Alcatraz Revisited – “Ernest Cobb”

All right, we’re back for the second episode of Alcatraz.  While this one is a little more “Villain of the Week” than the pilot, it’s a good episode.  Actually, that’s kind of the format of the show right now, which makes sense given the premise.  They do a good job of giving you something to chew on in terms of the overall story every week, so I’m happy.  And this one’s got a couple of surprises.

Before we get into it, I just want to note that spunkybuddy Larry Young is writing about Alcatraz over on his site, and you should check it out.  (Also, read the entry about “Ensign Crunch”.  Trust me on this one.)  One thing he’s pointed out, as a San Francisco native, is that they don’t have detectives in the local police – they have inspectors.  Alcatraz keeps using the term “detective”, probably for the same reason that Tony Soprano used to be able to pump his own gas:  They don’t trust the rest of the country not to be confused.  I don’t know whether to be insulted or to just say “Yeah, that’s about right”. 

We start in the prison, 1960.  A new prisoner is being led to meet with the Warden before going to his cell.  The Warden is outside, shooting targets with a rifle.  This is the first time we’ve seen the Warden, by the way.  Tiller was the Deputy, and this guy is running the show.  His name is Edwin James – historically, there was an Edwin James who was a 19^th Century English lawyer, and was the first Queen’s Counsel to be disbarred.  A different Edwin James was the first person to climb Pikes Peak.  And yet another wrote Alcatraz recaps.  (Me!  To be technical, the E stands alone on my birth certificate, but I was named for my grandfather, Edwin.  The J stands for James, so I am going to assume they’re giving me a shoutout.)

We learn that the new prisoner, Ernest Cobb, killed sixteen people with a sniper rifle.  Creepy Warden wants to know how Cobb picks his targets.  Also, Cobb shot a guard at his previous prison in the leg – he didn’t want to kill him, but he wanted to be transferred to the Rock.  He says it’s because he wanted a private cell.  Well, you have to admire his commitment.

In the present, Cobb sets up a picnic for one.  He eats his sandwich while sitting in a lawn chair, and then fishes a sniper scope out of the basket.  As he surveys the crowd, he mumbles “There are 47 slats in the picket fence.  Four.  Seven.”  And then he starts counting people to pick his target.  First, you knew 47 was going to come up sooner or later.  Second, I really like the way he’s got this method, but he’s really just scanning the crowd at random while he counts.  So it still appears to be random but in his head, it’s very deliberate.  Homicide did something similar when they did an episode about a sniper. 

At the comic store, Hurley is helping to train another guy to fill in for him, since he’ll be busy on the “task force”.  He totally wants to talk about it but doesn’t want to say anything.  Madsen shows up to talk about her grandfather – he went to jail for murdering his wife, but there’s less information on him in the book than the other inmates.  Probably because he was always getting his blood drawn!

Cobb assembles his sniper rifle, recites his picket fence mantra, then shoots a man.  He shoots two people who are riding in a Ferris Wheel, which completely creeps me out.  When Hurley and Madsen arrive on the scene, Hauser and Lucy are already there.  Hurley figures out it’s Cobb because of some dead crows – the guy had a thing about killing crows.  Hurley’s not doing well with the dead bodies.  There’s a neat bit where the SFPD assumes the weapon is an M40, which uses the same ammunition as Cobb’s vintage Winchester.  His range is only about 500 yards with that weapon, while the cops assume a greater distance – the buildings they’re searching are too far away.  Which is good for our heroes, since they’d rather nobody else find the 63s.  Madsen and Hurley search the hill and find a shell casing.

Flashback!  The guy in the next cell over won’t stop talking to Cobb, who really wants his privacy.  Just when Cobb is starting to get mad, he sees an angry Jack Sylvane getting hauled off to solitary.  And thanks to last week, we know why!  I don’t think the chatty inmate is anyone we’ve seen before, but Alcatraz is firmly committed to hiring white guys with dark hair as often as possible, so it’s a little confusing at times.

In the present, Lucy asks Sylvane about Cobb.  And this is where the show really won me over – it’s not just a Villain of the Week thing if they stick around for the next week!  That makes me happy.  Also, I sort of think Sylvane will be the Christian Shephard of this show.  Lucy asks Sylvane where they’ve been and how they got there, he says he doesn’t know, and that one moment he was in his cell and the next he wasn’t.  Note that he doesn’t actually say that he was suddenly in the future (our present) – he was in the cell and then he wasn’t.  They didn’t go straight from 1963 to 2012, I’ll tell you that.  She also asks about the key he stole from Flynn.  He says he doesn’t know.

In the interest of brevity, I’m not going to recap every step of each investigation – some of this is CSI type stuff that doesn’t involve weirdness or time travel.  If I break down every conversation about where somebody bought a gun, we’ll be here all day.  And frankly, I’d rather be writing about the fact that there is apparently a monster that lives in a room underAlcatraz.  (We’ll get there in a couple of episodes.)  I hope everybody’s cool with that. 

