When I started watching Firefly I knew what I was getting myself into. I'd never had thought that I would fall for this show as hard as I did, but... I cannot be helped. I don't regret one minute I spent watching it and then rewatching again and again.
Then I started watching Drive because Hello! Nathan Fillion (and Emma Stone and Amy Acker) and nice cars. I knew it had only six episodes, but I thought.. you know... maybe it's some sort of American attempt at a mini-series a la British television. Boy was I wrong. So, here's me, getting into this show, starting to care about the characters,
But hey, I understand. They rather drag shows into their seventh, eighth, ninth seasons although they're already half dead. Hey, just whip the exhausted donkey some more, maybe then it'll run faster again. I guess it's better to give long overdue and undignified deaths to shows like The X Files and House MD - you know, make the audience beg for those shows to end instead of giving new shows a chance to get established and maybe run for a few seasons. Maybe it's some sort of network policy there or something. So, I fell for another show on FOX. And I really didn't expect the 13 episodes of season 1 to be all there ever will be. This show's name is Alcatraz.
And I admit, I was a bit wary when I saw it aired on FOX Network. Because of my history with cancelled shows there. But they were advertising it on the German telly like it was a big hit in the US. And I thought “They won't go through all the trouble with buying the show and dubbing it and all if it wasn't successful and if there won't be another season.” It just doesn't seem smart and very profitable.
So I started watching the show online last Wednesday. Somewhere halfway through I got actually curious and wanted to know when the second season would air (since there's only 13 episodes to season 1 but the show mentioned 302 prisoners of Alcatraz and every episodes deals more or less with one of them). Yeah well, I should I have done my research beforehand because when I read that there was only this one season, I was already hooked and just had to watch the rest of it. And now I'm finished. I have to say, the cliffhanger ending wasn't as bad as I had expected, at least some questions were answered, but there are just so many questions I still have and that I want answers to. And... did I mention I liked this show. It was good.
(Alcatraz on IMDb)
It's, well, obviously, about Alcatraz prison. In the story Alcatraz wasn't closed in 1963, but everyone on the island simply disappeared. And now they're popping up all over present day San Francisco. There are scenes in/on Alcatraz in 1960, showing the inmates during their time in prison, what they did there, how they got punished, how they got experimented with and so on. And then there are obviously scenes set in the present, where the prisoners show up again and kill and a special ops team tries to track them down. There's Detective Rebecca Madsen, who's grandfather Tommy was one of the prisoners that disappeared and came back and who they did some experiments with during his time in prison. At first I didn't really like Rebecca, but she grew on me pretty quickly. (Also, her “uncle” Ray is played by Robert Forster aka Arthur “Papa” Petrelli from Heroes). Then there's Dr. Diego Soto, called “Doc”, who actually owns a comic book store but is also an expert on Alcatraz who has written some books about it. He's played by Jorge Garcia (man, I like this guy, I just didn't like LOST) and becomes Rebecca's partner. The two of them then get recruited by a federal agent (played by Sam Neill) who's investigating the disappearances on Alcatraz and already has some secret headquarters on the island. You know, super equipped, with secret rooms, a hidden rebuilt of the cells on Alcatraz where he locks them up again after they caught them again. You realize from the beginning that he knows more or is more involved than he will let on, especially since he even got one of the old doctors – the one with the experiments, not aged - there as well. And then there's also Lucy Banerjee, played by Parminder Nagra, who seems to be his assistant at first, but there's something going on there as well. Parminder and her lovely accent was what sold me. I adore her. There's also some of the main wardens on Alcatraz who get featured a lot in the flashbacks, Warden James and E.B. Tiller. While I think Tiller just isn't the nicest of guys and enjoys his power, Warden James is darn creepy and he's also got this secret vault under the prison and... well let's say he's very fishy. Some of the prisoners are pretty creepy and brutal as well, sometimes it gets kind of bloody, but others you even kind of feel for. I got a little crush on the pilot episode's returned prisoner Jack Sylvane. Darn, he was cute. (Leave it to me to fall for cancelled shows and bad boys.) Also: Rebecca drives this nice, dark green, 1960s Ford Mustang (IMDb Trivia tells me it's a 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT 2+2 Fastback). It's such a pretty pretty car (such as the one she gets to drive in the season finale – another pretty pretty Mustang, this time a new one in TARDIS blue). Give me all the cars! This show sure knows how to make a girl happy.
I don't want to spoil too much, in case anyone wants to go through the agony of watching and liking the show, knowing it's gonna get ripped away from them after only 13 episodes that don't give you a real ending with closure. It's a good show. I like it. I might even buy the dvds should they come out in Germany. And I'm gonna rewatch it, especially since I want to try to solve a bit more of the puzzle, now that I've seen the answers given in the season finale and can watch for clues.
I've always been interested in famous old prisons, one of them being Alcatraz and so this show kind of tapped right into that. Now I'm hooked again and doing research. Well, thanks a lot, Fox Network.
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