I hated it. So did my wife. I don't know, perhaps there was something in the second hour of the pilot that redeemed it, but we couldn't watch past the first hour (basically the first episode).

Where do I begin? The stilted, simple, cliché-ridden dialog? The promise of very little variety in the serial storytelling (I'm left to assume that each week we just follow a different convict)? The poor characterizations?

How about some specific aspects of the show that drove me up the wall and were clear failures on behalf of the people creating this show:

- At some point it's revealed that one of the two guards that discovered everyone was missing was the Sam Neil's character. What they failed to realize is that the audience can do math. Not only does Sam Niel look good for his age of 65, that would have made him 15/16 when this happened in '63. I don't think they were hiring 15 year old guards at friggin' Alcatraz.

- I realize that we don't know much at all about what's going on behind the scenes, but all we're told in the majority of the first episode is that someone brought these convicts/guards through TIME, and the big job they had one of these guys pull off was the theft and murder of some dude for a key in a pouch. Isn't that something they could hire a common burglar to do? You know, when the guy's asleep or out of his home? Maybe the guy needed to be killed, but again that's not something for which you need to go to the trouble of pulling someone through time.

- This last one nearly made me turn the show off as soon as it happened. Near the beginning of the show the lead character tells us that her grandfather was a guard at Alcatraz, and she's all proud of her family law enforcement history. Later in the episode she sees the list of all the people who went missing and we get the stunning revelation: her grandfather wasn't a guard, he was a prisoner!! WHAT?!? Earlier we're being told that this woman was supposedly assisting in her father's cases when she was 12 or something, she's a hot-shot detective, and proud of her family line, and SHE DIDN'T KNOW HER GRANDPA WAS A CONVICT AT THE MOST FAMOUS PRISON IN AMERICAN HISTORY? I lost it. This woman grew up in SF. She probably would have chosen to do a report on her grandpa at some point in grade school. She would have at least done some research later on her own! Then they had to go and throw the icing on the cake and show that she just realized the man who killed her partner...was her granddad! You mean she'd never seen a photo of her grandfather? Again, the man she was so proud of? WTF?


So yeah, we stuck it out through the rest of the episode and stopped before the "second half." If any of you liked it and stick with it, let me know if it gets any better. Also let me know if Parminder Nagra isn't wasted in future episodes.