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Herman and Pinky Ames were known for flashy heists back in the day. They spent much of their stint on Alcatraz trying to track down a rumored stash of Civil War gold. This involved an elaborate scheme to steal and copy the Warden's giant keys, since the brothers believed said keys would unlock the treasure vault. Alas, young Ray Archer caught onto their plan and the brothers were apprehended in mid-attempt. Not that they would have succeeded anyway, seeing as how the giant keys weren't for the vault at all.
The brothers reappear in 2012 to resume their search. Because the A-Team is crap for security and planning, the brothers easily kill one of the Sub-Hub engineers and then abduct Doc when they find out he's an Alcatraz expert. Doc is mostly terrified, but also a little bit intrigued, because he hopes to finally figure out how the brothers managed to stage their original attempt. As it turns out, they had a prison guard named Donovan on their side. Donovan has also reappeared in the present to pose as a park ranger and once again help the brothers. Rebecca catches on pretty quickly and sets out to rescue Doc. She and Hauser take down the brothers, but Donovan makes it all the way to the vault. He blasts it open with dynamite and finds... absolutely nothing.
The legend of the treasure seems to be nothing more than that until a flashback shows Warden James canoodling with the gold in a Scrooge-McDuck-like fervor. Also, Hauser seems to think that the good Warden might be the one controlling the returned inmates. More scenes with Jonny Coyne would be the real treasure. Stay tuned for the full weecap.
Check out the recap for the episode of Alcatraz.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A park ranger rushes a group of sightseers through a tour of Alcatraz. A big storm is coming and he jokes that he wouldn't want them to have to spend the night there. A big bald guy with a small duffel bag straggles behind the group and heads for one of the cells. As the ranger demonstrates how to slam the cell doors shut, the straggler has a flashback to his days as a prisoner.
In the mess hall, he takes a seat to two other inmates. They're arguing about baseball or maybe cartoon animals, tossing around names like "Babe" and "Thumper." The younger of the two debaters is a fan of the latter. "Ain't that right, Pinky?" he asks the bald newcomer. Pinky says nothing. "See, my brother concurs." They tell the other inmate to get lost, but make him leave his spoon behind. The inmate panics. "Herman," he pleads with the non-Pinky brother, "you know they count the silver." They make it clear they'll put him in the infirmary if he doesn't do as he's told, so he relents. As he gets up to leave, he snits, "No one believes you're twins!" Herman bristles. "Fraternal, you moron!" It's true they don't look much alike. Herman is much smaller and of average hairiness. Once they're alone, they exposit about their plans. Pinky is wary of some Donovan character who's planning something with them. Herman doesn't trust him much, either, but he figures the rewards are worth the risk. Herman talks about how rich they'll be once they walk out of there. Young Ray Archer walks by, looking suspicious.
Present day in the Hub. The storm rages outside. Doc stares at computer screens that flicker with every crack of lightning. Who set up the crappy tech in this place? When Rebecca joins him, he says he's waiting for "Dandruff Guy." He has nicknames for all the Sub-Hub guys that Hauser won't let them interact with. What could Hauser possibly gain by not letting his own teams work together? Also, what happened to Rebecca realizing that Hauser needs her more than she needs him? Girl needs to start using her leverage. Finally, one of the security cameras picks up Dandruff Guy nosing around the main cell block. Doc says he conducts experiments up there. Doc decides to check it out for himself before Hauser shows up. The screens flicker and conveniently switch to another camera just before Pinky beats Dandruff Guy to death with some massive bolt cutters. Alas, poor Dandruff Guy; I only knew of his scalp condition.
Doc shows up in time to see someone dragging Dandruff Guy's body into a cell. A flash of lightning illuminates the perpetrator. "Pinky Ames," Doc gasps. He turns to run, but comes face to face with Herman. Alcatraz!
While Hauser goes through with his annoying introduction can I take a moment to mention how dumb it is for these people not to have any security? They know that some of these super-deadly criminals show up on the island. The place should be crawling with SEAL-trained guards. Or maybe just actual seals. Those things are cute, but they can be pretty tough when protecting their territory.
You know what else they could use? Emergency generators. With the storm, the place has been plunged into near-total darkness. Anyway, Rebecca calls Doc after he's been gone for a while and gets his voicemail. About that time, the monitor has cycled back around to the camera in the main cell block. Rebecca sees Dandruff Guy's abandoned equipment and no sign of Doc.
He's currently being interrogated by the Ames brothers at gunpoint. They're suspicious because he knows who they are, so he explains he's an expert on Alcatraz. He knows about their old escape attempt, but wonders how they planned to get off the island. He says he even studied their escape map, but it didn't do him much good because of all the changes that have been made since. This buys Doc some time, since they now need his help getting down into the tunnels. Doc realizes they wanted more than escape back then. He gets excited. "The gold! It's not a myth? You guys know where it is, don't you?" The dialogue... it is like bolt cutters to the head!
