Alcatraz season finale Monday; or will it be the series finale?

The season finale of the Fox television show Alcatraz, a two-hour episode that will run on Monday, could end up being the series finale.

According to media reports, the mystery surrounding former inmate Tommy Madsen, the grandfather of special task force detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) will be resolved. But new questions will arise.

Will they be answered? After stellar ratings when it began airing in January, viewership has slipped for the show.

Bad scripts are the culprit, in my opinion, as Alcatraz has for the most part devolved into an "inmate of the week" serial, while putting the question of how and why all of the prisoners and guards disappeared in 1963--when "the Rock" was supposed to have closed down--off to the side.

Marathon Pundit in 2009

The 'Clarence Montgomery' episode two weeks ago is the most egregious example. Despite a superb performance by Mahershala Ali as Montgomery--an innocent black man sent to Alcatraz for killing his white girlfriend--I just couldn't get past wondering exactly what federal crime Montgomery was convicted of as I watched. The victim was killed on a private golf course and besides, assuming Montgomery was convicted of a federal crime, inmates were rarely sent directly to Alcatraz; Rafael Cancel Miranda was a notable exception, he was one of the shooters in the 1954 Puerto Rican nationalist attack inside the chamber of the US House of Representatives. The 'Clarence Montgomery' episode was ruined by lazy script-writing.

When I was a kid, "Why are you making a federal case out of it?" was a common protest by someone who believed that a big deal was being made out of something trivial. That's because before the de facto federalization of narcotics enforcement, criminals really had to work hard at committing a federal crime. For instance, bank robbery (deposits are federally insured), transferring stolen merchandise across state lines, income tax evasion, infractions involving the US Post Office and the like were the types of crimes that could put you in the federal pokey prior to 1963.

Warden's residence, 2009

On the other hand, perhaps I'm quibbling. As with Lost, much suspension of disbelief is needed for Alcatraz. I mean, how does its contemporary 'Bat Cave' exist on the island while the National Park Service and thousands of tourists are oblivious to it?

Other questions that might be answered tomorrow night: Why doesn't Dr. Beauregard (Leo Rippy) get to leave the underground prison? It's a subterranean and modern neo-Alcatraz. What's the deal with the Civil War gold in the cellar of the prison? Do the unethical medical experiments explain the disappearance of the 63s? Will coroner Nikki (Jeananne Goossen) and Doc Soto (Jorge Garcia) hook up? Will Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra) and Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) hook up again--despite their now 50 year age difference?

And why is the warden (Jonny Coyne) so weird? Is he the real villain here?

The highlight of the finale is a car chase, an homage to the one in the 1968 movie Bullitt, through San Francisco.

For more on Alcatraz, please read my earlier entries.

Related posts:

Alcatraz TV show and my 2009 post about my visit to the island

California Collision: Alcatraz

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