As a diehard LOST fan, The Blot has been ready to start watching Alcatraz ever since it got the green light from FOX last year. Produced by J.J. Abrams, directed by Jack Bender and starring Jorge Garcia, everything about this show says “Must See TV” to me. As FOX explains, Alcatraz is a “thrilling new series that follows a unique trio investigating the mystifying reappearance of 302 of Alcatraz’s most notorious prisoners and guards 50 years after they vanished.” Admit it, that one sentence synopsis sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Some thought ABC’s Once Upon A Time would be LOST’s heir apparent, but to me Alcatraz has always held that title. I just can’t figure out why FOX kept this awesome television show on hold until mid-season!
Catch the 2 hour series premiere of Alcatraz tonight, Monday, January 16th, at 8/7c on FOX! Alcatraz stars Sarah Jones as Det. Rebecca Madsen, Jorge Garcia as Dr. Diego Soto, Sam Neill as Emerson Hauser, Parminder Nagra (of ER!) as Lucy Banerjee; Robert Forster as Ray Archer, Santiago Cabrera as Jimmy Dickens, Jonny Coyne as Warden Edwin James and Jason Butler Harner as Deputy Warden E.B. Tiller. You can also listen to the new Diego’s Soule Patch: An Alcatraz Podcast by Jorge Garcia and Bethany Shady on iTunes (I know I will be)!
Alcatraz Official Synopsis: When San Francisco Police Department Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) is assigned to a grisly homicide case, a fingerprint leads her to a seemingly impossible suspect: Jack Sylvane (guest star Jeffrey Pierce), an Alcatraz inmate who died over 30 years ago. Given her family history – both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, Ray Archer (Robert Forster), were guards at the prison – Madsen’s interest is immediately piqued. When the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) tries to impede her investigation, she becomes doggedly committed to it.
Madsen finds herself working with an unlikely partner, Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto (Jorge Garcia), to help piece together the inexplicable sequence of events. The two discover that Sylvane is not only alive, but he’s loose on the streets of San Francisco, exacting decades-old revenge and leaving bodies in his wake. And strangely, he hasn’t aged a day since 1963, when Alcatraz was ruled by the iron-fisted Warden Edwin James (Jonny Coyne) and the sadistic Associate Warden E.B. Tiller (Jason Butler Harner).
Detective Madsen and Soto must team with Hauser and his associate, Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), to stop Sylvane’s vengeful killing spree. By delving into Alcatraz history, government cover-ups and Rebecca’s own heritage, the team will ultimately discover that Sylvane is only a small part of a much larger, more sinister present-day threat. Because even though he may be the first, it quickly becomes clear that Sylvane won’t be the last to reappear from Alcatraz.