Prisonbreak

Last Friday I went to the casino and they gave me a $5 voucher. So I cashed it in and made a quick $5. They also gave me a membership card and a stress ball. That way, when you're sitting in front of the machines losing your savings, you can squeeze it and it will give you the mental stability you need to keep gambling. All in all it was a good haul, but it has nothing to do with today's topic, which is...

...Prisonbreak. (Another TV show).

((spoiler alert) this (spoiler alert) post contains (spoiler alert) spoilers)

This show is old now, old enough that it's been off the air for like three years. But it's worth talking about because it's pretty good I guess. It's like if the Shawshank Redemption was a TV show, and then when (spoilers) Tim Robbins got out of jail there was a second season which was the TV version of The Fugitive. Throw in The Pelican Brief and you've got Prisonbreak.

The story involves a guy, Michael Schofield, who gets himself deliberately incarcerated, which is badass alone, but then we learn that he got himself imprisoned to break out his brother Lincoln, who is on death row because of a murder he claims he didn't commit. His girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend or whoever the fuck she is) is trying to get him exonerated by digging up evidence which supports these claims. But if this was the premise of the show it would be boring. Instead we get an awesome serial drama about how these guys escape jail.

The greatest part of this premise is how Michael's plan unfolds as the first season progresses. We find out late in the first episode that he has the blueprints for the prison tattooed on his body, which sounds like a painful experience and makes you think his brother better be fucking grateful when they're finally free. Michael also recruits other inmates to help with the plan, like the crazy Russian from Armageddon and some Peurto-Rican guy. It's interesting how they all have their own motivation for escaping. Meanwhile the government is going around killing anyone who knows the truth about Lincoln's case, which leads to wacky shenanigans left, right and centre.

The only real problem I have with this show is that it takes so fucking long for them to escape and the plan is horrendously flawed. Things keep going wrong and it's usually up to a combination of Michael's cunning and luck to save the day. One thing that particularly shits me is that he spends probably half a season mixing stolen chemicals inside toothepaste tubes so that he can melt away a drain underneath the prison infirmary. When he and his fellow would-be escapees finally find themselves in a position to climb up into the infirmary through the drain and I guess escape, it turns out someone put a huge pipe there because they just happened to look at the floor and notice there was no drain anymore.

This makes me wonder why anyone would rely on a plan which requires that none of the medical staff look at the floor. Considering there's that one chick who's Michael's love interest and she spends all her time in there, I would consider this too much of a risk and leave it out of the tattoo. But lets backtrack a bit. Another part of the plan involves the inmates working together on the convict maintanence team. Their job is to fix a shed, but when they guards leave them to it they slowly dig a hole in the floor to slip through to the infirmary on the night of their escape. When the guards come back they put a rug over the hole and put a table on that and act like they've been fixing pipes the whole time.

Firstly, wouldn't the guards be suspicious that weeks have gone by during which no maintenance work has been done whatsoever? The shed still looks like shit. Secondly, they've got a fellow escapee posted outside as a lookout to report back whenever they see a guard approaching. If I was the guard whose job it was to oversee the maintenance convicts, I'd be wondering why the fuck one of them is always standing outside, not doing any work, and why he always hurries back inside whenever I come over.

Possibly the most interesting character on the show is Theodore Bagwell, and here's why:

• His nickname is T-Bag, which is hilarious.
• He's the only person in the cast which the balls to kill a prisonguard who happens to stumble upon Michael's escape plan. Who cares if the man is young and just married, you gotta do what you gotta do.
• He's a combination of homosexual, pedophile, murderer, rapist, creep, thief, psychotic. Basically, he's every single type of criminal combined.
• He talks like a Disney villain.

T-Bag latches on to Schofield's plan after accidentally knocking aside the sink in Schofield's cell, which happens to have a big hole behind it in case Schofield feels like going for a late night walk or scouting for possible escape routes. So suddenly they have to find room in their dream team for T-Bag. But I don't know what they're problem is. He's like Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad: he may be a scumbag but he's well written. When someone's that well-written they should be in the gang regardless of whether or not they might decide to rape you the moment you turn around.

So that's Prisonbreak. I read on Wikipedia that they escape jail and then get thrown into another one a season or so later. Sounds great.