Alcatraz - "Ames Bros/Sonny Burnett" Pt 2 - Recaps

On March 21, 1963 three hundred and two inmates, guards, and staff vanished in the night and started to reappear today.

By The Light of the Silvery Moon:
Silver has often been shown with a symbol of a crescent moon. Moon in mythology are often associated with dreams, sub conscience, dual nature, dual reality, duel identity (moon lighting), and transformation. (ex: Were wolf folklore). The moon was also mention in 1x07 “Johnny McKee” as one of his favorite works of literature was Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”. Additionally the crescent moon relates to the history of Israel as the crescent moon and a star, Venus, appears on their National Flag.

More about the moon from Wiki:

The Moon has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for countless others. It is a motif in the visual arts, the performing arts, poetry, prose and music. A 5,000-year-old rock carving at Knowth, Ireland, may represent the Moon, which would be the earliest depiction discovered. The contrast between the brighter highlands and darker maria create the patterns seen by different cultures as the Man in the Moon, the rabbit and the buffalo, among others. In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Moon was personified as a deity or other supernaturalphenomenon, and astrological views of the Moon continue to be propagated today.

 The Moon has a long association with insanity and irrationality; the words lunacy andloony are derived from the Latin name for the Moon, Luna. Philosophers such asAristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the full Moon induced insanity in susceptible individuals, believing that the brain, which is mostly water, must be affected by the Moon and its power over the tides, but the Moon's gravity is too slight to affect any single person. Even today, people insist that admissions to psychiatric hospitals, traffic accidents, homicides or suicides increase during a full Moon, although there is no scientific evidence to support such claims.

What was also interesting about paring these episodes back to back was that as 1x10 introduced silver, but 1x09 introduced gold. As stated in Pt 1's Silver Wikapedia article, silver can be taken from gold (refined) and when we got to the end of the Ames Bros episode, and saw that in modern day there was nothing left in the room, while in the flashback we saw James with the bars and a civil war cannon, I asked myself, “Where did the gold go?” It would be plausible that James simply moved it after Alcatraz shut down, or perhaps the FBI redirected it, but after reading the Wikipedia article I wondered if this is were the silver was coming from?

For alchemist and ancient cultures alike gold goes hand in hand with silver, but sits at the top of the elemental food chain. Gold is associated with high society, wealth, power, warmth, strength, hope optimism, and the sun in which is also about being prosper and knowledgeable or having wisdom. From crowns worn by ancient royalty, to calling the Fibonacci. sequence the golden ratio, to the phrase having a heart of gold, continues to expand itself in pop culture. If the moon is the unconscious or sub conscience, then the sun is the conscience, -the one who is fully aware and in control.

This also brings me to the keys. In the Ames Bros episode we see that a small key mold was smuggled into Alcatraz and how the three of them made some kind of metal alloy in the prison’s kitchen,, but those keys they made did not fit the door of the dungeon. -I thought maybe they could have been the keys like Jack Sylvane and Cal Sweeney had found, but according to Hauser’s tech guys (which can you believe the Daniel Faraday-like one was killed!?) those key blades were made with lasers…I can only conclude that either these keys lead to somewhere else, or no where at all, or that if they are ‘the keys’, then something happens to the key blades when they go into the lock.

"The 63's you've been rounding up, they're all in perfect health. And I mean straight from God's own factory floor."

But also I would like to make mention of colloidal silver-blood infused men reminds me of FRINGE’s mercury based shape shifters. It’s my belief that Fringe’s shape shifters are apart of the evolution that lead to the creation of The Observers, which one could argue is a type of super human. It also then reminds me of The Terminator, a story about humanoid robots trying to wipe out human existence. But even as we learn how these criminals are capable of what they are doing, the more important question is why , for whom, to what purpose and I am hoping as we continue to delve into the philosophical debates between James and Tiller, might we come closer to those answers. One other thing about Fringe is that before the series aired FOX aired the pilot promos that included a very well known quote from Albert Einstein. For whatever reason that quote doesn't seem to have as much weight in FRINGE, as I think it would with Alcatraz and have to wonder if some of Fringe's abandoned ideas fell onto Alcatraz. The famous quote is, "Technological Progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

Final thoughts:
A few episodes back we learned what the “E” stands for in E. B. Tiller’s name; it’s Elijah. Elijah could be nod to the Biblical Elijah (and this may be a point of interest for those of you that also watch Person of Interest as Elias is the Greek version of the name Elijah). In LOST the Biblical references were abundant and in some cases, characters named after those mentioned in the Bible did parallel them in some way.

