Prison Break Season 4 Episode 19 S.O.B.

• Tweet
• Pin It

Prison Break

More and more ridiculous nonsense is going down in Miami. This is a perfunctory set of finisher episodes to the played out Prison Break Series. Michael Scofield and Dr. Sarah Tancredi enjoy their domestic life cracking the mysterious case of season 4 macguffin Scylla. Lincoln Burrows and company interrogate a brainy professor who knows whats what, but feigns innocence. A few harsh interrogation techniques later and he spills the beans.

You see, Michael and Lincoln, buzz cut brothers, have found out their evil mother has Scylla, and she has no qualms about killing either of them. Delayed postpartum depression perhaps? She busily tries to track down her Macguyver worthy son, Michael through generic industrial parks. When her black clad goons show up, he easily incapacitates them all with a paper clip and some scotch tape. Well, not really, but he is a genius you know.

Its easy to get the feeling that this show doesn’t concern itself with season story arcs per se, delivering plenty of weekly twists instead. After this rambling season of double, triple, and quadruple crosses, constant alliance shifts, and shifting power figures, does anyone remember just whats going on? No, its more sending good T.V. time after bad, making good on a four season investment.

General Krantz runs the Company, a shadowy organization that pulls the strings of power in the background. Scylla is a Company database of some kind of solar technology. Christina Scofield, evil mom, works for the Company, but has gone rogue in an effort to control Scylla for her own purposes. Michael wants to bring the Company down for past grievances. Lincoln wants to get Scylla back for the Company to preserve his own son and get a normal life back. Got it? Well, thats just the main characters, and there is a a healthy batch of supporting characters with similar mixed motivations to boot.

Michael takes the step of kidnapping and threatening physical harm on his Mother. She offers some generic bad guy responses. Michael’s girlfriend Sarah takes a crack at it, but Mom has classic pregnancy sensing abilities, and takes the air out of Sarah’s interrogative prowess. Sarah’s pregnancy is a curious thing, because the couple hasn’t been seen copulating once. In fact, kissing is a pretty rare occurence between these two chilly lovers.

Boring familial conversations, tepid pursuits through Miami, wait, wait a minute, GAME CHANGING REVELATION! This is a good twist, should have seen it coming, but T.V. hindsight is always 20/20. After this, Michael tries his hand as a petulant yeller, but this falls pretty flat. Michael beats on dear old Mom a little bit too, but he is no Jack Bauer.

General Krantz gives T-Bag an impromptu job interview for some future Company work. Among my wish lists for the series finale is T-Bag’s death, which has been long coming. Seriously, more pursuits through Miami? I think its time for a twist ending.

4 Comments

1. 

   Damon

   May 2, 2009 at 5:46 am

   Yeah this is a show I just loved the first season and it hurts my feelings now to watch it. Also did Michael chunk up or what. I mean the brothers had different last names from the beginning was it that big of a twist? This just needs to end already.

   Reply
2. 

   Jay Tomio

   May 2, 2009 at 7:15 am

   I saw the first 3 episodes, thought it had a great premise for a 6-part miniseries and now shocked to find it had one season, nevermind 4.

   Reply
3. 

   Jen

   May 6, 2009 at 1:47 am

   Yes, end it. Honestly, the only way this show can even begin to redeem itself is…

   if Linc and Michael get caught (or Linc gets killed for that matter- I don’t even really care anymore) and then the surprise twist of the series is that Michael wakes up in his prison blues in bed in a cell… and it pans out and you realize he is in prison… but the huge jaw-dropper would be the ambiguousness of the ending… in that it is completely left to the audience interpretation on whether he is back in prison after 4 seasons of adventure and drama or if he is STILL in prison and never actually got his brother out and it is still first season and it was all a bit of a day dream…

   yep, I know it is a bit of a cushioned ending, corny, that that ending has been-there done- that but this season is so crap loaded with plot “twists” and lightning speed that it is in desperate need for a cliché touch to pull itself from the rubble.

   I hate thinking this about a once beloved show (Most of all I hate thinking this while still continuing to watch a once beloved show)… A show I followed in 2 countries and the majority of my undergraduate life. A show that I was so completely addicted to that I would rush through my weeks just anticipating Monday night. I disagree with the other critics who claim the show began its plummeting decent after season 1. I actually rather liked seasons 2 and 3 as well… mostly because they had the main ingredient this season lacks, emotion. That raw intensity, on-the-edge anxiety, of never knowing where the next turn will take you… and I willingly went with it… every step of the way. I feel the slower momentum of how things happened and how the characters not only handled the situations, but the inner tortured psyche of the characters is what made the show so worth while in the first three seasons. The closest they got to that this season was in one of the earlier episodes with Michael attempting to steal one of the key holder cards from a safe. I appreciated the struggle.

   Once more, I believed in the characters and their stories. No matter how far-fetched the reasoning may have gotten I took it as a plausible (also, I watched the first season with an actual Structural Engineer and most of it wasn’t all that implausible), simply because the show didn’t have to take great lengths to convince me, it was confident, sure of itself; it simply was.

   As for me, I think I will stop Michael and Lincoln’s story at Season 3- there was a sort of poetic irony to Michael driving away with the gun and origami rose, Lincoln reuniting with his kidnapped son, Sucre sacrificing his freedom for a friend, and T-Bag becoming “King of the Jungle” again. In fact, I saw Michael’s driving away scene as parallel to the opening act of the pilot; the gun and the vengeance against the system. And, even while it didn’t answer my questions about the company conspirators at least there was some closure to the characters. I’m not going to deny I wasn’t waiting for the return since last winter, or checking every TV spot on the show since the beginning of the summer, I, like all the other fans wanted the story to continue, but I was sorely disappointed when it did. Season 4 is just too implausible, choppy, and commercial for me to enjoy. Yes, off course it’s fiction but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have certain expectations to fulfill to its devoted audience. It leaves you with more questions than answers, and it so incoherent that you forget the answer by the next question.

   For the past three years, for me, Prison Break was like a book I couldn’t put down, but with the closing of Season 4 it is one I can’t bare to pick up. Or, maybe it’s just time for me to get a life, move on, and leave this show behind me. I just hate to think of the potential this show had. End it. Please. End it. Put us devoted fans out of our misery!

   Reply
4. 

   Jen

   May 22, 2009 at 2:24 am

   Ok, I have to revoke my last response. Perhaps I was a bit too harsh. I do have to say Prison Break all but redeemed itself in the finale. As tragic, as it was, it was poetic, meaningful, the right kind of closure. And it was great to see so many characters back. Thanks Prison Break, it was a great run while it lasted! Here’s to Michael, the character that so many of us loved, and to all the characters he made a better life for!

   Reply