Prison Break-Return To Fox River

Be advised that the following post contains definite spoilers mixed in with what amounts to my own guesswork about the upcoming next three episodes of "Prison Break", the Fox Network series that airs on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. est. Following these next three episodes, the series is due to go on hiatus until sometime next spring.

But man, do these next three episodes ever promise to be a doozy. For one thing, we get to see Michael Scoffield (Wentworth Miller) display an unusual quantity of emotion as he starts to feel the weight of all the guilt for all he has inadverdently done in order to spring his wrongly convicted brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) from Fox River Prison, where he had been due to be executed for the murder of the brother of the Vice-President, and now President Reynolds (Patricia Wettig).

Among all these misgivings is the guilt he feels for the death of David "Tweener" Apolskis (Lane Garrisson), who was gunned down in cold blood by Special Agent Alexander Mahone (William Fichtner), who it turns out all along is not only a psycopathic killer in his own right, but is actually in leaque with the company and working under the direction of Agent Kellerman (Paul Adelstein), who, in tonights episode, is going to abduct Michaels lady love, Dr Sara Tancredi (Sara Wayne Callies), and subject her to an intense amount of torture and interrogation in order to get her to reveal what she knows about the whereabouts of Scoffield.

The problems he has already caused Sara is the main reason for the guilt Scoffield feels, as he caused her to lose her job at Fox River, return to being a junkie, almost caused her to be murdered, and caused her father, former Illinois Governor Tancredi, to be murdered as well.

Then, there's Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell (Robert Knepper), the head of a vicous prison gang of white supremacists, and convicted pedophile, kidnapper, rapist, and murderer, who horned in on the prison break once he inadverdently discovered the plans. Now, Michael blames himself for this creature being out on the streets. And, as if to rub salt in the wounds, T-Bag also abscounded with the five million dollars which had been buried under a silo in Toole Utah by now dead con Charles Westmoreland (Muse Watson), in reality famed skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

Michael had counted on this money as instrumental in helping him and Lincoln, along with Lincolns son LJ (Marshall Allman), escaping to fredom in Panama. But in the course of working with fellow convict Sucre (Amaurie Nulasco) to insure T-Bag was denied a part of the cash, T-Bag turned the tables and ended up with all the money.

But not for long. He was traced by ex-Fox River Prison guards Brad Bellick (Wade WIlliams, pictured above), and Roy Geary (Matt DeCaro), to the home of Susan Hollander, T-Bags ex-girlfriend who was actually the one who had turned him in upon seeing his face on an episode of America's Most Wanted. Unfortunately for him, by the time he made it to her old home in Tribune, Kansas, where he had promised her he would not forget what her front porch steps looked like, he discovered that Susan is inarguably the most intelligent of all the characters yet portrayed on this tense, gritty drama-she had long since abscounded.

Instead, he was greeted by Bellick and Geary, who knocked him out, tied him up, and began to tortued him in order to discover the whereabouts of the five million dollars. They started out by playing a tape, at full blast, of the old pop song, "Walking On Sunshine". This would be bad enough, but this seems to have been a device meant to drown out the agonized screams from the con when the real physical torture began, consisting of ripping out the sutures from his recently reattached left hand, and then pounding it with a meat tenderizer.

When they discovered the key to the bus station locker where the money was stored, T-Bag grabbed it and swallowed it, whereupon he was later submitted to prune juice, sliders, and chewing tobacco, ultimately culminating in a case of the runs over a commode with a strainer inserted. Geary was then made by Bellick to retrieve the key.

After leaving T-Bag reattached to a radiator by his bad left hand with duct tape, Bellick then taunted T-Bag as he called 911, as T-Bag finally started begging for mercy. The two guards turned bounty hunters proceeded to the bus station, whereupon Geary knocked Bellick out with the meat tenderizer and took off with the loot.

Of course, T-Bag will escape from the house, and in all likelhook will accomplsih this by ripping off his hand. That much is easy to figure out. What is also easy to figure out is that Roy Geary will soon be written off the show, either killed by T-Bag, or by-and here comes one of the spoilers-by one of the strippers which it seems he is going to hire.

Whether by T-Bag or by the stripper, he most certainly will end up dead, and in another bit of spoiler information, Bellick will be blamed for the murder. After all, there was really no reason for the two of them to ever be working together. Geary was bitter over loosing his job at Fox River, and in a hearing after the prison escape, gave information about Bellick which caused the former chief CO to lose his job as well. Following a fight in the following episode, they decided to bury the hatchet and work together as bounty hunters in order to get the reward offerred for the escaped cons. It was only later, after they learned of the five million dollars, that they adjusted their plans.

So, it seems that Bellick will indeed be going back to Fox River, but not as a guard, where he had a reputation as a brutal abuser of the prisoner population-but as himself a prisoner. Naturally, he will not be fondly regarded by the cons he used to abuse, and in another bit of spoiler information, by the time the series resumes in the spring, it seems as though Bellick will be targeted by one of the black cons who wants him as his bitch. Bellick beats the hell out of this con, whereupon he is targeted for death.

