Sarah Wayne Callies, the actress who portrayed Dr. Sara Tancredi on the Fox drama Prison Break (Monday 8:00 p.m.), has left the show, and her character has been killed off earlier than originally planned. Originally, Callies had taken a leave of absence from the show in order to have a baby and spend the first few months recuperating from the birth and bonding with the newborn infant, but evidently planned to return.
However, Fox decided to kill the character off at somewhere near the halfway point of this season, at around the mid-season hiatus of around episode thirteen. Callies balked at this, and seems to have lobbied to save the character, at the same time insisting she could not return to the show.
When you read between the lines, it would appear Callies was trying to make it impossible to kill the character, while at the same time opting for an extended contract. If so, the plan backfired. The network and studio killed the character off earlier than originally planned. For a couple of episodes, they utilized a body double in a couple of brief scenes, with the face unseen. There was also a brief phone conversation, in which the characters voice was obviously not that of Callies.
The network went out of their way to try to fit the storyline into Callie’s own situation. They even offered to film some scenes at her home. Not only did Callies evidently refuse this, she even went so far as to refuse to speak the role of the telephone conversation conducted with star Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield. They therefore had no choice but to kill the character off early, as they had no intention of renewing or extending Callies contract. It simply did not fit into the storyline.
So, how do you kill a character that refuses to willingly die, and do it in such a way as to maximize dramatic effect? Well, you could just have word delivered that the character had died or been killed, but that would be somewhat blasé. You could film the murder of the body double from a gunshot would, while yet not showing her face, but that would be rather obvious, would it not?
The best scenario would be to show an artistic reproduction of the character, and make the death as shocking and dramatic as possible. So, then, how do you go about doing this?
Well, how about-
Of course, wouldn’t you know that that vocal minority of Prison Break fans known as MiSa (Michael and Sarah, you know-like TomKat, Bennifer, Brangelina, etc.) largely either refuse to believe it, or have threatened to stop watching the show.
Well, to those who refuse to believe it, the above photo is from the Prison Break props department itself. Let me put it to you this way-I know people. Yes, Sarah is dead, and Sarah is not coming back. This is Prison Break, not As The Fucking World Turns.
As for those of you who threaten to no longer watch the show-good riddance. Maybe now Prison Break, if it does end from the drop in viewers, will end on a high note-as the rough, bloody, action packed, nerve-wracking, gut wrenching, suspenseful and mysterious thrill ride that the writers, producers, and directors conceived it as, where for the most part no character was sacred and anything could happen to anybody at any given moment.
Prison Break was never intended to be a love story or a soap opera. If you want that, you have plenty of other programs from which to choose. Go there, please. Let those of us who love the creativity of the darkness and gore have our one guilty pleasure-the pleasure of blood, violence, death, destruction, treachery, action, mystery, suspense, sex, surprise, some romance, and gallows humor.
After all, it is just one fucking night a week. Is that too fucking much to ask for?
For some of you, evidently it is. Well, too fucking bad, because guess what?
You lose!