Flashback. Warden James and Deputy Tiller walk into a makeshift chapel, arguing about whether or not the prisoners can be saved. Tiller thinks it's a waste of time and that the prisoners only attend services to get out of their cells for an hour. James turns to Pinky, who's duded up like an enormous choirboy. Services aren't actually scheduled for that day, so why is he dressed like that? Pinky confirms to James that he's not there for the "scenery," but admits to being more spiritual than religious. The difference? "Spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward." He sounds disdainful, but he's the one looking for a big stash of gold. Warden James eyes him for a while, then strips off his jacket to get down to work on his homily. Pinky sneaks the warden's big honking keys out of his jacket and then asks an Officer Donovan for a bathroom break. Hey, it's Frank Whaley! That guy used to be everywhere. Donovan and Pinky head not for the bathroom, but the kitchen. Donovan hands Pinky a small paper bag. "Watch the door," Pinky tells him. He takes two bars of soap from the bag and presses the keys into them.
Present. Rebecca goes up to the main cell block. "Doc," she whispers. "What am I whispering for?" Heh. She calls out, louder this time. She sees blood on the floor and whips out her gun. She finds Dandruff Guy. He's shedding flakes in heaven now.
Hauser walks into the Hub and finds it abandoned. He checks the security video and sees what's been going on. He's like, "Damn it, now I'm going to need to find another Dandruff Guy!" Seriously, he seems not at all upset to see the guy get bludgeoned.
The Ames brothers stash Doc in the Hole in case they need him later. Doc isn't crazy about the idea, but he's even more eager to learn the identity of their accomplice. Instead of answering him, they have a flashback. They've pulled kitchen duty and use the facilities to make lost-wax copies of the keys. The spoon they got from their fellow inmate earlier has been ground to shavings and melted. All this happens while Officer Donovan stands guard. When it's time for the shift change, Herman isn't finished with the keys. To buy his brother a little more time, Pinky puts an inmate's hand through a saw while the poor guy's slicing up some steaks. Blood! Screaming! Distraction! But it's not enough to keep Officer Archer from noticing the stray bits of metal the brothers left behind. He looks more suspicious than ever.
Present. Rebecca prowls around the dark prison, calling for Doc. A man walks up behind her and she knocks him to the floor. He's wearing a park ranger's uniform. He begs for his life and says he was hiding from these two guys. "What's your name?" she asks. "Donovan," he says. "Ranger Donovan." He says he's new to the job. He lies and says the two guys were headed for the lighthouse.
The two guys are wandering around, looking for Donovan. Herman wants to cut Donovan out of their plans. Pinky grabs his brother by the back of the neck. "After everything that's happened to us, being here in 2012, you think it's just coincidence we ran into him on the tour last month?" Herman shrugs out of his brother's grasp. "He's here for the same reasons we are," he says. "That's not coincidence or karma -- that's greed, pally!" Herman totally sounds like Squiggy.
Flashback. Time for church. Warden James opens the homily thusly: "Too often, the power of scripture can be overdressed with oratory." Being quite the orator himself, he would know. He goes on about redemption and the like, and is just about to launch into a discussion of Paul's letter to the Galatians when Herman starts mouthing off to Warden James. It's all a part of his plot to get into enough trouble that Donovan has to drag him out of services. Pinky goes along for the ride after trying to stick up for his brother. Ray Archer watches the whole thing and then goes to Warden James and Tiller with his suspicions. The three of them go to the hole, where they expect to find an Ames but find Donovan instead. His face is bloody and swollen. "Lock it down!" Tiller shouts. "Two prisoners loose!" Alarms sound. Donovan says he heard the brothers talking about escape before they beat him up. Warden James says he knows where the brothers are headed. "Or at least where they think they're headed."
Present. Doc is freaking out. He calls Rebecca first, gets her voicemail. he calls Chet to see if he can find out if the cells were retrofitted with inside locks, in case a tourist ever got locked inside. Meanwhile, Rebecca and Donovan are still wandering around. She tells him to get to the ranger station, fearing he'll get himself hurt. "I can handle myself, honey," he says. "I didn't show up at sally port yesterday." At the utterance of those old-fashioned words, she points her gun at him and orders him to his knees. The brothers burst onto the scene, guns blazing. Rebecca shoots back and takes cover. Herman takes a bullet in the neck and starts spitting up copious amounts of blood. Donovan tackles Rebecca and chokes her like she's Bart Simpson. She punches Donovan in the nuts. He lets go of her to tend to his precious nads. Herman burbles his last. Pinky flies into a rage and charges at Rebecca. Hauser shows up and joins the fray. A gunfight ensues. Hauser is shot in the side. He and Rebecca make a run for it.
Pinky chases them down a hall, shooting at them all the while. Somehow, he misses every shot. Rebecca and Hauser escape through a security door, leaving Pinky to wail in frustration. Donovan tries to calm him down, but Pinky is intent on revenge. He sets his sights on Doc.
