Review of Prison Break Season Three Premiere

Fox's Prison Break had a simple premise when it hit the airwaves three seasons ago. It had to do with a prison break, as if that weren't obvious enough from the title of the show. A man unjustly accused of shooting the president's brother was about to be executed, and his loyal brother robbed a bank in order to be placed in the same prison. Here's where the good part starts. The newly incarcerated brother had some inside information on the prison's blueprints (tattooed in code all over his body) and the engineering background to apply said blueprints, so that he could break his brother and himself out of said prison before the execution was to take place.

Prison Break ran on the same temporal rut that Fox's other hit show, 24, established so well: the ticking clock. Prison Break also did not move that fast in time, much like 24. It isn't an hour every episode, although it felt like it at times. Prison Break also had a hottie as the younger, loyal, brother in the form of Wentworth Miller, playing Michael Scofield. Dominic Purcell plays the older brother, Lincoln Burrows, and he has been a bit of a hit with the ladies, or any other segment of the population that enjoys shaved heads and prison uniforms. In addition to breaking Lincoln Burrows out of prison, Michael Scofield also enlisted the help of five other men to assist in the escape and was coerced into adding a sixth man to the team, for a total of "The Fox River Eight", each of whom met with various success in their lives on the lam.

So in a nutshell, Prison Break Season One was breaking out. Season Two was the fifteen days after the breakout, and somehow Season Three has Michael Scofield in a Panamanian prison that is so bad that there are no guards, just an amorphous military presence outside the gates that will shoot down anyone who escapes. This time around it's Lincoln that is trying to get Michael out of jail, although through the less dramatic method of going through official channels. In an even weirder chain of events, the FBI agent that dogged Michael all Season Two (Alex Mahone played by William Fichtner) is also in the same prison, as well as a former guard from the Fox River Penitentiary in Illinois that held Michael and Lincoln in Season One. Add to that mix the best of the baddies, Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell (Robert Knepper), and well, you see where this is going. Unfortunately, you did see where this went, so I am not entirely sure why it has to be done again.

Prison Break's Season Three premiere spent a lot of time establishing just how awful this new guard-free prison is, especially as it is run by a guy who has terrible mood swings (no Zoloft in Sona) and a thing for using dried up old chicken feet to arbitrate personal beefs between his fellow inmates. The nice thing about Prison Break is that in the past it always moved so quickly that you didn't notice how bad the writing was or how many holes were in the plot, or at least you didn't focus on those issues. Prison Break Season Three seems to be off to a slow start. Some minor supporting characters are introduced, but I didn't catch many names. Although I am sure they are all there for a reason or a plot device, and the scenes from next week proved my hunch correct.

Prison Break may be running the risk of becoming much like 24: a cliche of itself, and this new season's return to prison and having a week to break out someone is not really assuaging my fears that Prison Break will become as unwatchable as 24. Soon someone will have a drinking game that includes a shot for every flashback montage or T-Bag's mention of his severed hand.