Alcatraz continues its first season with tonight’s ninth episode ‘The Ames Brothers,’as Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) and Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) race against time to find two former Alcatraz inmates looking to infiltrate the prison and recover a legendary cache of gold.
If you didn’t get a chance to check it out for yourself, read on for our Alcatraz recap of “The Ames Brothers’!
When a modern Alcatraz tour gets cut short by an approaching thunderstorm, one man stays behind transfixed, that of Pinky Ames. He flashes back to his time in Alcatraz where he and his brother Herman regularly bullied inmates, and the two corroborate their upcoming plans for a heist that will make them rich.
The present storm also has the effect of playing hell with all the tech used by Doc, as he and Sarah observe one of Hauser’s mysterious eggheads performing some scientific exam up top. Suddenly the technician gets brutally beaten down by Pinky, and when Doc stumbles upon the scene, Herman shows up behind him. They press Doc for how he knows so much about Alcatraz, and realize he might be useful in updating the maps of Alcatraz they need for their search for a legendary gold. Back in 1960, Pinky uses his position in the Chapel to slip some keys out of Warden James coat, and an Officer Donovan aids pinky in making soap bar impressions of the keys while everyone else looks on.
Back in 2012, Rebecca finds the corps of the technician from earlier, while Hauser arrives and catches up on the situation via security recordings. The Ames brothers stash Doc in the hole, and flash back to 1960 where they used their chemistry skills to make a copy of Warden James’keys from the mold, though a young Ray Archer finds something suspicious about the whole scenario. Back in the present Rebecca stumbles upon Officer Donovan claiming to be one of the modern-day Alcatraz rangers, and the pair set off to find the Ames brothers.
The Ames brothers note Donovan’s absence and ponder cutting him out of their plan, as we flash back to the past Herman and Pinky getting themselves kicked out of church and put in the hole by Donovan. Archer brings the suspicious nature of the situation to the Warden, and they find that the boys ‘overpowered’Donovan and stashed him in the hole. Back in the present Rebecca quickly sees through Donovan’s deception and turns her gun on the former Alcatraz guard. The brothers appear guns blazing, and in the ensuing firefight Rebecca shoots Herman through the neck, killing him, while she manages to escape with Hauser.
Given a moment to catch their breath, Hauser reasons that the brothers and Donovan are looking for a stash of legendary civil war gold much as they were back in 1960, and concoct a plan to split Donovan and Pinky up to rescue Doc. Back in the1960, Herman and Pinky race to a mysterious door in the bowels of the prison, but find that their keys don’t work. Archer, Warden James and Deputy Warden Tiller arrive to catch them, noting that the keys they copied belong to another mysterious purpose, not this door. With the Ames brothers in custody, Warden James commends Archer for his intuition, but insists they report the incident as an escape attempt rather than mention the underground bunker. Archer than takes the news to Tommy Madsen, assuring him that he’ll find the truth of the experiments being performed on Tommy now that he’s in the warden’s inner circle.
Back in 2012 Rebecca arrives to save Doc, and nearly has her head taken off by Pinky. She leads Pinky away as Donovan takes Doc to open the Alcatraz command center door. Rebecca manages to get the drop on Pinky literally by dumping a steel bed frame atop the man, while Hauser catches Donovan attempting to open the mysterious underground door with explosives. He manages to blow the doors and knock out Hauser, but finds the room entirely empty, and at Rebecca’s urging, relinquishes his gun.
Hauser has Donovan taken away to ‘New Alcatraz’where he interrogates him over why everyone was so interested in Tommy Madsen, and whether the Warden had appeared in 2012 as well searching for his lost keys. Meanwhile in 1960, Warden James sneaks down to the underground bunker, opening it to find both a civil war cannon, and a large amount of gold…
Did you get your fill of time-traveling action? What did you think about the episode? Join us next week for an all-new episode recap of Alcatraz on FOX!