Lucy, on Hauser’s order, goes with Madsen and Hurley to the store where Cobb got his gun.  The clerk has apparently run afoul of Madsen before.  He recognizes Cobb’s picture because he doesn’t sell a lot of vintage sniper rifles.  In the security footage, they see he has a hotel room key with one of those big tags, which gives them a clue as to where he’s staying.  Someplace pretty fleabag if they still use an old-school key like that!  And then we see Cobb in his fleabag room, hoisting his rifle.  Nothing creepy about a guy sitting in a dark room playing with a gun, no sir!

Back in 1960, the Warden eats steak in the mess hall – he’s got a private table set up at night where he eats and listens to records.  He’s meeting with Cobb, who wrote him a letter asking for a private cell, permission to eat alone, and transfer to a cell block where chatter is kept to a minimum.  The Warden denies his request, and Cobb panics.

In the present, they check the hotel.  Hurley asks Lucy why she’s taking all of this in stride – this will be important later.  They manage to find what they think is Cobb’s room, but it’s empty.  He’s across the street in a different hotel.  Lucy opens the curtains, and sees a crosshairs and “I Can See You” painted on the window.  And then Cobb shoots her right in the chest!  Hauser arrives just as she’s being loaded into the ambulance, clearly stunned. 

In the hospital, Lucy’s alive but in a coma.  After a quick visit, Hauser heads to his secret prison to ask Sylvane if Lucy was “a target”.  Sylvane doesn’t know, which is kind of his answer for everything.  So Emerson offers to let Dr. Beauregard jog his memory.  It’s pretty clear that Hauser knows a lot more than we’ve seen – otherwise, why would he ask a guy who’s in prison if a different timelost prisoner with no special ties to him had specifically targeted somebody?  He’s keeping secrets from us!  Seems like somebody wants to be Benry!

Madsen and Hurley go through Cobb’s victims, and determine that though they seem random, there’s always a 15- or 16- year-old girl in the mix.  They find a letter that was never delivered to Cobb among the Alcatraz mailbags – a letter from the sister, Eloise, that he never knew.  We learn that Cobb spent years trying to find his real mother.  Once he found her, she slammed the door in his face.  He’s acting out in jealousy – his mother raised one child, a daughter.  She accepted one and rejected the other.  And thus was a psychosis born! 

Flashback!  Cobb attends to his morning hygiene in his cell and then sits quietly, refusing to stand up for morning count.  A guard roughs him up for disobedience, and Cobb is thrown into solitary, which is exactly what he wanted.

In the present, Madsen goes through Cobb’s cell and personal effects and realizes he made a scope out of a magazine and an eyeglass lens.  He just sat in his cell, staring out the window through his scope.  And then we see Cobb, who’s set up at the Kelvin Fish Cannery (the name again!) with his rifle.  He recites his mantra and then starts shooting crows out of the sky.  Two crows down, he turns his attention to people, shooting three dead.

Flashback!  The Warden visits Cobb and compliments him on his skill in getting tossed into solitary without hurting anybody.  Man, this guy is a total creep.  But to prove Cobb didn’t beat the system, the Warden moves the chatty inmate into the cell with him.  I love that he is talking the moment he enters the scene and never stops.  He’s like that cartoon mouse!  (The one who talks a lot, if that wasn’t clear.)

Our heroes reason that Cobb would choose a building that he could see from his cell.  Once they isolate the ones that existed in 1963, there are only two, across the street from one another, that are tall enough to make a good vantage point for his next shooting.  Hauser and Madsen split up. 

Madsen’s the one who finds him as he’s setting up his shot.  She spooks him and he fires a shot at her before turning his attention back to the crowd.  Man, he’s obsessed here.  Hauser arrives and circles around while Madsen tries to track him down.  Hey, Madsen mentions that Eloise lived at “47 Haley Street” – the same as the number of slats in the picket fence in his mantra!  Nothing she does takes his attention away from his rifle scope until Hauser spooks him – Madsen tackles him and the case is closed.  Well, sort of.  Hauser shoots him in the right hand to make sure he’ll never use the rifle again.  Madsen is appropriately horrified.

Back in the hospital, Hurley doesn’t think he’s really contributing to the team – he’s freaked out.  Madsen talks him down, but the poor guy is pretty torn up.  The man’s not cut out to see dead bodies. 

Hauser brings Cobb to the secret prison and as he passes Sylvane, the two inmates share a look.  One final flashback to the prison hospital – the Warden can’t figure out what’s wrong with Cobb and why he keeps getting himself sent to solitary.  He’s brought in a specialist – Lucy!  She’s a 63!  A couple of thoughts and questions about that – she uses a different last name in the flashback, which makes sense.  Does Hauser know that she’s a 63?  I would assume he does, but we don’t know at this point.  And clearly, she’s not part of the official count, which is limited to guards and inmates – I think they would have noticed the picture of somebody they know on that wall, right?  And while Sylvane seemed to be acting under a specific set of orders, Cobb was just shooting random people.  Unless Lucy actually was the target.  But how would he know that she’d be out in the field?  There’s a lot to think about here.

Another recap in a couple of days, which should mess with our heads a bit more!

Related posts: