Alcatraz - TV Show

I've recently caught the new TV show, Alcatraz. I read about it in Entertainment Weekly and was eagerly anticipating its arrival. The show had a compelling storyline and with JJ Abrams behind it, sounded like a hit TV show in the making. I'm a huge fan of Lost, which to me, is hands down the best TV show, period. JJ Abrams did a phenomenal job of creating an alternate world and kept viewers guessing right till the very end on what was going on. 

Anyway, in short, Alcatraz the TV show is about how over 300 inmates and prison guards disappeared from the Alcatraz island prison 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. These inmates start returning in present-day San Francisco, having aged not a day, and with no idea of where they've been.

Sarah Jones stars as the titular character Rebecca Madsen, and I'm on the fence about her. I don't dislike her nor do I like her. I think her problem is that she doesn't seem to have chemistry with the audience, I find that I'm not particularly interested in watching her and I'm not rooting for her in any way. In Chinese, we say she has no ren yuan (loosely means 'fate with people', which otherwise can be translated as a lack of the X factor).

But now, her hair. They've given her a bob haircut with long side-swept bangs that has practically half her hair falling down one side of her face over her eyes. I'm trying to grow out my bangs and find them terribly irritating, how they keep coming into my eyes, and it's all I can do to stop myself from either tucking my bangs behind my ears or to sweep them up, of which she does neither in the entire show, which is testament I feel, to the tremendous will power she must have in order to resist doing a gesture that is so instinctive when you have this much hair falling in your face. Not only that, she also doesn't walk with her head tilted to one side, as people with a long-bangs hair problem tend to do. And she does this all whilst chasing down criminals, jumping off roof-tops, shooting from great distances, and tumbling from bombs going off. This girl is having to doing some serious acting while grappling with unwieldy hair!

Jorge Garcia plays Dr Diego Soto, who's Rebecca's sidekick and presumably the comedic relief in the show. Jorge Garcia was Hurley in Lost and he was so endearing as Hurley. He's still Hurley in Alcatraz, but more laughable because he's still a bumbling kind of guy, but whip-smart - his character is a geek who's totally into Alcatraz inmates and their disappearance, hence he's some sort of Alcatraz expert extraordinaire, but it just seems a tad ludicrous.

Sam Neil plays federal agent Emerson Hauser who's leading the task force in tracking down the inmates who have re-surfaced. It took me two or three episodes of watching this guy before it finally hit me that he's the guy from Jurassic Park. Ahhh...that's why he looks so familiar! So that's where you go after being in an epic blockbuster.

The show overall is kind of all over the place. The premise is a good one but the creators seem to be trying too hard to keep the mystery of the series just that - a mystery. So instead of answers, each episode sets off on chasing down yet another inmate and covering their back story. The lead characters all seem to lack chemistry with one another, so the show seems to kind of plod along. So much promise, but so poorly executed. It seems unlikely that the show will be renewed for a second season, so I guess we'll never find out the big mystery on what happened to those inmates.