ALCATRAZ: Explained

The TV show ... not the prison ...

So I recently decided to quickly re-binge Alcatraz, the unexpected flop of JJ Abrams' and his Bad Robot team, and decided that I would share with you my thoughts over its plots and my outrage over its cancellation.

Because Alcatraz is rather a statistical anomaly. Unlike the shows Abrams has previously created, directed or executive produced (such as Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest and Revolution, six shows which altogether have clocked up a whopping 27 seasons of TV time), Alcatraz seemingly met no one's expectations when it completely flopped and was cancelled at the end of just one.

Alcatraz was a typical JJ Abrams-style show: a simple premise that is twisted in a science fiction manner (Alias's overlying mythology was of a Da Vinci-like prophet who supposedly created the key to immortality, Lost's island setting was an unpredictable lifelike character of its own, Person of Interest was about a Machine that can predict crimes).

I admit, I didn't know much about it at first back when it was airing, but the fact that it had Jorge Garcia (Hurley, Lost) and Parminder Nagra (Dr. Neela Rasgotra, ER)  among its main cast was enough to pull me in. Of course, that and the premise. The below is the Wikipedia summary of the show.

On March 21, 1963, 256 inmates and 46 guards disappeared from the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary without a trace. To cover up the disappearance, the government invented a cover story about the prison being closed due to unsafe conditions, and officially reported that the inmates had been transferred. However, federal agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), a young San Francisco police officer tasked with transferring inmates to the island in 1963, is one of the first to discover that the inmates are actually missing and not transferred. In present-day San Francisco, the "63s" (as the missing inmates and guards are called) begin returning, one by one. Strangely, they haven't aged at all, and they have no clues about their missing time or their whereabouts during their missing years; however, they appear to be returning with compulsions to find certain objects and to continue their criminal habits. Even more strangely, the government has been expecting their return, and Hauser now runs a secret government unit dedicated to finding the returning prisoners; this unit was set up long ago in anticipation of the prisoners' returns. To help track down the returning prisoners and capture them, Hauser enlists police detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia), a published expert on the history of Alcatraz and its inmates.

That's quite an inspired premise - and carries a vastly different appeal to the typical cop procedurals that usually air on broadcast networks. And its casting, on top of Parminder Nagra and Jorge Garcia, also boasted Sam Neill (middle right), Sarah Jones (middle), Robert Forster (far right), Johnny Coyne (far left) and Jason Butler Harner (inside left). (Don't ask me who the other guy is between Neill and Nagra, I genuinely can't work him out from this picture).

What happens in Alcatraz?

The show focuses on its mythology of how the 63s came to vanish from the island and why they are coming back now, although not directly. It sidesteps some of those questions (as you might expect from a first season) by presenting others at the forefront: namely what is behind the door that the keys, which the prisoners are returning to retrieve, and which used to belong to Warden James, open? And why was Tommy Madsen, Rebecca's grandfather, being experimented on? What was his blood being used for and why do some of the returning prisoners have colloidal silver in their blood, which gives them advanced healing properties.

   The plot was thickened when it linked Rebecca's uncle Ray more closely to Tommy than she expected, and when an Alcatraz inmate, Harlan Simmons, was revealed to have been helped off the island by Warden James and in the 50 years since has become a reclusive and untouchable billionaire with strong links to what is going on with the 63s.

   Some of the subject matter with regards to the inmates was particularly dark - child killers, emotionless thieves and many, many styles of murderer and serial killer - but that's probably to be expected given the show's setting. And all of the inmates were interesting in their own way, because their crimes occurred in the 1950s and 60s. Their methods didn't involve any modern technology, and that's what made the style of the show standout from the rest of the pack.

   But more interesting than that were the flashbacks to Alcatraz themselves. Prison life was depicted honestly and showed only what was necessary to the plot (which was often a lot) and Warden James and his fencesitting Deputy E.B. Tiller were compelling villains. Perhaps it's just my interest in all things past that made the Alcatraz flashbacks more captivating and revealing than the inmates' travails in the modern-day world.

