Review: ALCATRAZ 1.2 - Ernest Cobb

Apologies first off, I didn't realise that Alcatraz had a two part opener so last week all you got was a review of the first episode, now the third episode has already aired and I'm only onto the second so I have some catching up to do.

I made a lot of Alcatraz and it's pilot episode last week and after watching this second episode I'm beginning to wonder why. I watched last week attempting to second guess everything that was going on, a move which did give me quite a few ideas or theories of where the story would go or may well be headed. This week I decided I should stop second guessing so much and just watch it for the story and see what I made of it.

I have to say I wasn't all that impressed by anything in this episode, it came across a little cheesy at times, so far I'm still more interested in Jack Sylvane, the prisoner from the first episode he played a mysterious creepy guy in "Ernest Cobb", a story which was not really about him but did suggest a little, especially at the end that maybe he does know a little of what is going on. New prisoner Ernest didn't really interest me all that much, even when they did reveal his reason for all his killings.

Speaking of Jack Sylvane, would he really know what CCTV camera's are if he didn't know where he had been since 1963? Just a little one I thought I would throw in.

Clearly Emerson Hauser is going to have a bigger part to play in all of this, we already know that he returns the prisoners to his modern updated version of Alcatraz, I did like the little twist at the end of this episode with Hauser's partner Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra) being revealed as the doctor from Alcatraz prison in 1960. She was shot by Ernest Cobb during this episode in the modern day, maybe she is going to play a big part in what is going on, or what happened to all of the prisoners who were in Alcatraz at the time, this was probably the only positive thing in the episode for me.

I like the way that Doc and Detective Madsen just know how to work the computers that Hauser seems to have allowed them full access to awfully quick, would you, really? I feel at the moment that this is a cheaper version of Person of Interest, a cheaper version which is nowhere near as good. For me Alcatraz has some work to do if it is hoping to become the new Lost. Saying that Person of Interest started quite slowly to, let's not forget that it's only in the last few episodes that we have started to find out a little more about the lead characters, maybe Alcatraz has something similar up it's sleeve, maybe not, we'll see I suppose.

This is not the longest review I have ever posted I know that but I honestly can't really think of that much to say on this episode, I feel like what I have covered has been done in enough detail. I will still be watching the show next week as I really do hope that it will improve into the show we all expected it would be, but for "Ernest Cobb", at times I felt like I could have been watching a day time cop show on Hallmark.