Review of ALCATRAZ: Season 1, Episode 6 – Paxton Petty
by Paul Chamberlain
This is part one of two... I'll be
reviewing “Johnny McKee” later today!
The Oscars are this Sunday and I
confess I've been spending more time catching up on movies than on TV
shows. I've fallen behind again, but I'm vowing to get caught up and
I'll do my best to stay a little bit more current in the future.
I have a few more movies to watch, but
I'm also working on compiling my Top Ten Movies of 2011. Look for
that here as well!
In other TV news, I just learned that
COMMUNITY will make its return to NBC on Thursday, March 15th!
This is the best TV news of 2012 so far!
Here we go... as always, full spoilers
of the episode “Paxton Petty” are after the jump!
More intriguing than any other storyline on ALCATRAZ, except perhaps for Tommy Madsen, is Dr. Lucy Sangupta/Banerjee, her relationship with Emerson Hauser, and how she fits in to the grand scheme of things. In this 6th episode, we are finally treated to a glimpse of their mysterious past together. As I predicted, Hauser and Lucy have a romantic history dating back to 1960.
At the top of the episode, we see the
moment they meet, during the arrival of the mad bomber Paxton Petty
at Alcatraz. The year is 1960 and Hauser is as green as they come:
nauseous on the boat ride from the mainland, and lovestruck at the
first sight of Lucy. Flashforward to present day, and we learn that
Lucy is dying.
Another interesting tidbit regarding
Lucy: there is no record of female doctors on Alcatraz. Why would she
have been kept a secret?
Paxton Petty is the focus of this
episode. His weapon of choice? Land mines. In downtown San Francisco.
Very bad ass, and Paxton Petty is probably the coolest name of the
'63s we've met thus far.
While Dr. Soto and Det. Madsen are
trying to figure out how Petty is acquiring land mines, Soto notes
that the '63s are getting help and he theorizes that someone could be
“unfreezing them.” This means that we can pretty much rule out
the fact that they were cryogenically frozen, like Captain America. I
doubt the writers would have a character make an off-the-cuff remark
early in the series about what will probably remain a deep, dark
secret on this show for a while.
Another one of Soto's theories is that
it's a “quantum thing.” His example of a water-bug thinking that
a twig is moving when it is just the water level that is moving, is
easy to understand: the water-bug's only level of perception changes,
so the changes he is perceiving aren't around
it, but are happening to it. I
tried to do some quick Googling and to figure out if I could find out
anything more. Turns out quantum physics isn't something you can
really learn about quickly. Or, rather, I
can't.
Doc Soto really is living the dream,
isn't he? His parents forced him to get doctorates in Criminal
Justice and Civil War History, and he became blacklisted for writing
an academic journal revolving around Batman's fictional town Gotham
City. He's happily doing his thing as a comic book writer and comic
book store owner and all of a sudden, all of this falls into his lap,
and he is literally living the life of a superhero. Comic book geek
by day, federal task force civilian authority by night.
The dynamic between doctors Beauregard
and Sangupta is fun to watch. The former's idea of effective
interrogation is submerging the subject in a bath of ice water, while
the latter drugs his cup of hot tea and uses electroshock therapy. As
the Warden puts it, “dueling sawbones. Toe to toe. Old school
versus the avant-garde.” He can't get enough of it. The best part
about their feud, though, is Beauregard's ridicule and one-liners
against her: “a prescrition straight from the pad of Mother Goose
herself!” and “What's next... crumpets?” Character actor Leon
Rippy delivers these barbs brilliantly.
We get to see a different side of Tommy
Madsen during this episode. We already know that he spends a crapload
of time in the infirmary, giving blood – but now we now he has no
idea why. He is desperate, confused and genuinely ignorant.
A moment I missed on the 1st
viewing: Soto and Rebecca find a tomb where they suspect Petty was
keeping his mines. They learn that he broke the lock on the tomb from
the inside, and Soto theorizes
that “this is where he came back.” Additionally, Petty himself
states that he woke up on the floor of a tomb. If this is true, this
certainly means that the supernatural is almost certainly at play, as
Petty would have to have been transported from one time and place, to
another – the destination being a locked tomb. Of course, someone
with a key could have physically placed him there... but with over
300 inmates and 40 guards to return to present day, I don't see it
likely that someone would go through that kind of trouble.
As predicted, Hauser takes dying Lucy
to Dr. Beauregard in New Alcatraz: “You know her methods,” Hauser
says to Beauregard. “Fix her.” This sort of aligns with my theory
that Lucy had a hand in the disappearance/reappearance of the '63s.
But it doesn't fully offer any kind of answer. We learned that Lucy's
ailment is heart-related. We don't really have any info as to how Dr.
Beauregard is going to be able to bring her back to life... other
than the fact that he'll be using “her methods.”
Final grade for “Paxton Petty”: 8
out of 10
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