The dreaded television slump. Because of you, during that deluge of emptiness, we’re willing to add all sorts of stuff to our queue once shows start again, as a reactionary attempt to not suffer through the drought again. Sure, we might watch a lot of tv… but if you’re not huge into a lot of reality TV, and not a fan of network sitcoms, there’s not always a ton of stuff out there.
And that’s what led us to watch Alcatraz.
On the outset, you know they’re throwing old Lost fans a bone. It has Hurley, an island, a mystery, and some cagey behind the scenes guys who operate outside of the mainstream. It’s not spectacular, but it fills space. It’s entertaining, every week focusing on a simple crime investigation of yet another old Alcatraz prisoner, reappearing inexplicably the same age as they were in 1963, hell bent on doing the same stupid shit that got them there in the first place.
It’s missable. It’s passable. It’s nothing to write home about. But… being as though I used to live in San Francisco, and in fact, on the “other” rock, Treasure Island (half real island half landfill, looked out onto Alcatraz from the same section of the bay), there’s always that appeal based on familiarity.
And here’s why it sucks. WTF DO YOU MEAN THE HOUSE HE GREW UP IN IS STILL FUCKING ABANDONED, DO YOU HAVE ANY CLUE WHAT PROPERTY VALUES ARE AROUND HERE????
Yeah. Some fuckwad that got himself thrown in prison in the 1960’s is not going to have the chance in 2012 to wander back into his childhood home complete with torn wallpaper and cutesy Fallout-esque pastille candy tins on the shelves. You claim he lives in Daly City? Still a no-go. Land costs too much to go sitting around, like that abandoned school or hospital. At this point it’d be a bad restaurant location that got sold every 9 months with a few dismal apartments above it that charged extra because it was walking distance from a BART station.
I like that they had episodes taking them to Walnut Creek or other surrounding areas, and that they don’t do stupid shit like “ooh, let’s drive to Marin” and show footage of them driving the toll direction on the Golden Gate, back into the city. These things annoy the shit out of locals. Like that terrible 2000 movie Boys and Girls (with Jason Biggs and that weird looking girl you can never remember her name), where they drove back and forth over the Golden Gate Bridge, NEVER GOING THE RIGHT DIRECTION. Fucking irritating.
I suppose that isn’t my biggest criticism of Alcatraz, it’s an okay show, it tries hard to have an over-arching mystery stringing them all together which only occasionally outweighs the fatigue of generic detective show from episode to episode. And sometimes it tries too hard for that, and really, it’s just an episode of Charlie’s Angels without the cool synthesizer music during chase scenes.
I can suspend a lot of belief, but unoccupied real estate in San Francisco area…not a chance.
