As we mentioned yesterday, J.J. Abrams was at the Television Critics Association‘s winter press tour on Sunday to promote his new baby Alcatraz. He had some really interesting things to say about it, which we’ll share with you after you check out these really interesting interview featurettes:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp2vFhWk3eU&hd=1[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJBuTzzV1_Y&hd=1[/youtube]

Bless him, he really does take pains to make sure that people don’t think they’ll get – sorry – lost if they miss a week. Which is funny considering that seemingly everyone in attendance at Sunday’s Alcatraz panel tweeted his quote that he LOVED serialized shows. But hopefully it will be wonderful and everyone will want to watch every moment of it when it premieres and for every week thereafter. Speaking of it being wonderful…

According to Deadline, he also defended the decision to tweak the early episodes and to change showrunners, as we reported to you back in November. Elizabeth Sarnoff, author of the final pilot script and showrunner until November, was said by Abrams to have left when the decision was made to go in a different creative direction with the earlier episodes. He said that by having the show premiere in midseason, they had time to make the changes instead of later saying ““It would have been cool if we had, [but] let’s suck it up and move on.”

Okay, we’re ready! BRING IT ON!

Alcatraz, starring Sam Neill, Sarah Jones, and Jorge Garcia, airs its two-hour premiere on Monday, January 16 at 8/7c on Fox.