The best show currently on TV is back with a vengeance, and, for the next six weeks, you should be aware that one time you need not expect to see any new posts from me is from 8:00 p.m. to after 10:00 p.m. on Monday night. This is because Prison Break is now followed by a new serial adventure/mystery/drama called "Vanished". More on that at some later date.
When last we left Prison Break, at the end of season one, the motley crew of assorted felons had finally successfully broken out of Fox River Pentientiary, though one was captured and another was killed in the course of the escape. Still, eight are on the run.
1. Michael Scoffield- A structural engineer who, unknown to the authorities, had as an employee of an architectural firm designed the prison, and had on his body a tatoo that was a symbolic rendition of the prisons designs. He had arranged his own incarceration by "attempting" to rob a bank, in order to free his wrongfully convicted brother, on death row and due to be executed for the murder of Terrance Steadman, brother of the sittting Vice-President (now President due to her predecessors unfortunate "heart attack").
2. Lincoln Burrows - Michaels half-brother (the relationship was also initially unknown to the prison authorities) who was set up in an as yet to be unraveled conspiricy to take the blame for Steadmans murder. Come to find out, Steadman is actually still alive, and imprisoned in a mansion in Wyoming, where he was found by Veronica Donovan, Lincolns lawyer and ex-girlfriend, who has been working feverishly on the outside to prove his innocence.
3. Fernando Sucre'-Scoffields celmate through all of last season, a Puerto Rican madly in love with a woman who was, unknown to him, also the object of the affections of his own backstabbing cousin, who set him up to be caught in the middle of an armed robbery. Sucre' during last season had a falling out with Scoffield and temporarily had himself resassigned to another cell, but the rupture was healed over Michaels attempts to gauge his trustworthiness.
4. "Haywire" Potashik-Was for a brief period Scoffields cellmate, which made things very difficult. He was, as his nickname implies, crazy, and to make matters worse, due to a lesion on his brain, never sleeps. Also somewhat of a genius, he quicly figured out in limited detail the symbolic significance of Michaels tatoos. Michaed feined an assault by Haywire, whereupon the crazed con, imprisoned for sixty years for the second degree murder of his own parents, was sent to the psych area of the prison. Later, Michael prevailed upon Haywire to help him recall the part of the tatoo that had been inadverdently burned off. By this time, Haywire figured out the entirety of the tatoos meaning, and as the escape route went part of the way through the psych ward, managed to muscle in on the escape at the last minute. After the escape, the others managed to ditch him, whereupon he stole a bicycle and helmet from a young girl, and was last seen in the woods, riding down the road doing the classic "look ma no hands" maneuver.
5. John Abruzzi-The don of a Chicago area Mafia family and uneasy ally of Scoffields, whom the latter approached for aid by dangling the bait of Fibbonacci, the informer who had caused Abruzzi's life without parole sentence for murder and conspiracy and other related charges. Veronica Donovan, it turned out, had been Fibbonacis attorney, and Michael knew where he had been relocated in the federal witness protection program. In an unexpected plot development, Abruzzi had corrupted Veronica's partner on the outside, intending to kidnap Donovan and so force Scoffield to reveal the whereabouts of the informant. But Nick Savrin betrayed Abruzzis thugs at the end, which cost him his life, unknown to Veronica, as she made her way to Montana in search of Steadman.
6. Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell-In prison for life without parole for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of six teenage victims, the white supremacist gang leader and homosexually inclined predator had nothing to lose when, upon learning in the course of a riot which he had instigated of the tunnel in Scoffields cell, he blackmailed his way into the plot to escape. And, when he was warned by Abruzzi to back out or lose his life, he responded by slicing Abruzis throat. Abruzzi, temproarily overcome with a religous conviction due to the accidental murder of T-Bags cousin and his young son by an associate on the outside, temporarily let his guard down, but survived the incident. He returned to the prison some weeks later, itching for revenge. He got it at the end when, T-Bag having handcuffed himself to Scoffield during the course of their escape in order to protect himself from Abruzzis wrath, Abruzzi responded by cutting off Bagwells hand with an axe he found in a barn that had become a temporary hideout. Bagwell was then left on his own in the barn, and was last seen trudging through the woods on his own.
7. "Tweener"- "That Vanilla Ice Kid" as he was referred to by the one con caught in the escape when it was demanded that he reveal the name of his confederates, he as a thief had the extraordinary bad luck of stealing a series of baseball cards, one of which was very old and very valuable. Thus, the thief and pickpocket received a prison sentence for grand larceny, and was immediately the object of sexual harrassment by T-Bag. Michael warned T-Bag to leave him alone, wherupon the violent con relented. Tweener, however, was impressed upon by Brad Bellick, the corrupt Chief Prison Gurard,ever suspicous of Scoffield, to inform on the PI work crew. This lead to Bellicks temporary incapacitation and the death of one of the cons, Charles Westmorland (in reality, it turns out, famed skyjacker D. B. Cooper). Scoffield came to realize Tweeners betrayal, and after they escaped, told him he was on his own. When last seen, Tweener had hidden in a horse trailer stopped at a roadside construction crew, and soon was headed to St. Louis.
