TV Review: ALCATRAZ - Garrett Stillman 1.12

"Garrett Stillman" was the first part of what was supposed to be Alcatraz's big finale, thing is "big" didn't really come into what was a dull and boring two hours which offered little to no insight as to just what has been going on at Alcatraz. I can't even begin to tell you just how dissapointing I found this, but I'm hoping that I can go some way towards doing it below. I will say to remember this was a two episode finale, with the "Tommy Madsen" season finale following on afterwards, I have the review coming tomorrow.

Let's talk about the man Garret Stillman first off, a very posh English gentleman who just happened to be a genius when it came to pulling off the perfect cash in transit robbery, Alcatraz's answer to Clive Owen I found Stillman one of the more menacing characters to have made a re-appearance in modern day San Francisco. Other than that I really can't think of anything to say in regard to Stillman, at least we got one little answer in that it would seem all the prisoners work for the Warden ultimately but Tommy Madsen would seem to act as his second in command.

Last week's "Webb Porter" left us all with bated (not really) breath following Lucy opening her eyes, she was back this week but was it with a bang? Not really in my opinion, at least we are finally starting to get to the truth about who she is, being in the coma obviously pricked her conscience a little as she felt indebted to tell Doc and Rebecca just who she was, little did she know they had already figured that bit out. Did she tell them much though? I thought not, she went into a little ditty of what it was like leaving 1963 and returning to 2012 for her, but she didn't tell us how? Or why? And at the end of the day that's really what I want to know, the more I think about it I'm not so interested in the how, although it would be nice to know I'm more inclined to find out why? Why do they want to send themselves forward in time (if that's actually what is happening). Criminals tend to have two agenda's, the first would be that they are just crazy and can't stop themselves when an opportunity arises, the other would be money. "Garret Stillman" wasn't crazy, nor did he want the money (back in the 60's he did), but back in the modern day he was just doing over cash transit vans and seemingly didn't care about the money, why? What is the point of them all, including the Warden (I imagine) coming back unless there is something to be gained by it?

Speaking of the cash in transit robbery's, is it just me looking into things to much or were they the unreal looking security vans that you've ever seen? I know it's a TV show budget but I think maybe they could have done a better job there. What Alcatraz did do well this week was something that I have talked about from the beginning, it wasn't a focus on one returnee, there were about three of them involved and that did help to make things a little more interesting. As much as that was an improvement, Alcatraz still failed to do anything interesting with Doc or Rebecca, when Lucy came out the coma I feel they would have had a lot more pressing questions to put to her about what is going on, in all honesty they really didn't seem to care. Rebecca is a cop, she should know how to ask leading questions, like, how did you get here? What are they doing to the prisoner's etc.

As you've probably guessed I wasn't to crazy about this episode, pretty much like most of the episodes up to now I felt it was just plugging a gap. This far into the season, I shouldn't feel like that. Like I said above I will get the "Tommy Madsen" finale review out for you tomorrow, a quick warning though, I really wasn't any more impressed with that than I was with "Garrett Stillman".