I'm watching the second hour of the premeire of Fox's "Alcatraz" after having the first hour last night. The premise of the show is that when the prison facility on Alcatraz was closed in 1963, there were actually 300 hardcore bad guys who mysteriously disappeared . . . and now they are re-appearing one at a time in the present, free, and intent on committing all kinds of mayhem. Fortunately for us, two sinister government agents (one a former Alcatraz prison guard, the other some kind of scientist), a SF detective, and a comic book fan/supergenius team up to catch them.
It's kind of like "The 4400" but instead of coming back with mutant powers and ambiguous intentions, they just have homicidal tendencies. . . .
The show comes from JJ Abrams, who's responsible for the recent "Star Trek" movie, "Mission Impossible 3" (and has producer credit on the excellent "Mission Impossible 4"), "Fringe," "Lost," and "Alias," among others. That buys him some slack from me. On the other hand, Abrams also created the promising but ultimately boring "Undercovers," and it's not like "Alias" and "Lost" were flawless.
Anyway, I found the first hour kind of boring, which was not a good sign. Since pilot episodes have a lot of set-up to do, I thought I'd give the second hour a try, but if it's not better, I may end up canceling the season pass on it.
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