Wednesday the hammer dropped on the Fox TV show Alcatraz — I can’t say it was a surprise here Up and Down These Mean Streets. Lots of potential, I guess, just sitting there, not going any place.
My main objection, that star Sarah Jones looks to be about twenty years old — not old enough to be convincing as a police homicide detective — could have been handled with the exact same actress playing a rookie cop. Her character was going to be in the mix regardless, since she’s related to time-hopping bad guy Tommy Madsen — she could have been a teenager in high school, anything, and they’d have had to write her in. Make up an excuse to give her a gun and let her go Dirty Nancy Drew. I’d have been more willing to go along with that than to try and believe she’d made Homicide.
Sure, that’s nitpicky, but petty little details often make or break it. A guy on the tour this past Sunday thought the show was awful, but also mentioned that he had a relative, a local cop, who couldn’t watch Alcatraz because they called homicide cops inspectors instead of detectives, or detectives instead of inspectors, whichever is correct.
The San Francisco audience is a tough sale.
