Alcatraz!

I feel like Alcatraz should always be pronounced the way that Gob Bluth pronounces Michael's name when he thinks he's escaping to Portugal down ol' South America way: "Michael!"

Anyway, it was great! Fun show, off to a good start. Alcatraz is sort of like a sci-fi show, a crime procedural, and a historical drama rolled into one - with the emphasis on science fiction and with the historical stuff handled with a broad dramatic hand. To sum up the basics: When everyone thought that Alcatraz closed in 1963, it actually didn't - everyone just disappeared. Somehow this elaborate cover-up was so meticulously handled that no one except for this one FBI agent knows about it. Now, in present day San Francisco, Alcatraz inmates keep showing up and killing people, except they haven't aged and they don't know how they time-traveled here (or do they????). Right off the bat the most important thing to have while watching this show is the active ability to suspend your disbelief. There is a lot of crazy shit to swallow in these first two episodes, and if you keep in mind that this is science fiction and not supposed to be real at all, than you'll love it.

Ok, so - disbelief suspended. Now we can get on with meeting our cast of characters. There's the very young lady detective whose name I don't know because they literally said it once at the beginning and then never again, and when Soto questions how she's a detective so young her answer is basically "I helped my uncle solve cases as a kid" which answers no questions about promotion and chain of command and bureaucracy, but we'll just move on. She is pretty and spunky and not only was her uncle (& guardian) a guard at Alcatraz, but her grandfather was an inmate. What? Craziness. Anyway, she gets help from Diego "Doc" Soto, played by my imaginary lover Jorge Garcia, and man is it good to have him back on my television. All Jorge, all the time, please. He, like, owns a comic book shop but also is a super smart historian who writes books about Alcatraz and lectures at Stanford, so he's there to balance out all the cops with his brains and know-how. He's the best. Garcia is also doing similar work to when he was Hurley on Lost in the way that he is the layperson who voices the audience's questions and concerns. There is literally no one who is better at this than Jorge Garcia (Have I mentioned that I love Jorge Garcia? Just checking.) Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham; ER) adds to the cast; she's fantastic in everything and could have a job reading me audiobooks if she wanted. Already her character has been revealed to be more than she appears. Yay, mystery! The weakest link is the character of Emerson Hauser (played by Sam Neill), the lead FBI agent who was also one of the cops to discover the Alcatraz disappearances. Maybe it's just the writing, but everything he says sounds staid and rings false and is directly out of the "grumpy FBI agent with a secret agena and something to hide" playbook. I hope he gets more interesting and less punchable FAST.

So anyway, the inmates seem to be reappearing one at a time or so, and while they all have their own agendas and own people they want to murder or avenge or whatever, they also seem to be working for someone, probably whoever, like, displaced them in time. They don't seem to know anything about this person or the time travel, thus creating the overarching mystery for this season. As our team of super-secret agents tracks down the inmates and rearrests them they are imprisoned and interrogated in an Alcatraz replica buried deep in Muir Woods or something. Y'all with me so far? The show is fast-paced, and while it definitely uses classic crime procedural elements, Garcia's character and the Alcatraz twist keep things new and interesting.

That is not to say that there aren't already issues. All of the time-traveling inmates we've met so far seem to have adjusted remarkably to the 40-year jump forward; there's no Marty McFly cowering before a 3D animated Jaws. They use credit cards and check in to hotels and get around the highly-technological city of San Francisco without saying boo. I hope that this is part of the mystery, because if not it's a really dumb mistake. Speaking of San Francisco, the problem with basing a show in my fair city AND having the city and its history be such an integral part of the plot is that San Francisco is a highly distinct and recognizable place. Show me a Google Earth shot of a block in SF and I could probably tell you not only that it's from here, but what neighborhood. While Vancouver might be a perfectly good stand in for a lot of places, it only kind of works for a city like San Francisco. If they shot here, the city would become an inspiration for the show and they would work together super-harmoniously. But I bet filming and permits and stuff here is crazy expensive and difficult, so it's a minor quibble. Lastly, the offices that this ragtag gang of secret-keepers work out of is in THE BASEMENT OF ALCATRAZ. Like, no joke, it's a wet, musty dungeon with super high tech equipment and they commute to Alcatraz to work out of their "office". Ok, on one hand this makes sense because they use the prison's files and whatnot for information, but also, did we forget that Alcatraz is a huge tourist destination? That tons of people wander through there EVERY DAY? And that they might notice if a FBI agent is just hanging out in a cell, talking about time travel? Yeah, no. I guess their alternative is to commute to Muir Woods or wherever to Fauxlcatraz...either way, it's weird.

But like I said, these are details - details that will be worked out at the series goes along and finds its footing. Taken as a whole, Alcatraz ("Alcatraz!") has a fresh, solid (if a little weird) premise and doesn't seem to be attempting something too lofty or serious - leaving room for a lot of fun, a tiny bit of comedy, some solid acting, and plenty of plot development. Now if only FOX would move Fringe to Monday nights, there would be a whole block of excellent sci-fi (and House would finally disappear). Check it out, Alcatraz airs on Mondays at 9pm on FOX. Alcatraz!

Images via Heraldo.es, SeriesandTV