But the texture of it is a fine, fine thing indeed. Much of the story in the first episode is told not with what’s directly going on with Kiefer and his magical son, but with other, smaller stories that their work has an effect on. That material is fine, each creating it’s own sense of person and place.

The series does tie into the events of September 11th, with Kiefer’s character’s wife having died in the World Trade Center. Something is telling me that this may be the last series to really take that path… I could be wrong, but it feels like enough series have gone after the direct fallout of the attacks. The series is also cryptic; it opens with some unanswered questions, and yes it answers some even in the very first episode, but it also hits us over the head with there being Things We Don’t Know – not only with the magical son, but with the dad as well. Will it last long enough to play out to anything? Or will it just end up being a convoluted mystery series that fails to maintain interest? Dunno. But I’ll watch at least a couple more of this.

Well… yes. Because in chess, the king is not strong; in fact, it’s your weakness.

So both of them set up their big story, but work very hard in their first hours to make it clear that A Story Will Be Told Each Episode. In the case of Alcatraz, the basic pitch is that 300 prisoners who mysteriously disappeared from the famed prison 50 years ago are reappearing, unaged, one at a time, and committing crimes. As such, each episode  is about how the investigative team goes after one bad guy, basic cop drama, and then running in the background is the Big Mystery of What’s Going On.  The setup is pretty goofy even just beyond the inherent science fiction of it, with the team being pulled together in some unlikely ways (hey, cop, we’re trying to get you on the team by tricking you into being interested. And who do you want for your sidekick? A graphic novelist? Of course!) I’m unsure of how much I can invest in the “find the killer” plots – I’m growing weary of serial killer fiction – but there are a couple characters that I like, most particularly Jorge Garcia. I may watch more.

The Firm is a sequel to the Grisham novel and the movie based thereon, which means that the lead is about to get himself involved with another complexly corrupt law firm. I mean, it’s Jack Bauer syndrome, life repeating itself in intense and exciting ways, showing that one has learned from his mistakes and, in the words of Peter Cook, “can repeat them exactly”. Within this framework, they have the room for the legal case of the week, generic law show stuff.

The look of the work is good, but the writing is less so. The legal case in the pilot had our hero – how we are supposed to think of in that manner, not just as a protagonist – ultimately working against the interests of his client, and doing so without consulting with the client.

Not sure either is a keeper. The Firm seems less clunky, but ultimately less attractive.

This week, the show my two kids, 7 and 2, have been eager for is Speed Racer: The Next Generation. And despite the visual awkwardness of this part cheap CGI, part badly flat animated series, and working through a long-term storyline that I’m not sure pays off enough along the way (from Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmioti, who have writ some good comic books), it’s still very heartening to see them enjoy this echo of what Daddy loved.

Okay, okay, it was a pilot episode, and yes, it needed to introduce the characters. But that means establishing who they are… if you have a series, you have plenty of time to reveal why.

There was something about the pilot, with a desperate man showing up needing his father found, with travel to distant places, with the structure of his crew around him (and not just with his main business handler being a large black man – in this case, Michael Clark Duncan – although that’s certainly part of it) that made it feel like it wated to be Human Target… which is silly, considering HT‘s short run. If somehow that is their goal, it fails. This felt awkward, pointlessly self-important, and not particularly convincing or entertaining.

Well, they needn’t have worried. No one will be laughing at this. It’s seventeen kinds of awkward, none of them are funny.

You know, I do sometimes have concerns about what message a show is sending, but I will forgive much for actual humor – and “crossdressing in order to secure a job” actually has a good track record in such things as Some Like It Hot and Tootsie (although being on TV, people are more likely to call the parallel to the crossdressing-for-a-cheap-apartment Bosom Buddies). Luckily, I am not faced with any moral dilemma here.

One of the tricky things is that Nick is targetting this (and all their series) at people who have seen a lot of sitcoms… which costs them, because when they use all the standard rhythms, it’s stuff we’ve seen before. It’s not a surprised, not funny. The true sitcom buff needs something challenging, and Nick is generally not delivering.  Leave the same-old-structures to The Disney Channel, where they face an audience who has not yet figured them out.