KSiteTV welcomes Shane S. Saunders to the team with his recap & review of the Monday, February 13 episode of Alcatraz.
Recap:
A young Emerson Hauser escorts Alcatraz’s latest inmate Paxton Petty from a parked boat in Alcatraz Harbor to a security team standing by. He’s met by the Warden and Lucy Banerjee (who looks all fine and dandy compared to her current state). In present day Hauser pays visit to a hospitalized Lucy Banerjee. The attending doctor informs a concerned Hauser that Lucy is showing no signs of improvement and asks if a DNR has ever been brought up. Hauser has no answer, but his silence speaks volumes. At a park in San Francisco a series of explosions take place forcing Hauser to leave the hospital and meet up with Rebecca and “Doc” at the scene. The comic book enthusiast and Mr. Crankypants immediately and simultaneously identify the perp as 63-er Paxton Petty, locked away for multiple bombings years ago. A nearby figure catches Rebecca’s eye–it’s Petty. She chases off after him and corners him but she’s met her match. Petty launches a wheel-shaped bomb towards a nearby car and the area goes up in flames. She’s knocked down and Petty is in the wind.
The team is introduced to explosives guru Matt Tanner who sparks an instant chemistry and rapport with the lucky-to-be-alive Detective Madsen. 1963-ish, we see Lucy upstage the Warden and Dr. Beauregard and take over the interrogation of Paxton Petty. Petty fails to give up the whereabouts of a missing in action bomb, but Lucy’s good cop/bad cop routine somewhat successfully delivers the goods. Following up on the new information, Badass Banerjee has a personal one-on-one conversation with Tommy Madsen. Madsen–you know, Rebecca’s relative–expresses some concern over his captivity in the infirmary.
The two strike a deal; she promises to look into the matter as long as he cooperates. While it seems Lucy has locked on to the information she’s missing, present day Hauser has also stumbled upon some pivotal evidence. Following the lead, he comes face to face with the criminal mastermind. And though it seems the Alcatraz Agent has the Paxton Petty Perp cornered, Hauser finds himself in his own trap: he’s stepped right on a pressure sensitive bomb–one move and kaboom. Oops.
Petty gets away–again–and travels to a nearby park where Doc and Rebecca soon approach him. They soon discover through Petty’s twisted toying ways that Hauser is caught in a trap and that time is ticking. He shares that just one week ago he fell asleep in a cell block in Alcatraz and woke up right next to a tomb. They may be a part of a task force, but they’re just as clueless as him. Rebecca manages to uncover where Hauser is located and enlists of the help of Matt Tanner to free her boss. Hauser escapes but just as Tanner thinks he dismantled the bomb completely, he’s thrown into the air after the device explodes. An angry and distraught Hauser confronts Petty, handicaps him in the leg, and leaves us with a morbidly cool line: “Killed a good man and my feet hurt.” In the final moments, Hauser kidnaps Lucy from the hospital and delivers her to Dr. Beauregard at the new Alcatraz HQ: “You know her methods. Fix her.”
Review:
Alcatraz is slowly but surely solving its initial problems and easily becoming an addicting series as most hoped it would be. The freshman series had some initial roadbumps in the first few episodes, relying heavily on a procedural formula that did not do any favors. When you see the name JJ Abrams attached to a series called Alcatraz, it’s fair to say that you expect something more twisted and clever than just a team of agents of tracking down prisoners. As the series has evolved producers have integrated more mythology elements and Sci-Fi twists that work well and continue to peel back on this strange event that took place on the world’s most dangerous prison.
Sam Neill’s character is seen in a different light in this week’s installment, showing a more vulnerable side than in previous episodes. He cares a great deal for his colleague Lucy Banerjee, who we learn worked on Alcatraz way back when. The two have a history and it’s one I’m sure the show will have a great deal of fun exploring. Viewers are so used to seeing Hauser butt heads with Doc that it came as a real treat to see the two form a bit of a bond over their knowledge of convict Paxton Petty. Jorge Garcia and Sam Neill play off each other wonderfully and it’ll be interesting to see how that working relationship develops.
