Alcatraz
In case you haven’t heard, this is the latest J.J. Abrams tale of alternate realities. It tells the story of what really happened to all of the prisoners who were in Alcatraz when it was closed down. The pilot came with a bonus second episode on the same night. Two episodes were enough to worry me that show is just another procedural. If it’s just going to be about searching out the murderer of the week, we don’t care. Even if said murderers haven’t aged since 1960-whatever. Basically, it’s a cop-with-an-unlikely-partner show. The partner in this case is a comic book store owner (Jorge Garcia), so there’s tons of room for geek jokes.
Lost Girl
I’m calling this show the new Charmed. Airing on Syfy, t’s campy and all about showing off hot chicks with magical powers, but it has an appeal. (I guess for some viewers, the hot chicks are the appeal.) It’s about Bo (Anna Silk, who’s done a ton of stuff you’ve never heard of), who has the power to drain others’ life forces. After killing a guy who is trying to date rape a young pickpocket, Bo is discovered by a group of supernatural beings who have been trailing her. It turns out they’re all fae, magical beings divided into good and evil sides. Bo is just discovering for the first time why she has the powers she has.
The pilot is very pilot-y. It loads us up with rules of its universe and a bunch of characters. What keeps it interesting is that we’re never sure who the bad guys are–or if they’re just all bad guys.
Unsupervised
In contrast to Lost Girl, this first episode wasn’t pilot-y at all. They might have written a bunch of episodes and just decided to throw this one on first. We’re thrown straight into the lives of two high school freshmen boys doing what high school freshmen boys do: trying to get laid. There’s not much to the story, but the animation is pretty sweet, ala the far superior show, Archer.
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