You work with Alec Baldwin?! :)

Should I have gone with Tina Fey? Really, anyone from 30 Rock could have worked.

Why are home-schooled kids always portrayed as socially awkward weirdos in the media? Do they realize that while most kids are shooting each other with spitballs in the cafeteria, home-schooled kids are out in the real world, interacting with adults? It's not like they're kept in a bomb shelter, drinking kool-aid and dropping acid all day.

The current rating system for television is so antiquated and the networks are lightyears behind in figuring out how to make streaming profitable. For example, if you look at a show like Fringe... It's designed to appeal to a tech savvy audience. It airs on Friday nights. It's made available for streaming online, but those views do not count toward its overall ratings, so the network will probably cancel it before its time.

There are more viewers than are being counted, but because they watch it online (made available by the network and studio) those viewers aren't counted.

If the networks figured out a way to make those streams profitable, they could count those views in their overall ratings. Air the same commercials online as you do during a live broadcast and sell it all to advertisers as one package. Online commercials can't be fast-forwarded through... It can be done, but it's not being done. Instead, the networks are scratching their heads and wondering why the show isn't getting higher ratings when it airs live.

Fringe is just one example. Chuck would be another... Shows which target modern audiences who use technology for their viewing simply will not get the ratings that a show like CSI gets, because CSI targets an older audience which is used to watching shows live and oftentimes doesn't even know what a "Hulu" is. If you're going to target a demographic, you should at least know how to acknowledge them.

Meryl Streep (62)
Helen Mirren (66)
Sally Field (65)
Betty White (90)
Cloris Leachman (85)
Kathy Bates (63)
Judi Dench (77)

I'm sure there are more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

You can't really exclude comedians because they're making fun of themselves. That's their job. Betty and Cloris make age jokes now because people generally change how they behave and how they think as they get older. This is why people have an issue with Madonna. When someone in their 50's is acting like they're 20, it seems trashy. Especially when they have children. This goes for men as well as women. I constantly see people making comments about aging singers or actors who are still putting on the same schtick that they used when they were young and it's equally disturbing when it happens with men.

Agism happens. That much is true, but I don't think you know what agism actually is. To say that it's agist to expect a woman who is past the half-century mark to act her age is not agist. Unfortunately, Madonna built her career on being provocative, so it's not like she can sit on a stool and perform her songs with a guitar in her hands. She built this house of cards herself and now that it's coming down, she has nobody but herself to blame.

The article should be corrected... Joan Allen is in the Bourne movies. Joan Walsh is a liberal blogger.

I haven't seen the new season yet, but I feel sorry for the new actor. Every review will be a comparison. People will be looking for Whitfield, rather than really looking to see what Liam brings to the table himself. If he's not Whitfield enough, they won't like him. If he's not built the same way, they'll make a comment about it.

I think I will wait to see where the dust eventually settles. I don't think anyone related to the show is in an envious position as it premieres.

In the season 3 finale, Walter figured out that Peter had made the wrong decision when he destroyed the other universe (remember, Walternate was over in "our" universe because his had been destroyed by Peter). So when they sent the machine to the past, they allowed it to give Peter this glimpse of that one potential future so that instead of destroying the other universe, he would save both of them. That created the bridge that we see on the show now, and apparently wiped Peter from the timeline.

That world no longer exists. It was one of many possible futures, but it's no longer THE future. As soon as Peter planted the machine in the past, that history was altered.

I'm not sure I know which characters you're talking about, so I'm not sure how to respond to your specific comments.

As I said, Fringe isn't the same show it started out as. Around halfway through season 1, they had a big change in direction (actually a lot of those early episodes still play a big part, but the show was more focused). So it might be worth another try if you didn't like it at first.

UPDATE:

Okay, just reread your post with the proper context this time. Got it. I'm not slow, really. It just read weird the first time...

I think you're referring to Walter waiting to test his theories before telling Peter and Olivia what he though might be going on, right? He will usually say that he will have to run test and study something before he can give them an answer. But I think that's different than someone having the answer and just choosing not to share it, despite the fact that they're endangering lives in doing so.

I have to disagree with this review. To compare the writing of Alcatraz to the writing on Fringe is like comparing the writing of Gilligan's Island to the writing of Lost. It was sloppy and unpolished... We have a scientist woman who, while on the hunt for a sniper, decides to stand in front of a target with a look of bewilderment on her face. We have two character splitting up to search two different roofs for a suspect, and upon finding his empty, we have one character magically appearing on the second roof shortly after the other agent arrives (y'know... the one who has been climbing those stairs ever since they split up). We have a sniper who doesn't act like a sniper. An OCD character who gets conveniently sloppy, just long enough to leave evidence behind. We have the lead female finding a pattern amongst victims which nobody (including the resident Alcatraz genius) has put together in the last 50 years, despite the fact that it's an incredibly obvious pattern.

Fringe doesn't dumb characters down in order to make other characters seem smart. They don't cut corners. They aren't sloppy. Whereas on Alcatraz, I have no idea why this woman would decide to work for a group of people that is keeping vital information from her, which ties her hands behind her back while at the same time puts her life in danger. She'd be better off going rogue.

The mystery isn't driven by wonder or complexity. It's driven by a guy who just decides that he doesn't want to tell us, or the other characters what is going on. It's a false mystery. Like if Jack had the secrets of the island on "Lost" that entire time, but simply chose not to tell anyone for the sake of keeping the show going for a little bit longer.

As far as casting goes, Anna Torv convinces me that Olivia Dunham is a tough, intelligent, troubled woman. She's complex, and they don't need to pretend that she's a superhero just to make her seem badass. The lead female on Alcatraz suffers from the same problem that shows like Chase had... I don't buy the tiny girl being the toughest person in the room. She's literally ALL of the muscle of this operation. It may sound sexist, but c'mon!

This show is not a replacement for Fringe. It's got a rather limited scope. Granted, Fringe wasn't exactly Fringe when it first started, but to call Alcatraz a solid replacement right out of the gate is absurd. One of them is a show that you have to pay attention to (if you want to call that "confusing", I guess that's up to you) and the other is cops and robbers.

Just because they have JJ Abrams' name in the credits doesn't mean that he is running these shows. They are run by completely different people and shouldn't be considered interchangeable just because they have the Bad Robot logo on them.