From Wiki:

Elijah ( /?'la?d??/;[1] also Elias /?'la?.?s/; Hebrew: ??????????, Eliyahu, meaning "Yahweh is my God";[2] Arabic:?????, Ilyas), was a prophet in the Kingdom of Samaria during the reign of Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Books of Kings.

 According to the Books of Kings, Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the more popular Baal, he raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and was taken up in a whirlwind (either accompanied by a chariot and horses of flame or riding in it). In the Book of Malachi, Elijah's return is prophesied "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord," making him a harbinger of the Messiahand the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. Derivative references to Elijah appear in the Talmud, Mishnah, the New Testament, and the Qur'an.

.Elijah is also a figure in various folkloric traditions. In Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, he is known as "Elijah the Thunderer" and in folklore is held responsible for summer storms, hail, rain, thunder, and dew.

 Starting in the fifth century, Elias is often connected with Helios, the Sun. The two words have very similar pronunciations in post-classical Greek; Elijah rode in his chariot of fire to heaven (2 Kings 2:11 ) just as Helios drove the chariot of the sun across the sky; and the holocaust sacrifice offered by Elijah and burned by fire from heaven (1 Kings 18:38 ) corresponds to the sun warming the earth.

Additionally I would then have to wonder about Edwin James name, thinking of both King James (Two Kings of England, One of which resided during the time of The American Civil War), and possible Biblical James, whether the apostle, or ‘the brother of the Lord’. It’s a little early to tell which James could be associated with him, but going back to LOST again, thinking about James 'Sawyer' Ford, the characters do have a few things in common. They both are well read and smarter than they appear. Both seem to be from the south and both seek their own brand of justice and may not show everyone their true colors until later in the series. Sawyer’s “A tiger can’t change his stripes” is similar or the same to Edwin’s argument about predetermination and survival of the fittest, as he denies Tiller’s argument about adaptation and/or being provoked to change. Additionally these ideas of "proper motivation" also relate to con-man perspective of LOST in which several characters used psychological tactics to get the results they wanted (Ford, Linus, Austen, Locke, Dogen, Widmore, Jacob, MIB, ect)

It would be nice to eventually see Diego learn how to use a gun and take some defense classes, but considering what happened to him as a child, I think he did well enough. Rebecca too commented, “Thanks for saving my life.” I think that’s exactly what Diego needed to hear. I like Rebecca more and more every week. She continues to be very caring, but also very capable. It was also nice in the Sonny Burnett episode to see that she is concerned and is invested in finding Tommy Madsen. And I love that Hauser put Ray in his place by saying that Rebecca has the stomach for it, just like Hauser does. It was the first real compliment that he has ever given. But I understand Ray’s concern. We have seen deplorable gruesome behavior from most of the inmates so far and considering Tommy had yet to be caught, it seems like he is smarter and not being mentally held back like the others. But it also makes me think Ray is hiding a lot more than his awareness to Tommy Madsen. There is something that is truly bugging him about all this. Some kind of guilt perhaps. I also love the idea that Rebecca dreams of Tommy being in her apartment at the beginning of “Sonny Burnett” and at the end of the episode he is pretty darn close. I would like to think this says something more prophetic about dreams perceiving reality before it happens and Rebecca’s deep sense of conscience awareness of things yet to unfold.

Uniquely the Ames Brothers episode also had characters with interesting names. Names like Herman and Donovan remind me of some 1960’s bands! (Donovan - “Atlantis” and Herman’s Hermits “Dream On”) --But Donovan is a name I have heard before in another Bad Robot work, none other than LOST. In LOST he was a physicist and friend of Desmond’s who didn’t believe Desmond when he explained he was time traveling back and could predict the outcome of the soccer match, which turned out was just the wrong game. If you noticed the one man of Hauser’s team was conducting experiments around the prison in a VERY similar fashion to Daniel Faraday’s time or time displacement/scattering light experiments on the Island. ("The Economist") I can’t help to think the writers are dancing around some of those issues from LOST and if we should expect problems with time displacement or time travel at some point? And Pinkey reminded me of Pinkey and the Brian and the alleged team effort of a group of sentinel beings “trying to take over the world”.

I thought both episodes were VERY well done. I liked that the Ames Brother episode gave us 3 time travelers instead of one and that their purpose centered on the inside of Alcatraz, rather than the outside world, but I also thought Sonny Burnett’s episode was equally creepy, as Sonny’s pathological expressions were way worse than many we have yet to see, let alone the reveal about the colloidal silver. It also seems like each episode’s inter stories themes bleed into the next episodes giving the more serialized viewer a sense of progression of stepping stones and I think it’s serving the series well.

Until Next Time,
                              A Tiger Can’t Change It’s Stripes