8. Benjamin "C-Note" Franklin-Having been discharged from the army while in Iraq, ostensibly for smuggling, in reality it was due to his reporting of an incident of torture of an Iraqi prisoner. On the outside, finding life difficult, he found work as a transporter of stolen merchandise, for which he received a prison sentence, though telling his wife and daughter he had been recalled to duty in Iraq. He was the go to man among the black cons at the prison, and Scoffield sought and received his aid in securing the drugs he needed to make him seem diabetic, thus gaining him regular lengthy acess to the prison infirmary, a key to the escape. C-Note, however, was suspicous, and when he determined that the PI crew was tunelling under the guard shack Westmoreland had sabotaged for that purpose, he demanded to be let in on the escape.
Tonights season premier took up where the last seasons finale ended, with the five cons running through the woods with Bellick and his guards in hot pursuit. However, a train afforded some cover, as they managed to barely make it to the other side of the tracks, thus holding up the pursuit.
It later becamse obvious that Michael and Lincoln would have a problem with the other cons. More than one of them had heard of Westmorelands dying words to Michael when he extracted a promise from Michael to visit his dauhter, hospitalized and dying of cancer. Westmoreland revealed that he had five million dollars stashed under a silo in Utah. C-Note, one of the cons who had heard this (Tweener and T-Bag were the others) reminded him in front of both Abruzzi and Sucre'. It was obvious they would be stuck with them for awhile.
Michael then revealed to Lincoln that the tatoos contained more than just the prison designs. They contained a map to various outside areas pivotal to their eventual escape to South America. One such plan involved a grave which contained money, and clothing, the last of which would be now availed of by all five of the cons.
They barely escaped from their newest nemesis, an FBI agent called in to head up the search for the escaped convicts, whom he called in a press conference the "eight most wanted men in America". He was on to the tatoos, and knew that the tatoos, which he would soon reproduce from the tatoo artist who had in painstaking detail applied Micaels design, were the key to not only the prison escape, but to their future plans.
Bellick as well is hot on their trail, and is doggedly detrmined to track them down.
As for T-Bag, he soon stumbled upon a camp site, which contained the one thing he was looking for-a cooler with ice, into which he put his severed hand, which he carried with him from the minute he left the barn on his own. He then secured the services of a veterinarian, whom he threatened in the harshest trms with the murder of his wife if he would not-without anesthesia-reattach the hand.
The other cons meanwhile had availed themselves of a stolen vehicle. While still in the woods, they were approached and questioned by a young girl, whom Abruzzi promptly grabbed up and held at gunpoint when her father appearred and threatened them with a shotgun. Though the others decried this tactic-after the fact, of course-they all still went uneasily down the road in the stolen vehicle.
But the real shocker came at the end, when Veronica Donovan, having confronted the still very much alive Terrance Steadman, found out that he was as much a victim of the conspiracy as Lincoln, and was adverse to crossing his sisters murderous conspiratorial designs on government power. He pulled a gun on her when she used her cell phone to call the police, but she refused to be moved from her course of action. After she called the police, and reported that Terrance Steadman was still alive and was a part of the plot to frame Lincoln Burrows for his own murder, along with the now President of The United States, she then called Lincoln Burrows, who now had a cellphone, which I assume was likewise extractd from the false grave.
When she found out the escape plot had been sucessful, she urged Lincoln to tun himself in. She now had proof that Steadman was still alive, that the President was in on the conspriacy to frame him, and the police were on their way, in fact, they had just puled up to the house, then entered the house. The last thing Lincoln heard was the cops orders to Steadman to back away from her, which he did. He then pointed the gun at Veronica, whose last words were "oh no" before a hail of bullets went crashing into her forehead and chest.
The entire town in which Steadman now lived, imprisoned in a house the doors of which can only be opened from the outside, and which has windows which are bullet proof and two inches thick, is on federal land, and policed by federal agents. As scenes of the dead and strangely smiling Veronica Donovan transformed into the federal agents carrying out what was evidently her hacked up body in garbage bags and placed in the trunk of a car, the scene changed to a horribly distraught Lincoln Burrows, being comforted by his borther Michael.
Televisions best adrenaline rush is on for another season, reportedly it's last. It was originally conceived as an eight part miniseries, then ran for the entirety of the season, and then was renewed for a second season. If tonights episode is a portent of things tocome, might we prevail on the executives of Fox to renew it yet again? Probably not. Some things just cry out for an eventual ending, and it's hard to see how many extensions of this theme can be rasonably justified. But, while it lasts, damn is it good.
As good as it is,though, last season required quite a bit of suspension of belief, and this season can be assurred of the same. The bit with T-Bag and his hand has already been decried by critics who had reviewed the season premier before hand (no pun intended) one pointing out that such an operation would not only require anesthesia, but micro-surgery aimed at enabling the healing of damaged nerves. But as T-Bag told the vet when informed that nobody could withstand such an operation, "I ain't nobody".
Still, for the coming season, our eight cons (no sign tonight of Tweener or Haywire) will find out the hard way, escape from prison is not exactly freedom. It's just not quite as claustrophobic.
