Break out, stay out, break out, break in.

Some television shows push the boundaries. Some allegorise the human condition. Some exercise the viewer’s mind and some… are so dosh garn well made that we can’t help but watch in awe at the sheer magnitude of talent on display. Prison Break, however, is none of these things. Well, maybe you could make a case for the latter but still… it’s certainly not the most complex, demanding or iconic of programmes. It’s escapist fantasy dressed in the narratalogical wardrobe of ‘suspense drama’. There have been more backtracks, contrivances and deux et machinas in the last three seasons of this show than you can shake several proverbial big fuck-off sticks at and, therefore, it should come as no surprise to anyone that it’s much-heralded fourth season premiere is peppered generously with more of the same. But that’s okay. Really, it is. We don’t need Prison Break to be sophisticated entertainment. It doesn’t have to speak to us, make us think or force us to re-evaluate our entire, pesky little existences. Escapism is an entirely valid form of artistic appreciation. It fulfils a need: the perfectly ordinary human desire to slouch back in a comfy chair at the end of a hard day’s slog, remote in hand, in front of something that requires the absolute minimum of thought. Something that we can quite comfortably let wash over us without ever requiring the use of the ‘pause’ and ‘rewind’ functions. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t elements of the show that do stimulate debate, particularly as regards the planting of cryptic hints towards future plot developments, but, you know, it’s hardly Lost, is it? All we really need Prison Break to do is keep us creeping towards the edge of our seats for the duration of its 45 minutes, to make sure that there’s sufficient tension and suspense for us not to get so lethargic that we either fall asleep or flick nonchalantly over to the next channel. Where Grand Designs is probably on. And we definitely wouldn’t want that.

Season four, for the most part, has successfully fulfilled this requirement. The show’s premise has been given the old reboot and now each episode takes the pleasantly simplistic formula of ‘find card, get card, fly’. Sorry, couldn’t resist. The formula’s actually ‘find card, get card, copy card, have poignant moment with Sarah Tancredi while female falsetto plays irritatingly in background’. It’s perfectly innocuous and does make for some nicely structured, distinctly suspenseful entertainment. The writers have kept the methods used to acquire the pieces of Scylla nicely varied, helpfully disguising the repetitive nature of the plot structure. There’s also enough peripheral intrigue to whet our collective appetites, as T-Bag tries to figure out Whistler’s bird book, while dressed in a rather snazzy suit, sitting in a rather snazzy office inside faceless corporation GATE’s rather snazzy gigantic building. Saying rather snazzy ‘pretty’s, one would imagine. Oh, and that’s after he’s cannibalised a Mexican, by the way. As you do. We also have the rather sinister General and his various impenetrable utterances about THINGS GOIN DAWN IN LAOS, Michael and his all-important nosebleeds (which I’m sure we’re all supposed to think is indicative of some sort of cancer/serious brain injury, but will actually turn out to be something far less serious), Lincoln being a meathead, Bellick being useless, Sucre being pointless, THE BLACK ASSSASSIN being the coolest villain since Dina Araz (how deliciously evil was the psychedelic sequence with Bruce?) and Mahone being the best damn tortured soul this show has ever seen. Credit to William Fichtner for pulling off incredibly multi-layered performances every single week. The sequences in episode three in which he receives the photographs of his dead child are chillingly believable, and last week’s reunion with his wife was superbly pitched, absolutely spot on. Let’s just hope the writers don’t drop the ball with his storyline and have Josh actually be alive. I don’t think I could cope with another 50 tonne slab of revisionism…

…not this soon after Sarah, at any rate. Ah dear. I appreciate that this is entirely out of the hands of the production staff, that Sarah Wayne Callies was asked to be in season three and resolutely declined, but if there was ever any chance that she may desire to return, surely you wouldn’t chop off her head and leave her for dead? Bad move, guys. You pissed off a good 70% of your viewers last year with this decision and now, the vast majority of them and the 30% who didn’t really care before, are pissed off with the whole ‘oh, that was just a head in a box Michael… really, she escaped and we were just pretending’ debacle. I suppose there’s nothing we can do about this; there really was no better way of re-introducing the character into the inner workings of the plot and, at the end of the day, the programme is better with Tancredi in it. No denying. She and Michael do have wonderfully understated (well, when the actors play it) chemistry. I’m willing to accept it and move on… provided the sound department cut down on the use of the ‘wailing female falsetto’ that underscores EVERY SINGLE ONE OF SARAH’S DOWNBEAT SCENES. She goes to a bar, it wails. She sits on the dock, it wails. She takes a shit, it wails. Enough already! She’s a tortured soul… we get it. Don’t beat us around the head with the point… we’ll only resent you for it. Oh, and while we’re still vaguely on the subject of revisionism, before I forget, SONA burned down and everyone escaped? Come on… surely you could do better than that? Surely? Guys?

The inclusion of these particularly difficult to swallow plot points marred the premiere a little, in my opinion. There was a lot of good in there though: the introduction of the Don Self character, Gretchen’s (almost) death, Whistler’s actual death, LJ’s re-appearance… oh yes, there’s another Hollywood star I have a hopeless crush on, Mr. Marshall Allman:

Oh and, erm...


Yes. Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes. The premiere. While it did feel incredibly telegraphed, moving all the characters to LA in order to orchestrate the current state of play, and read as the positioning of narrative pieces rather than the believable development of plot and character, it was responsible for the set-up of an ultimately quite fulfilling new formula and, as such, deserves its dues. The show feels fresh, it’s moving at a nice pace and the characters, for the most part, are interesting. I do question where they’ll go, if anywhere, after this season: we’ve had breaking out of prison, staying out of prison, breaking out of another prison and now breaking in. What’s left? Hopefully, this will be Prison Break’s swansong and the show will be able to ride off into the sunset on a high. Let’s just forget that there’s Cherry Hill to come yet, shall we?

401: ‘Scylla’: 7.4
Wr: Matt Olmstead; Dr: Kevin Hooks

402: ‘Breaking and Entering’: 8.1
Wr: Zack Estrin; Dr: Bobby Roth

403: ‘Shut Down’: 8.8
Wr: Nick Santora; Dr: Milan Cheylov

404: ‘Eagles and Angels’: 8.6
Wr: Karyn Usher; Dr: Michael Switzer

405: ‘Safe and Sound’: 8.7
Wr: Seth Hoffman; Dr: Karen Gaviola