Monday, September 17, 2007

A RECAP OF A SHOW I BARELY REMEMBER: Previously, on Prison Break: Linc went to jail for drug-murdering the Vice-President’s brother, except he didn’t. He only was going to, except it was already done. Brother Mike went to jail for trying to rob a bank, except he didn’t. He just wanted to go to jail, where he could try out the World’s Least Efficient Full-Body Mnemonic Device. Dr. Sara gave up her bad habits, except she didn’t. She left drugs behind, but still loves her the thrill of a dangerous man. Mike, Linc, sociopathic mobster Abruzzi (sounds fake-Italian; is real-Italian), hard-cheese-for-Tony Iraq scapegoat C-Note, K-Fed, omnivo-rapist T-Bag, saintly lovebird Sucre, and Bad Dustin Hoffman Impression, with help from DB Sweeney (no, really), Cousin Hurley, Dr. Sara, and the Jackpot of All Mail Order Brides, conspire to break out. They succeed, due in large part to the incompetence of CO and dirty cheater Bill Belichick and elementary-school craft enthusiast Warden “Pope Warden” Pope, fka coke-importing Mike Hammer. Portion of giant-ass tattoo used in escape: 2.5% (hex-bolt sizer; deltoid map; annoying upside-down number puzzle; rendezvous location). I suppose the other 77.5% will come in handy later.

Pursued by a crack team of law enforcers -- bounty-seeking Belicheck; his old, out-of-shape Man Friday; master extrapolator Agent Mahone, a pill-popping tormented bad-father rogue who shares an ex-wife with Detective McNulty; Secret Agent Young Dan Ackroyd; and the least-menacing Asian menace since Mickey Rooney (what, exactly, did Bruce Lee think?) -- the team, minus T-Bag’s hand, splits up. Impenetrable disguise of choice: generic ballcap, hunched shoulders. Methods of transportation to DB Sweeney’s loot: borrowed motorcycle (Sucre), rental car and spurned prostitute (Linc, Mike), kindness of strangers (C-Note), craigslist shared ride of love (K-Fed), killing spree (T-Bag). All reach the stash at about the same time. To create a diversion while they dig through a concrete foundation for the loot, they let greasy rubber-handed reptilian liplicker T-Bag sweet-talk the faded rose who owns the garage, which naturally results in a hostage situation with an off-duty cop-daughter. Hijinks ensue, whereupon T-Bag escapes with the loot and Mike and Linc, brain surgeons, escape with ten years of National Geographics. Agent Mahone catches up, kills K-Fed (satisfyingly), Abruzzi (abruptly), and Bad Dustin Hoffman (chattily).

The Vice-President kills the President to prove a point. The point is lost on me.

Belicheck and Man Friday catch up with T-Bag, steal the money, and feud. T-Bag catches up with Man Friday, kills him in the act of trying to get hookers to defecate on a glass table above him, and frames Belicheck. Belicheck tries to outsmart the local rube detective, and predictably buys himself a ticket back up the (Fox) river, where he bunks with giant Avocado in Mike and Sucre's old cell. Belicheck's face during that reveal: "prison rape, ay caramba!" T-Bag moves back in with his old nonconsenting family, using handcuffs and rope to take attachment parenting to its logical extreme. I can’t remember how he gets caught, but it involves church ladies, returning to the old abusive homestead, and nobody acting in a manner that makes any sense.

C-Note gets his wife arrested, his ailing daughter’s insurance discontinued, and his own self thrown in prison, where he makes a deal with Mahone that includes a friendly proposal that he kill himself. There’s Getting Past No, there’s Getting to Yes, and there’s the advanced course, Getting the Other Side to Agree to Kill Himself.

Sucre makes a huge deal about how he’s Puerto Rican. Then he goes to visit his dear auntie in Mexico. He loves a hot girl with dimples, which convinces the bus rider with the live chicken to give him a Volkswagen Bug. He shares a ride with a Federale to the airport. I'd tell you how he escaped all the Federales, but they didn't show us. They just let him hang around out of kindness, I suppose.

Mike and Linc pretty much can’t take four steps without bumping into their black-ops dad (until he dies), Linc’s idiot son (until he gets thrown in jail and then released and then kidnapped and then just says I want out of this show), Mahone (a definite catch-and-release fisherman), or Sucre, but to get to Dr. Sara, they need to employ an elaborate origami-messaging system. Also, the following APB apparently does not work: “be on the lookout for a steely-gazed college boy with short-cropped hair, a generic baseball cap, and a full-body tattoo.”

There’s all kinds of angst with Special Agent Young Dan Ackroyd, but it involves his sister and his love for President Wettig and homoerotic office politics with Non-Menacing Asian and zzzzzz. He teams up with Mike and Linc, and they kidnap their prime evidence, the President’s brother, but while they're obsessing over the fact that he only kind of looks like himself, they manage to let him kill himself. They neglect to try the Weekend At Bernie’s escape plan, which, duh, of course.

Dr. Sara goes to trial for her role in the escape, but Special Agent Young Dan Ackroyd testifies in her behalf, and although his story is twelve different kinds of craaaaazy, the judge tosses Dr. Sara’s case right then and there, and sentences Young Dan Ackroyd to interminable sexual tension with Addison Montgomery.

Sucre, Mike, Belicheck (who took a La Femme Nikita deal from Mahone, sans les yeux triste ou les jambes longues d'Anne Parillaud*), Linc, Dr. Sara, Mahone, and Agent Not-Menacing Asian all rendezvous in Panama, where everybody kills, frames, gets framed, gets caught, backstabs, loses the money, or resolves to end the cycle of abuse; each ends up either dead or arrested. If they’re in Group B, they all end up in a Panamanian prison whose motto is "like Fox River, only Medieval, and less helpfully similar to Mike's tattoo."

Will Linc and Mike team up with Mahone and Belicheck to bust out again? Did C-Note kill himself? Will Dr. Sara forgive and forget and re-conspire? Will this show make one single bit of sense at any point this season? Tune in tonight next week tonight (whoops, missed it), I guess.

*Warning: 8th-Grade French not certifiedFrench certified -- merci, D'Arcy

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