun to watch as they chew through their lines, but everyone else has been simply atrocious. Are they really paying these people? The doctor from the 60s in particular is laughable, her performance would be eclipsed by those given by most school children. Main roles are no exception, between the lack of acting ability and the hackneyed characters it’s hard to take them seriously.
Anyone else got annoyed by that scene transition gimmick of swelling music followed by the sound of rattling bars? I’m watching this show without ads and it simply looks awful. Maybe it’s better with ads to break it up.
All in all a pretty laughable show and that’s why we’ve decided to watch it for a while. With the growing scarcity of good shows, making fun of bad shows might end up being our main source of TV entertainment.
[spoiler]The kid (the prisoner o’ the week’s brother) didn’t die of scarlet fever. The prisoner murdered him because his mother liked him better.
They also didn’t own a bomb shelter; the guy worked for a bomb shelter manufacturer.[/spoiler]