ALCATRAZ Gets a Bullitt To The Head… But It's a Good Thing

Episode 1/11 “Webb Porter”
Episode 1/12 “Garrett Stillman”
Episode 1/13 “Tommy Madsen”

[photos: Liane Hentscher and David Moir/FOX]

In playing catch-up, I think I actually like watching Alcatraz in episode sets, mainly because it feels like more of the underlying mystery gets revealed. Of course, that could be just me, but it feels like the show has finally – finally – hit its stride. Just in time to go away.

These three episodes feel more connected than the others. Up until now, we’ve had a very formulaic “63 of the Week” cop procedural that was light on the things that make a good cop procedural work. Let’s hand-wave over that for a minute, because this show is really driven by the character interactions in 1960 more than anything else.

Scratch that. Let me take back the hand-waving. I think if Alcatraz gets picked up for a second season, the writers need to spend more time boning up on how police investigations really work, because there have been so many glaring gaffes in this area of the story-telling. Granted, some of it has been pretty decent. I like the Se7en nod at the beginning of the season. But when you take a seasoned cop like Rebecca Madsen and have her walk away from a uniform who’s been shot in the throat before paramedics arrive, it makes me squirm a bit. I know she’s got to go after the bad guy, but it felt sloppy. And there have been moments like this through the season (admittedly, mostly the first half) – sloppy cop procedure in those times when the story needs to move forward to the next plot point, almost like the writers are impatient to get to the next story beat.

Relax a little more, guys. The devil may be in the details, but the willing suspension of disbelief is completely dependent upon them.

Now, having said that, let’s get into the details of the last three episodes of the season. SPOILERS AHEAD!

“Webb Porter”

This episode gives us the musical savant Porter, who plays the fiddle better than the devil before he went down to Georgia. Porter has tinnitus, a terrible ringing in his ears, and Lucy deduces his ailment and uses music as a therapeutic tool to get him calm enough to return to the general population. (Now, I have tinnitus, but it’s never driven me to scream and hurt people…but I digress.)

Porter’s episode gives us our first piece of the puzzle to bring Madsen and Soto fully into the Awareness Zone. There’s an inmate with a movie camera. This camera captures a performance by a rather good jazz group, and catches Lucy in the room at the tail end of the film. This is one of the canisters Soto finds and decides to digitize into his computer for a new batch of research. When they catch the end of the reel, they realize Lucy is a 63.

You can hear the “click” as some things fall into place for Madsen. She’s not one of these who gets emotional and storms around feeling betrayed. She almost fully takes it in stride. Given the fact that she’s already aware Hauser withholds a lot of information, this would be just one more thing. Of course, it surprises me that it took this long for Soto and Madsen to discover Lucy’s absence from the hospital. Yes, Hauser told them to stay away from her, but you know Soto. He should have sneaked into the hospital well before the Porter episode.

That would have ratcheted up the tension in the team quite a bit more. Lucy seems to be the one who stabilizes the group, and the discovery of her absence from the hospital would have heightened that deficiency in the team.

In the meantime, Porter is killing girls and using their long hair to string the bow for his violin. The creepiness is amped up when he plays, because he’s so intense. It’s like he goes into his own little world. And indeed, that seems to be the case in one scene where he imagines a raving audience listening to his performance. It suggests that Porter sees all of his performances that way.

Of course, his capture is inevitable, because this is Alcatraz, and it’s a cop procedural, and cop procedurals almost always end with the bad guy getting captured. Which is necessary because it’s Porter’s blood that finally provides the key to Lucy’s recovery. It also serves to add another layer of mystery, as we learn more about the silver being put into the blood of certain prisoners. What’s it for? What’s it mean?

Porter’s chase almost seems like a secondary consideration this time, and it seems like that’s when the episodes work better. Others have pointed out that the 1960 material is so much richer and interesting, and I tend to agree. This is where the story is being told. The pieces from 1960 are falling into place in 2012, and Madsen is getting more of an idea of just how it all comes together around her grandfather.

“Garrett Stillman”

This episode gets into more of the mystery of the keys, and delves into the relationship between Warden James and Sonny Burnett. And more tension between Warden James and E.B. Tiller.

Warden James apparently needs Sonny Burnett off the island (the reasons why are never quite clear, unless it’s a plot buried deep in the subtext). James recruits chess player Stillman to swap out phony parole papers that give Burnett an early exit from Alcatraz. So, there’s obviously something going on here. Remember, Burnett took over the prison’s contraband smuggling outfit since he took it from Cal Sweeny. Does this have anything to do with the Civil War gold? Odds are, Warden James and Burnett made a deal to get the gold invested over a long-term arrangement wherein Burnett gets early release so he can build James’ fortune on the outside. If the warden made the jump with everyone else, he’ll have the benefits of the wealth without having to wait for it.

Only there’s something not quite right in the present. Stillman is working for someone (through Tommy Madsen) to get the warden’s third key to the vault under the Alcatraz lighthouse. With this episode, the world-building gets a little more complex, as we now have two factions of 63s fighting for control of … what? The gold? The time-jumping technology?

