Kit Nelson

The new show Alcatraz returned with another episode tonight, and I think took a nice baby step in the right direction.

The show held strong on all the qualities that made the first two hours intriguing. The case and the criminal were unsettling. The tiny hints of the larger mystery were tantalizing without being overwhelming. The mood was dark without being relentlessly oppressive.

But at the same time, the writing worked just a bit more on developing character. In the spotlight this week was Jorge Garcia's character, Diego Soto. We saw him become much more emotionally invested in this week's case, and by the end of the hour, we got a taste of why. Again, just enough not to frustrate, but not enough to give the game away. Abducted as a child? It should be interesting to learn more about that.

But while I did find this episode more compelling overall, and I definitely plan to keep with the show, there are two aspects I think the writing is going to have to address in the relatively near future.

First, how is it that these criminals freshly transported from 1963 are so easily "acclimatizing" to 2012? In tonight's episode, the criminal-of-the-week confronted our heroine, Detective Madsen, and after instructing her to throw her gun away, told her to throw her phone away. And then later, he easily located an abandoned bomb shelter despite a complete alteration of the terrain in the intervening decades. I think I'd like to see some of the criminals struggling some to come to grips with their new environment.

Second, I think they'll have to develop some new textures to play in the 1960 scenes. So far, the format seems to be "watch the warden find a clever way to torture the criminal-of-the-week." It actually reminds me just a little bit of the 1990s one season wonder American Gothic, in which an evil sheriff (played wonderfully by Gary Cole) tormented and controlled everyone who came into his sphere of influence. It totally worked on that show. And there's no question, we're dealing almost exclusively with some truly bad people here, so we don't mind seeing someone (the warden or anyone else) getting the best of them. But might it get old if the warden remains a mustache-twirling villain?

It's understandably a higher priority to flesh out the main characters in the present day, though. If the show flourishes and grows to a point where it needs to flesh out the evil warden, then I suppose it will be a hit and have plenty of time to address such things. I think I'm looking forward to that.