  TV Tuesday: "Alcatraz"  January 17, 2012 - Ray Eckenrode  Hey.
It's January. The weather is terrible. The Steelers are out of
the playoffs. What else are you going to do on Monday night? So,
we ventured out of the HBO zone for the "Alcatraz" pilot on Fox
(although we're not sure we would have had we not just visited
the famous prison in September).  It's a J.J. Abrams show,
created by a team that includes Bryan Burk, Elizabeth Sarnoff
and Jack Bender, starring Jorge Garcia, with the pilot scored by
Michael Giacchino, so, yeah, the "Lost" comparisons are a given.
We assumed such comparisons were a marketing gimmick. We were
wrong.  First off, there's time travel. While it took "Lost"
four seasons to admit it was a sci-fi show, there's no such
issue with "Alcatraz." To get on board, the shows asks us to
believe that several hundred inmates "disappeared" on the day
The Rock closed in 1963 and are now reappearing (unaged) in
present-day San Francisco to wreak havoc.  The first character
we meet on Alcatraz is a