No answers here, but plenty of new details about Lucy’s relationship with Hauser from back then – lots of time spent talking philosophy and listening to jazz. Hauser wasn’t all that bad a guy back then. Bothers me that the guy playing younger Hauser doesn’t look anything like Sam Neill.

As a character, Stillman only serves to facilitate a chain of events from 1960 to 2012, with plenty of heist moments and a very unsatisfying end to his streak of robberies. Of course, Stillman was never a major factor, plot wise, except to put a spotlight on the security issues for the company owned by now-bazillionaire Sonny Burnett, who’s more reclusive than Howard Hughes, apparently. Nobody gets in to see him. Not even the President, who’s apparently in on the whole 63 situation. The finale introduces a new wrinkle in the form of Hauser’s handler, a military guy who has the President as his next “up the food chain” people.

I like that we’re finally getting a sense of the larger picture within Alcatraz. The mythology has needed a huge dose of oomph for a while now, and the energy in these last few episodes should inform the template for next season (if there is one).

Lucy catches up on all of the “bag and tag” cases. And she has her own issues to deal with – findingher Hauser buried somewhere in the 2012 Hauser.

“Tommy Madsen”

Here we get the payoff that we’ve been anticipating since Sarah Jones first pulled up in that Mustang: a direct homage to one of the greatest car chases ever in Bullitt. She’s even wearing the turtleneck. Of course, this chase has to be done with the new Mustang. And that works for a couple of reasons: product placement for the sponsor, and preservation of the classic car. Don’t want to scratch the paint on that beauty.

And this is also the episode where everything gets laid out (to a point) – the silver in the prisoners’ blood, the fact that Lucy will always be a target as long as she lives (thus making her central to whatever is going on), and part of what was behind the Big Door under the lighthouse.

The finale is Tommy’s episode. We’ve been getting hints that this was coming for a while now. The stalking was the biggest clue, of course, but the fact that the lead cop on these cases is the granddaughter of the key prisoner – that’s no accident, of course. The whole thing is a conspiracy wrapped in a plot surrounded by a lot of circumstances that could be contrived if they weren’t integral to the integrity of the show’s logic.

Of course, you have to suspend disbelief for the whole thing to work anyway, but that’s the beauty of science fiction.

This episode also gives us some bonding time between Rebecca and Nikki, the hot medical examiner. Now, when an episode leads with one of these ‘feel good’ moment scenes, it’s a sure bet that something is going to happen to one of them by the end of the episode. Given that it’s a lead character and a supporting, you’d assume Nikki would be the one who’s got a Red Shirt on this week. But remember, it’s also twisted-plot Lost guys driving this boat, so anything could happen.

Before we get to that, though, let’s cut to the chase.

Having bonded with my father a bit over Bullitt, I had a layered reaction to the car chase. On one level, it was fun product placement in that Madsen (the good guy) commandeers a new Mustang to chase Madsen (the bad guy) in a stolen Dodge Charger. See what they did there? Ford = good. Dodge = bad. Subtle.

Then there’s the fact that the new 2012 Mustang is easier to replace than the classic Fastback that Rebecca usually drives, so instead of using that car, the producers wisely chose to leave it behind when Rebecca starts to crash into stuff.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/iBvazW3uPUc]

Then there’s the Bullitt angle. It’s not a shot-for-shot remake of the chase, but it’s close enough that anyone familiar with the original will detect the echoes. Even Steve McQueen’s missed turn is here. And it’s fun to watch a car chase through San Francisco anyway. It’s even better when the producers clearly want to evoke a vibe from one of the greatest chases of all time.

You can see the full chase, uncut, over at the Fox site for the show.

The chase, of course, isn’t the end of the episode. This is where we find out one of the reasons why there’s so much silver in the blood: to track them as they go through time. We meet Mr. K, the scientist(?) behind the technology – or at least part of it. The vault holds at least the tracking equipment, although it looks as if the actual time-jump equipment is somewhere else. The introduction of Mr. K is an interesting new bit, and since he’s made the jump, too, it will be interesting to see what knowledge he brings to the mix.

These last three episodes really set up an arc that has some worthwhile payoffs. And it also establishes new questions for all the answers that have been delivered. Of course, the fact that Mr. K made the jump will immediately fire off speculation that Warden James made the jump as well. He almost has to, in order for the Sonny Burnett arc to play out properly. And there’s still a question of where the gold went.

Plus, you know, the whole death of the lead character. But this is science fiction. And you know what that means.

The show has earned a second season, creatively. As long as they maintain the footing they’ve gained in the back four, they should be able to keep us wanting more. The writers still need to get a more solid footing on police procedure, but it seems as though we’ll be going more into the realm of Mr. Wizard now that Mr. K is here. The show might morph into more of a “Painkiller Jane” type of show, with this team of people working out of the “Batcave behind the Batcave” under orders from the President. Or it stays a cop drama with wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, but if it does that it needs to study the police process a bit more.

[Official Show Site on FOX]   [Previous recap: “The Ames Brothers”]