Alcatraz started out strong last week on Fox – and at 8pm, right in the sweet spot for Tween viewing. My kids and I watched it and were intrigued. But Monday night’s episode (1/23) aired at 9pm and turned out to be super creepy from the opening scene, so I’m grateful my kids were already in bed.
The first two episodes of Alcatraz set up the mysterious disappearance of all the inmates of Alcatraz prison, the one on an island in the middle of San Francisco harbor, in the early 60′s and added tantalizing details of Lost-like twists and turns (same producers), albeit with a bit of a grim undercurrent, what with all the crimes the inmates committed and keep committing, now that they’re back from the netherworld where they’ve been hiding from the last 40 years.
There was an especially great twist at the end of the second episode, with Lucy (played by actress Parminder Nagra) appearing in the 1960′s flashback, proving that we don’t really know what the full extent of the mysterious disappearance is. It was a very Lost-like moment and made me think there were more to come.
That and the fact that Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley on Lost, is one of the main characters, had me and my sons ready to watch on.
But Monday night’s episode was about as creepy as they come, with a criminal come back from the past to continue his kid-killing crime spree. Yuck. Take it from me, if you have kids, you probably don’t want to watch this. It might give you nightmares. And keep your kids away.
That’s just my 2 cents.
I hope the show gets back to what I liked about it originally, but I have a bad feeling this was a sign of things to come. If so, this is not the show for us.
