Alcatraz

I worry about starting to watch US TV shows. I have been burned too many times with interesting stuff being dropped.

I didn't watch 24 until it had been running for 4 years.
 
I'm on episode 4 also. For me, the show didn't start that well, but is slowly, slowly, getting me hooked... It needs to answer a few questions soonish though...
 
I know that they are being compelled by someone to do this but its just all a bit silly at the moment. They all just seem to get out and think "time to go killing". Not enough back story on the criminals and no notion of the fact that they are in a world that would be completely alien to them.
 
RobTheMonk said:
I'm on episode 4 also. For me, the show didn't start that well, but is slowly, slowly, getting me hooked... It needs to answer a few questions soonish though...
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seems alright for a filler series so far.
person of interest is more my style for mindless catch the badguy rubbish though :P
 
its an ok show but yeah needs to start answering questions earlier before its just outright cut...

hopefully its not one of those series that takes a year or 2 before some answers come out of it.

Otherwise if people are bored just remember theres always house of lies/touch/person of interest which are good so far... I quite digg house of lies actually.
 
I've started watching this and I thought it was great at first then as most of you I got to ep 4 and I started to think what the hell is the point...going to be Lost style rubbish with unanswered question until about the 3rd series, but the last 2 episodes have been pleasantly surprising.

Couple of things still really ****ing me off though. The main premise behind how Rebecca and Soto and just gone along with the completely far fetched happenings just bugs the hell out of me. No one in their right mind would just carry on and think "it's just people coming back from the apparent dead and not aging at all, nothing even remotely weird ponder about" ... I feel it might be because it would make every Yank's head explode if they did something to question the story. Sam Neill is annoying the hell out of me as well, it's obvious he's playing the bad cop who's hell bent on a mission to catch all these people but it's as if he wants to spend as little time on set as possible, some of what he's doing just seems really forced as well.
 
Eurgh, is every criminal going to have a motif? They're like the rejects who didn't make the cut as villains in a superhero comic.

Just onto the third episode there now and it seemed very similar to the second.

Guy killing young girls because he hated his step-sister/Guy killing young boys because he hated his brother

They also had memory related fixations, one on the number of pickets in front of the house, the other on a sequence of events which had to be played through.
 
There was so much potential for sci fi story arcs - both per-episode-short and per-season-long. So much could be done with the mechanism of come back alone, the element of extraction/disappearances in 60ies, even with the idea of "agency" and "secret prison" awaiting. Instead we were served with... procedural police drama? They just come back, without explanation of how, how they feel about it and how the world looks to them and all of the imbeciles try to do the same crimes, with the only "gripping" element being "the crime style is really old"? WTF? Why? It's a wasted idea, it's not done, it's like if Lost was about passengers of an airplane getting stranded on mysterious island and then all we see is them talk about politics, badmouth celebrities, get suntan, try to make fire and do some spider eating challenges in each episode when Ant & Dec appear out of nowhere to announce voting out. You don't do time travel Alcatraz sci fi mystery series to do some lame donkey "first time chick + fat guy" Dempsey & Makepeace routine for quarter of a season? What on earth is this?
 
its crap thats what it is, i was hoping for some science fiction goodness but instead its just about 2 people hunting a criminal every episode and it got old fast...

person of interest is very similar and a hell of a lot better for anyone who actually wants to watch a show like this but one that isnt complete horse crap

person of interest
Centers on ex-CIA hitman and a scientist who team up to prevent crimes before they happen.
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damn good show! that seems to actually have a story arc and not just "lets catch XXX whos back to the future from alcatraz"
 
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v0n said:
There was so much potential for sci fi story arcs - both per-episode-short and per-season-long. So much could be done with the mechanism of come back alone, the element of extraction/disappearances in 60ies, even with the idea of "agency" and "secret prison" awaiting. Instead we were served with... procedural police drama? They just come back, without explanation of how, how they feel about it and how the world looks to them and all of the imbeciles try to do the same crimes, with the only "gripping" element being "the crime style is really old"? WTF? Why? It's a wasted idea, it's not done, it's like if Lost was about passengers of an airplane getting stranded on mysterious island and then all we see is them talk about politics, badmouth celebrities, get suntan, try to make fire and do some spider eating challenges in each episode when Ant & Dec appear out of nowhere to announce voting out. You don't do time travel Alcatraz sci fi mystery series to do some lame donkey "first time chick + fat guy" Dempsey & Makepeace routine for quarter of a season? What on earth is this?
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This sums up my thoughts nicely. I only noticed there the JJ ABRAMS is behind this. That explains a lot. Does anything touched by JJ ABRAMS not turn sheeeiiite?
 
The irritating thing being the method of police work that she catches them by, the "hey maybe he's killing more than one person to make it look random, but there really is a pattern"............ she's the only cop who can come up with that wild theory that 1/ has been done in every single cop show, EVER, because 2/ its a pretty standard occurence that has both happened often enough that every crap writer of every crap cop show has researched and found one, and that anyone looking for a pattern would consider within a few minutes.

That's what REALLY gets to me, she's a tottally and completely average cop and every case(I've missed the last ep due to assignments being due) is based on everyone else having looked into it being the worst cops in the world and missing incredibly obvious things.

IE, if she was an epic detective and saw things other people didn't, it would make sense as a show, but everyone misses obvious crap and only she see's it, is just lazy writing.

The "i'll brake the law and help this guy escape" thing when at that stage she, didn't know what was going on, has no idea if helping break the law to catch these people is somehow a good thing or not she's just instantly jumped into working towards the cause way of doing things where you break the rules to get it done because its sooo important....... but she doesn't know what the damn cause is.

Also every "I heard a crime on the radio, one that could basically be anyone, therefore I instantly know its an Alcatraz guy" is painful aswell, Hurly's whole character is crap, he's not acting well, his dialogue is laughable, and asides from having read the rap sheets of the prisoners, has offered again nothing beyond what a rookie cop would cop up with "theory" wise.

really, really awful.
 
its crap that's what it is, i was hoping for some science fiction goodness but instead its just about 2 people hunting a criminal every episode and it got old fast...
 
Well considering supernatural was a baddie a week for 3-4 seasons, I wouldn't throw this out yet, then again it may pull a LOST and have me watching just to see what the frakk is going on.
 
finally starting to see a bit more about what went on at alcatraz, and development of how much some of the other characters know, just a shame its taken so long to get there.
 
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