As for T-Bag, in another bit of spoiler information, he takes up the search for the missing Susan Hollander, either by enlisting the aid of a postal worker, or by disguising himself as one. And here's another bit of spoiler information you won't read anywhere else, at least I haven't, it's just an inadverdent disovery I made by researching the cast listings.

And that is, the role has been cast for the father of Gracie Hollander, who is Susans daughter. I neglected to write down the name, but there it is. You read it first here. This seems to suggest that either the two have gotten back together, or that T-Bag will abduct Gracie, and perhaps kill the father, who is unnammed as of yet in the cast credits, or whatever, but the obvious implication is that the Hollander family will figure in the shows plot when it returns in the spring.

I doubt that T-Bag retrieves the money, even if he is the one who kills Geary. As Geary dies after ordering strippers, I surmise that one of these strippers is Michaels wife Nika, a Russian immigant whom he hired to marry him prior to arranging for his incarceration at Fox River, and with whom he is now on the outs, due to jealousy over Michaels love for Tancredi. I am guessing here, that she ends up with the money next, and will then use this as leverage in order to force her will on Scoffield.

Whatever the case, it seems that Bellick is not the only one due for a return to Fox River. So is Scoffield and brother Lincoln Burrows, who are due to be captured sometime in the next three episodes.

However, Kellerman and Mahone will determine that they will not make it back to Fox River alive. Mahone has been brought into the picture exclusively by The Company in order to kill them both, as well as all the other cons, on the off chance that they might have learned something about the government agencies attempts to frame Burrows for the murder of the Presidents brother.

All of which leads me to wonder if maybe Bellick will be targeted for the same reason, when it is learned that he has engaged in the torture of one of the priosners, it will be surmissed that he too might have learned something he shouldn't know.

As for the other cons, Sucre will make it to the plane arranged for Michael by the mysterious Coyote, whom he betrays (by giving him sugar water in retun for the plane instead of the promised viles of nitroglycerin) and who then tries to kill him in return. He is determined, despite the turbulence he is said to encounter on the plane, to make it to Mexico to reunite with his beloved Maricruz, who I am thinking will end up being killed by an insanely jealous and enraged Hector (Kurt Caceres) , who was left by Maricruz at the altar, and who has learned of her trip to Mexico with her sister, a trip that was meant to be the honeymoon that he had paid for.

And then there's C-Note (Rockmond Dunbar), who is due to get into a great deal of trouble in the next weeks episode when he ventures out in public due to some necessity, though it's unclear what it is.

No word as of yet as to whether Charles "Haywire" Potashik (Silas Weir Mitchell) will appear in these next three episodes, but the last we saw of him, he had made friends with a dog with whom he was explaining his plans to go to Holland and build his own windmill. Yep, he's crazy, sufferring from a neuroanatomic lesion which afflicts him with profound insomnia, in additon to being schizo-affective with bi-polar tendencies. For now, he is funny, and even goofy . The longer he goes without sleep or medication, however, the crazier and crazier you can count on him becomming.

You have to love this show, which requires such a suspension of disbelief, but you get so tied into the characters, the acting, the writing, the production values, the dialoque, the drama, and the suspense- you really don't care, for example, that one of them might well have been sent to prison for stealing Mr. Scotty's teleportation machine from Star Trek. As a character can be in one part of the country and can seemingly end up in just the right place at just the right time, in a matter of minutes, well into a different state, and once or twice halfway across the country.

Or that one characters phone calls can be monitored, while another seems to be able to call with impunity. For that matter, the fact that in the first season, prisoners could seemingly call anywhere from a public phone in the prison yard without moderation.

Or that any prisoner can be so focused, so intense, that he can draw up such a comprehensive set of plans for an escape from prison, have them coded in a full body tatoo, and carry them through to such effect that, even if something goes wrong, one of the backup plans is sure to make up for it. Of course, there is an explanation for this aspect of Scoffields drive and abilities, one that might well afford an explanation for the manifestation of certain kinds of psychic abilites. Scoffield is sufferring from an ailment known as low latent inhibition.

The nail-biting, pulse-punding, nerve wracking excitement of the show, however, more than makes up for it's many flaws, which are insignificant by comparison. Me, I can't wait to see what happens tonight. No matter what you think you have figured out, you never really know.

I'm still expecting in the back of my mind for this seasons promised "biggest surprise" to be the return of mob boss John Abruzzi (Peter Stormare) who was killed by Mahone in this seasons episode four, killed by a hail of bullets in the doorway of a motel where he had been lured in the hopes of finally killing the despised mob informant Fibbonnacci.

Yeah, I know, that kind of thing is just totally unrealistic. But like I said, this is Prison Break. Who cares about realism anyway? Surrealism is so much more fun.