Back in the Hub, Rebecca is trying to make Hauser get some medical attention for his wound. He's all, "I'm fine! The bullet went right through!" Rebecca's ready to get back into the fight, but Hauser stops her. "They have Doc!" she says, except it totally sounds like "duck" the way she says it. Hauser warns her that they'll surely kill Doc if she goes after them, guns blazing. Plus they still have, like, 15 minutes of episode to kill. Hauser suggests they figure out who the men are and then they'll know how to go after them.
Chet helps Doc escape from his cell just in time to run into Pinky and Donovan. Pinky smashes Doc's face into the floor. Donovan makes him stop so they can use Doc as a hostage.
Meanwhile, Rebecca and Hauser go to the storage room and dig out the brothers' boxes. She sees from their files that they pulled off "high risk, high reward bank jobs," including a Federal Reserve building. Hauser takes out a little med kit and seals up his bullet wound with some kind of powder that sizzles like Pop Rocks. Hauser picks up on the Federal Reserve thing and says the brothers are looking for gold. Rebecca remembers reading about a stash of Civil War gold in Doc's books, but thought it was an urban legend. How does any of this help them? Pinky issues an ultimatum via one of the security cameras. He says he wants "blondie" or he'll start cutting off pieces of her friend. Rebecca thinks she can separate Donovan from Pinky, because Donovan doesn't want her dead. Except for that time he tried to kill her ten minutes ago.
Flashback. The brothers make their way to a heavy door in one of the island's tunnels. It's not the door that leads to that "subterranean visitant." The brothers realize that the keys they have are all wrong for these locks. They also realize they're not alone: Warden James, Tiller and Ray Archer have come up in the tunnel behind them. The brothers find themselves staring down three gun barrels. James commends them on the complexity of their plans. "You dipped your pens into the inkwell of daring and creativity! Only one problem--you stole the wrong keys." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the unimpressive-looking keys they should have stolen. Tiller looks a little confused himself as he takes the brothers back to their cells. "Congratulations, officer," James says to Archer. "You just stopped one of Alcatraz's most daring escape attempts!" Ray scoffs. "Sir, it's obvious they were only interested in getting behind that door." How were they planning to get the gold off the island? Warden James continues to insist that their goal was escape. Ray finally gives in. Warden James invites him to dinner that night. Don't order the steak!
Later. Ray visits his brother Tommy in the infirmary. Tommy looks pretty weak. "I'm in," Ray says. "Warden James invited me to his residence." Ray promises to find out what they're doing to Tommy.
Oh, hey -- Doc is still in peril. Somehow managed to forget that. Rebecca offers the treasure hunters a deal: "We know where the gold is. My partner will open the dungeon for you, but only if you let him go." Pinky would rather fight, so he has it out with Rebecca. She manages to get away. Donovan warns Pinky against going after her. "It's what she wants," he says. Pinky's too hell-bent on revenge to care. He chases after Rebecca. She lost her gun at some point during the fight, so she lures Pinky into a cell block and then drops some big, metallic thing on his head from the walkway above. Cartoon style, baby.
Doc leads Donovan to the Hub. Why wasn't Hauser there, waiting to shoot and/or apprehend him? Doc points out a hallway that he says leads to the dungeon. Donovan knocks him out. Rebecca comes running and sees his prone form. "Oh, my God, Duck!" Doc assures her he's (mostly) all right and sends her after Donovan.
Donovan gets to the vault doors. He places explosives around the locks. Hauser sneaks up behind him. "That'll be enough of that," he says, gun at the ready and head titled at an annoying Horatio Caine angle. Turns out, Hauser was curious to see where Donovan was going. Asshole risked Doc's life to satisfy a curiosity. Asshole. Donovan blasts open the door. The explosion throws both him and Hauser to the ground. Hope you enjoy the raging tinnitus. Donovan gets back up, but finds the vault empty. Rebecca catches up to him. "Drop it," she says when he points his gun at her. He doesn't comply. "I have had a really bad night," Rebecca says, "so I'm not gonna tell you again. Drop it!" One, you did just tell him again. Two, you had a pretty good night. You know who had a "really bad" night? Dandruff Guy. Donovan, defeated, drops the gun.
Woodsy Prison. Hauser interrogates Donovan, who's been strapped into something that looks like a nightmare dentist's chair. Hauser starts off with a Hmong fable about greed, and then gets to the matter at hand. "I knew about the keys," he says. "What I didn't know is that they belonged to the warden." Dr. Beauregard fastens some sort of pronged device to Donovan's neck. Hauser wants to know about Tommy Madsen, Ray Archer and Warden James. "Has he come back?" he asks. "Is he the one that's willing to kill for these keys?" Donovan just looks petrified and cries a little bit.
Flashback. Warden James goes back to the vault, this time alone. He pulls back a tarp, revealing a stack of gold bars, each the size of a hippo's foreleg. "Hello, ladies," he coos at them. He picks up one of these enormous bars and gives it a lusty, slightly insane smile. It looks like he might need some... "alone time"... with those things. Let's give it to him, shall we?
Tippi Blevins disappeared from prison 50 years ago and then mysteriously reappeared to write about this show. Email her at b_tippi@yahoo.com, or find her on Twitter.
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