If “Lost” left you lost after the finale — were they just in God’s waiting area that whole time? Was the fire monster a metaphor for the plane crash? How could Hurley have stayed so fat on that island? — then you’ll be happy to know that producer J.J. Abrams is back with a whole new slew of souls lost in the space/time continuum. And also with Hurley.
“Alcatraz,” which premieres tonight on Fox, takes place in both 1963 and today — and many of the same people who were in the prison then are on the loose in 2012. Most of them look like they haven’t aged a day.
No, it wasn’t that the warden allowed unauthorized, if fantastic, plastic surgery experiments on prisoners, it’s that on the eve of the whole terrible joint closing down on March 20, 1963, 256 prisoners and 46 guards disappeared.
Just like that. But because there was no accounting for them, the government conspired to cover it up.
Guess what? They’re baaaack. All those murderers, rapists and vicious guards are on the loose — and they are the same ages as they were in 1963.
One at a time, they begin to show up, and it’s the job of blond, gorgeous detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) to figure out what the hell is going on.
Madsen gets involved when the sadistic former deputy warden is murdered and the fingerprints left at the scene are those of Jack Sylvane (Jeffrey Pierce), a man who was sent to federal prison for sticking up a store to buy food for his family. It was a federal crime because they sold US stamps. Yes, that is as perplexing as him showing up as handsome and young as ever in 2012 to kill the old, decrepit warden.
Madsen enlists the aid of Alcatraz expert, author and comic book super-enthusiast Hurley, er, Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia), to help her. The first thing he tells her is that Sylvane died in the 1970s. What? How can that be? Damn that space/time continuum.
Impeding her in the hunt is the mysterious fed, Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), who seems to have a bead on the whole situation. Is he really a fed? And why is his associate Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra) even more gorgeous than detective Madsen? And why is Sam Neill being passed off as a guy who is in his seventies?
All good questions, and, knowing Abrams, good questions that will never be answered.
Each week, another missing Alcatraz inmate or guard arrives from the mysterious beyond to cause chaos.
The pilot moves along well, is a lot of fun — but Madsen is just too blond and bland to create the kind of excitement that Jennifer Garner or other of Abrams’ female kick-ass characters were able to do with both hands tied behind their backs.
But Sylvane? How happy am I that murdering devil looks as good as he ever did!