For the last few years, Fringe has been our favorite TV show of weird. Twisted plots, twisted characters – gotta love it! But something has happened this season, and the show has lost a lot of its appeal. Perhaps it’s the twist about Peter Bishop, which has changed some of the other characters’ personalities – in particular, that of Walter Bishop (played brilliantly by John Noble), who has become more dour and a lot less impish in his behaviors.
Now comes word that the series, plagued by dropping ratings, may be playing out its last season. So we began looking for a new series that would slake our desire for weird and intriguing, that could replace Fringe if the worst occurs. And we may have found it in a new series that began this week: Alcatraz. Like Fringe, it follows a task force set up to pursue unusual cases; and like Fringe, there’s more to what’s happening than appears on the surface – an underlying mythology of weird goings-on that continually twists and turns into more convoluted storytelling.
Basically, the show rewrites history in postulating that 300+ inmates of Alcatraz were not relocated when the facility closed, but rather simply disappeared. Fast-forward to the present, and the missing cons are showing up in San Francisco – without having aged a day since 1963. Into this situation blunders a young cop who starts to uncover the truth and is grudgingly recruited into a task force to handle the weird process of recovering the ageless cons (who, in turn, are getting help/direction from an unknown source). Her new partner in this venture is an Alcatraz expert (played by Jorge Garcia of Lost fame) who has written four books on the prison, which, of course, are now seriously flawed by the emerging truth.
Add to the mix a project leader (Sam Neill) who knows more than he’s telling, and you’ve got an ensemble cast that invigorates what could have been a dull, if strange, procedural. And really, besides Sam Elliott, is there any actor who can do authoritative and growly-voiced menace better than Neill? I don’t think so.
After watching the 2-hour premiere, I’m impressed enough to continue viewing to see how this drama plays out. Sarah Jones may be a relative unknown to many viewers, but I suspect that, like Anna Torv on Fringe, she’ll make her presence known in a forceful way as plot lines unfold.
Give Alcatraz a watch, and see if you don’t agree. With Fringe still running, this may be the best one-two punch of weird on TV since Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.