Johnny McKee

Tonight's episode of Alcatraz was a fairly entertaining hour, though it did sport a rather major flaw... and I might as well start with that.

This week's criminal was a particularly well crafted nemesis, with a rather more interesting back story that some of the characters our heroes have come up against. He was a considerably greater menace that we've seen before. His background was given to us in an interesting way; we the audience were filled in on the whole story, while Madsen and Soto themselves never learned the full reasons behind his criminal acts.

But within that clear motivation lies the problem. McKee was clearly depicted with a singular drive, to kill people who deserved it -- bullies. But the climax of the episode had him committing a mass murder on a subway full of anonymous people who hadn't done him (or anyone else, that we saw) wrong. The writers shoehorned in some nonsense about an infatuation with "the future" to try to provide an explanation, but the fact remained that the episode's big climax required the villain to behave in a manner completely inconsistent with the M.O. carefully presented in the rest of the hour.

Still, the rest of that episode was fairly compelling at least, even though it fell more on the "self-contained story" end of the spectrum than the last few episodes have. The small bits of ongoing story doled out this time came in the form of inmate Silvane, returned again for a few brief scenes. Soto of course wasn't there to hear Silvane mentioned the name "Beauregard," or else it's likely the whole game of Hauser's secret prison would surely be up. The series isn't going to be ready to go there until the end of the season, at least.

So, not my favorite episode of Alcatraz, but still good enough to keep me intrigued and awaiting the next installment.