TV Review: ALCATRAZ - Tommy Madsen 1.13 - Season Finale

Welcome back today for the second part of the Alcatraz two hour Finale “Tommy Madsen”, catch yesterday’s post? No, well here is your chance to catch up on “Garrett Stillman”. Over here we will roll on with what was a very disappointing finale to what has been a hugely disappointing show in my opinion. On watching this episode it was
clear that the first hour was nothing more than a build up to the so called main event, but in that event would we be given answers? After all “Tommy Madsen” is the man all of this would seem to revolve around, what’s the family connection?, how much does Ray really know? Well, I still don’t know to be honest so maybe we’ll have to wait and see if Alcatraz gets a second season.

If you rolled up on the Alcatraz finale expecting answers to any of the questions you had then I imagine you would have been disappointed, I got nothing from it and I was expecting a lot more, maybe to much who knows but in my opinion it was just boring. I thought maybe we would get some sort of 63’ grand finale where they all rolled up in modern day San Francisco along with the warden in toe to wreak a little havoc. Instead what we got was an episode based on Tommy Madsen, a bad guy after all, I mean fancy killing your granddaughter. I’m still confused a little as to what Tommy Madesn’ purpose is, on this it would appear that he was quite willing to walk away from his son (Rebecca’s father) and family and take up the warden on a more lucrative offer rather than build bridges.


Probably the best bit of "Tommy Madsen"


What is the more lucrative offer though? I really thought we may have got to find out, I was at least expecting the warden to show up. Did they forget to send him an invitation? Of course not, they had something more up their sleeve that provided no answers and only succeeded in posing more questions, I really don’t have a problem with that if I thought Alcatraz was going to get a second season, but lets face it J.J. Abrams and his team of writers have got some convincing to do, Terra Nova didn’t get a second season and that averaged a 7.1m audience weekly, I don’t know the figures for Alcatraz but I can’t imagine them being much better.

“Tommy Madsen” focused on the hunt for keys, well the missing key to open the wardens secret door which last time we seen was a room full of dust and oh yeah some gold bars, they’ve gone a little more high-tech now and when Hauser did eventually get in there he found a mad scientist who appeared to have been asleep for the last 50 years along with a grid map of the USA showing where all the 63’ will re-appear. Again, that’s great providing that Alcatraz gets a second season.

I was very surprised by the ending, I knew Rebecca got stabbed or shot as we saw that in the preview on Sunday but to kill off the leading lady of a supposed hit TV show is just a little crazy. On saying that I really didn’t mind that much as this far Rebecca has not really done anything that screams out a great lead to me, I felt no emotional attachment to her character at all, but maybe this is all part of the bigger plot and maybe J.J Abrams has an ace up his sleeve knowing that TV loves him and he already has a second season secured with Fox. If that is the case (I’m pretty sure it’s not), then will they kill Rebecca off? I would say no, just pump her full of silver and bring her back to life. That could be a good plot to start a second season and we could hope that one is a lot better than this debut has been.

There is nothing worth me going into any depth in my opinion, I just didn’t think this was a good finale at all, good if there is a second season yes, but if they are leaving it there then Alcatraz may end up on TV’s trash pile of terrible finale’s like The Event and
FlashForward, shows which I watched and personally wouldn’t have minded seeing a second season of. If Alcatraz gets a second season then I will watch it because I don’t feel anything I wanted answered was, so for that reason I would check out some more but we’ll have to wait and see if it’s commissioned first.

What did you think of Alcatraz? Would you watch a second season? Do you think the finale made things clear? Leave your comments below letting me know what you think.