Alcatraz recap: Silver, Gold and Peeping Tommy Madsen

Last night two episodes of Alcatraz aired. You might think that because of last Monday’s NASCAR debacle, Fox transferred last week’s episode over to this week. Only that’s not what happened. Not at all….

Actually, the episode that was to air on Feb. 27 will air on March 12. Last night’s eps had been planned as a twofer for a while and after watching them I can see why. Both “The Ames Bros.” and “Sonny Burnett” showed off a more assured series than we’ve seen before, in terms of eerie cinematography and characterization. And since the first episode was a brisk action-packed hour while the second episode was a measured investigation into the overarching intrigue, they played well when seen back to back.

“The Ames Bros.” might have had a silly setup — the inmates were two brothers looking for the legendary lost gold beneath Alcatraz — but the claustrophobic lighting and tense pacing kept you from dwelling on that. The entire episode took place on the Rock, with Rebecca, Soto, and Hauser sharing their 9 to 5 office with three returned ‘63s.

A storm had knocked out the lights on Alcatraz (though not the security cameras), so most of what we saw in the first hour was lit solely by flashlight. That constricted lighting, along with a rather gruesome slasher-style killing in the beginning, gave the episode an unsettling quality. To be fair, it’s hard to have a consistently frightening tone when your series takes place in one of the nation’s most gorgeous cities (even if it isn’t entirely filmed there).

The inmates of the week — the titular Ames Brothers — weren’t exactly psychologically complex, but the presence of a former Alcatraz guard working in cahoots with them in 2012 was a surprising twist.

The guard, a man named Donovan who definitely did not seem to be down with the electric banana, had been working with the Ames boys back in the 1960s as part of a rather convoluted scheme. Apparently the three of them bought into the legend that the U.S. government had accidentally left behind gold on the Rock from Civil War days and they decided to do a little heist while they were doing some time (how they were planning on escaping with the gold was another matter entirely).

Their plan involved faking a religious awakening, lifting a key from Warden James and making a copy of it surreptitiously during kitchen duty. Before it was over, one of them had his pinky sliced off by a meat saw and Donovan had to suffer a bloody beating that made him resemble Rocky Balboa for a second.

The key in question was one of the hefty, mysterious keys we’ve been seeing since the pilot. When the warden caught the Ames Bros. back in the ’60s — before they had a chance to try it on the room they assumed held the gold — he assured them that the key was to something else entirely. (That being said, the episode did wrap with Warden James cackling over a pile of gold bars and calling them his “ladies.” How many weird things are happening on this island anyway?)

After failing to steal the booty in 1960, the Ames brothers suddenly found themselves alive and young in 2012 (along with their guard friend) and apparently decided the best thing to do was to stick to their 50-year-old game plan and get the gold. Before the episode had wrapped, one of Hauser’s tech dweebs was murdered, Dr. Soto was taken hostage, and Det. Madsen killed both brothers (one she clobbered by launching a jail door at his head, which was gnarly and nasty).

NEXT: Secret of the silver and the reverse Godfather moment

Although the brothers met their maker, Donovan actually managed to get into the secret room. But instead of being a chamber of secrets, it was just a musty old claptrap. The gold was long gone and he was captured by our heroes as he sunk into hysterical despair.

When Hauser interrogated Donovan later, we learned that Warden James might not be so dead after all. “Has he come back? Is he the one willing to kill for these keys?” Hauser questioned. Personally, I find Warden James immensely menacing and would love to see him in 2012.

Perhaps non coincidentally, the first hour was all about gold while the big reveal in the second episode had to go with silver. Specifically, colloidal silver, which Dr. Beauregard (in the present day) revealed had been introduced into many of the inmates’ blood streams in order to give them unnaturally fast regenerative powers.

There’s a long history of silver in medicine. Hippocrates — the ancient Greek physician who has that famous doctor’s oath named after him — touted the healing properties of silver. It was even used as an antiseptic as recently as the Great War. Since then, it’s basically been proven to be medicinally useless and potentially unsafe, but that didn’t stop the ’90s alt-medicine fad from trying to make colloidal silver a “must have” dietary supplement. (Don’t take colloidal silver).

Warning aside, in the world of Alcatraz, colloidal silver in the bloodstream partly explains the returning inmates’ above-average strength as well as all the phlebotomy back in 1960. Dr. Beauregard claims he knows very little about the endgame of all that, but he knew enough to entice Hauser with the idea that finding a silver-infused blood match for the still-comatose Lucy could aid her recovery. And that wrapped our first hour.

The inmate of the second episode was Sonny Burnett, a very creepy kidnapper who was out for revenge in the year 2012. His back story: Prior to capture, he coerced a 14-year-old girl (ewwww) named Helen to come along as Bonnie to his predatory, kidnapping Clyde. Eventually Sonny was caught and incarcerated, at which point Helen absconded with “his” secretly stashed ransom money.

Shotgun Sonny had been hoping that money would buy him protection in Alcatraz, so when he found himself “betrayed” by Helen and unable to afford protection, he basically got his arse handed to him several times over by the jail yard bullies.

So with that axe to grind, un-aged Sonny was tormenting the aged Helen by doing a couple mean things to her. You know, killing her husband and burying her daughter alive in a coffin. Jilted lover stuff like that. Love makes you do crazy things, you know?

There was a particularly gruesome moment where Madsen uncovered Helen’s husband’s decapitated head in a horse stable. It was sort of a reverse Godfather moment, where you are shocked to find a human head in a horse’s bed.

NEXT: Madsen comes into her own and Peeping Tommy

Speaking of Madsen, Sarah Jones is really beginning to flex out more within her role. She was an effective but flat cop in the earlier episodes, but she delivered several great moments during last night’s two-hour run.

The scene where her Uncle Ray tried to convince her to cease investigating Alcatraz with Hauser elicited a particularly impassioned and saucy response from Madsen. She called him out for lying to her about knowing more than he let on about her grandfather Tommy. Doing so, Jones did a nice job channeling that respectful “bugger off” tone you use in real life when telling your parents/guardians to leave you the hell alone.

In an evening full of “creative” violence, the most memorable incident had to be when Sonny flipped out during one of the flashbacks and gouged out the eyes of one of the prison bullies. Sort of like Rutger Hauer blinding his creator in Blade Runner.

Sonny was eventually captured and Helen’s daughter was freed from her early grave, but things are still building to a head with Madsen. She knows that Hauser is having her uncle tailed to get a hold of her felonious grandpa, but she’s glad because she still wants Tommy’s head for killing her partner. But as Doc Soto sagely pointed out to her, “One day this is going to end, and when it does we’re going to have to live with what we’ve done.”

At the end of the episode, we found out that Rebecca’s nightmares haven’t been so far off — Peeping Tommy does stop by to watch her sleep from her fire escape. I guess Grandpa Madsen wants to start making up for all those missed birthdays.

Overall, a very solid one-two punch. Did you prefer one episode to the other? Sound of Silver or The Gold Rush? And what do you think about the unraveling enigma? Sound off below!