   The recurring characters were also very well done. It must be hard to sell a guest starring role to an actor and then request that, for continuity of character, they return for a large number of prison scenes to make cameos in episodes where no one but the observant will notice them, but for the most part whenever we saw a prisoner captured in the modern day, they did return for small cameos in Alcatraz flashbacks - but also in their secret present day prison too. That's credit to the writers and the actors, who, every time I wondered if continuity was going to be difficult for the show, managed to show up and remind me they had their eye firmly on the ball.

Season 1 was filled with enough twists and turns to keep the story plodding along, had great character continuity, was cast well and was incredibly well-written.

So why in the hell didn't it come off?

The answer is a number of factors. One of the biggest is naturally viewership, and having started at 10.05 million viewers for its opening double header, Alcatraz closed with just 4.75m. That sounds bad, but the ratings' decline had been slowing in the last few episodes and it's not as if 4.75m is low for FOX. Look at that wonderful Andy Samberg sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has drawn in bigger ratings than Alcatraz's finale on only four occasions at the time of my writing this - and is currently filming season four. FOX's judgement of ratings baffles me, but that isn't the only reason Alcatraz was cancelled too soon.

Another big factor is that it was broadcast ... by FOX. FOX who already slaughtered Firefly, and who are quick to snip the purse strings to any show they deem unsuitable, are the network Abrams shopped Alcatraz too. And so, predictably, it was cancelled after one season, despite its first-season figures achieving and outdoing the third season of Fringe (which somehow still got two more seasons afterwards, neither of which had an episode with ratings above anything Alcatraz fell to), and equalling the numbers for NBC's Grimm, which was considered a "breakout hit". Someone tell me the logic there.

Also, Alcatraz had the bad luck of getting absolutely trashed because of its timeslot. Competing with The Voice and Dancing With The Stars was never going to do Alcatraz any favours, although that's something that would have been easily fixable with a season 2 - just don't put it in a Monday timeslot where it's likely to get mauled to death by other major network reality shows.

Was it then a character thing, why the show didn't work? It can't have been for me. All right, the main character Rebecca Madsen (played by Sarah Jones) was a bit boring, but it's other present-day characters - Diego Soto (Garcia), Emerson Hauser (Neill) and Lucy Banerjee (Nagra) - were all intriguing enough to make up for whatever deficiencies Jones's character had. And the great thing about Alcatraz was, because of its shifting timeframes between 2012 and 1960, there ended up being a genuinely equal balance in airtime between the guest stars and the main cast.  You don't see that in most shows and it was refreshing, although maybe that's part of the reason some of the present-day characters couldn't be more strongly developed. (Special mentions to Johnny Coyne, who played creepy, corrupt Warden James {see image} [his acting was the best of anyone's], and Harner, who played the Deputy Governor E.B. Tiller, both of whom shone in the flashback scenes in the prison.)

So maybe it was a story thing? After some early revelations, it's true to say that the middle of the show slowed down the overall focus and gave us some inmate focused episodes rather than expanding on the colloidal silver or why the prisoners were returning. That may have upset a few people who were hoping for more, but I maintain the show was well-paced and nothing was left out that shouldn't have been. Some things were even included so subtly as to link the overall plot to the inmates without us even knowing at first: for example, Harlan Simmons was introduced early on in flashbacks but isn't mentioned by name, so when he is revealed later on as a major player in the present day it's one of the stronger reveals of the show.

Or maybe it's just that it didn't keep enough people interested. The ratings lend themselves to that conclusion, despite Alcatraz's only season garnering a 2.2 average demo rating (find that on most networks these days, I dare you). But that just wasn't enough.

PROMOTER OR DETRACTOR?

Me? I'm a big fat PROMOTER. Fans of JJ Abrams will find everything they expect from one of his shows in Alcatraz, with the tidy bonus that if the real-life prison is your passion you will love it for that as well. The premise is strong, the cast is excellent, the acting is tight, there is a unique balance between guest star and main character that feels natural and there's plenty of twists to keep you hooked. It's well worth your time even knowing that it only gets one season, but don't expect to get answers about what's really going on, because you never will.

I'll leave the trailer here in case anybody fancies to check it out, but genuinely, if you think you might be able to watch it and not lose your shit when your questions go unanswered, I recommend you do so. Highly.

Thanks for reading everyone and see you next time!

Sam