“Alcatraz” (8 p.m. Central Mondays on Fox) demonstrates that a show can be too high-concept, and also that how you present a show in your previews can influence how people view it.
Consider “Lost” and “Fringe”, as well as the upcoming “The River.” These shows were all teased in mysterious, intriguing ways. All I know about “The River” is that a scientist goes missing in the Amazon, his family searches for him, and weird stuff happens — that’s enough to hook me. And “Lost” and “Fringe” both had such a breadth of big ideas that there’s no way that vastness could be encapsulated in a preview.
I think my failure to be hooked by the first two hours of “Alcatraz,” which aired on Monday, has a lot to do with the fact that the previews told us almost everything about this high-concept show. With most of the surprises taken away, the high concept gets boiled down into something rather simplistic.
(Spoiler warning for those who have somehow avoided the marketing and want to be surprised by the pilot.)
In 1963, the public was told that all the Alcatraz prisoners were transferred to other prisons. But in reality, they mysteriously disappeared. The U.S. government pulled a Roswell and covered it up, falsifying death reports for all those prisoners over the years.
They covered it up with such skill, in fact, that even Alcatraz buff Diego (Jorge Garcia from “Lost”), a comic-shop owner by day, wrote a thick reference book about the prisoners without having an inkling that there was more to the story.
San Francisco detective Rebecca (Sarah Jones) teams with Diego to track down the first re-appeared Alcatraz prisoner, and by the end of the pilot, they both sign on with Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), who maintains a vast computer database carved out of the rock below The Rock. Emerson was one of the officials who came upon the mysteriously empty cells back in ’63.
Emerson’s assistant Lucy (Parminder Nagra from “Bend It Like Beckham” and “ER”) is also one of those unaged, time-jumping folks; presumably she was a doctor or some sort of official on Alcatraz (and presumably her backstory will be peppered throughout upcoming episodes). As such, Emerson isn’t surprised when the first prisoner re-appears. In fact, he has a giant Alcatraz replica hidden in the California woods, complete with prison guards, ready to re-imprison all of them.
Whew. Now, while all of that sounds like a decent-enough yarn (like a long-lost “X-Files” spec script), the fact of the matter is that “Alcatraz” is a procedural. It’s “CSI: Alcatraz” or “Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Alcatraz” or “Criminal Minds: Alcatraz.” A bad guy re-emerges in society, and Diego and Rebecca use their expertise to catch him.
There’s a set number of prisoners and guards who disappeared from Alcatraz. It’s somewhere north of 100, but I don’t recall the exact number. Nor does it matter. Just like “Cupid” (2009) established that the protagonist had to pair up 100 couples only to be canceled after seven episodes (rightfully so; it was terrible), “Alcatraz” isn’t going to be around long enough to recapture all of these prisoners.
This is partly because it’s a sci-fi show on Fox, of course, but it’s also because — unlike, say, “Fringe,” which still has tricks up its sleeve — “Alcatraz” gave away all its twists right off the bat and, frankly, it’s not very good. It might have supernatural elements, cool settings and a likeable cast, but it doesn’t have that “must-watch” appeal.
Also — for some bizarre reason — it peppers in hard-to-watch flashbacks where the Alcatraz prison official psychologically messes with his prisoners, reminding them “This is MY prison and I make the rules!” and that sort of cliched garbage. After watching these scenes, we somewhat sympathize with the bad guy, but only to a degree, because, after all, they are all murderers.
The end result is that I don’t feel much after an episode of “Alcatraz” other than depressed and bored — and I watch TV to avoid those feelings.