Cliffhangers, contingencies, and captivating.
That’s an alliteration I never thought I’d write. But then I watched Prison Break.
Starring Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell, and Sarah Wayne Callies, Prison Break is anchored in the story of two brothers, Michael Scofield (Miller) and Lincoln Burrows (Purcell).
Burrows becomes the pawn in a murder-for-hire set up in Chicago, Illinois. An all-powerful, all-knowing organization known as “The Company,” makes it appear that Burrows killed Caroline Reynolds, the Vice President of the United States’, brother.
The Company basically makes the world go round. It controls politics, economies, federal agents, and more. The staged murder was calculated by the Vice President, to send the VP’s brother away to a hidden mansion in Montana. Later in the show you find out the Vice President and her brother had a romantic relationship that the Company would take public if she did not follow their every order.
Back to the brothers.
Michael Scofield is nearly the smartest guy that ever lived. He has a condition that allows him to create maps out of tattoos. Literally, he tattooed almost all of his body so that he could read the blueprints of the Fox River Penitentiary in Illinois. To the normal human being, it would’ve just looked like gargoyles and demons. To Michael Scofield, it was he and his brother’s way to freedom.
As every good show does, the main characters pickup some friends… who can also be enemies… along the way. These friends are Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco), Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell (Robert Knepper), Brad Bellick (Wade Williams), Benjamin ‘C-Note’ Miles Franklin (Rockmond Dunbar), and the love of Michael’s life, Dr. Sarah Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies).
Why’d I use the word contingency at the beginning of the article? Because each person is a contingency. They’re used for a specific purpose to try to achieve the end goal. Freedom. Normal life. That’s the whole goal of the show. And somehow, it takes 5 seasons of cliffhangers, contingencies, and captivating story-telling to achieve yet.
As the show goes on the acting gets better, the story gets better, and the stakes get higher.
Season 1 is all about getting out of Fox River (which is just a couple hours from where I live). After that, it’s all about trying to open a surf shop in Panama. I’m kidding, sort of.
Like I mentioned before, the whole goal is to obtain normal life. Michael & Lincoln’s idea of that is escaping the U.S., where now they’re both seen as criminals, to open a surf shop in South America. How will they get there, you ask? Well, Michael has a plan.
Michael meets a man in prison named Charles Westmoreland (Muse Watson). Charles is just his alias, his real identity is DB Cooper. A man who had a whole lot of money, but was on the run from the law and got caught. Westmoreland tells Michael about his secret stash of cash in Utah, which is how Michael and his brother would get out of the country.
As everything else goes in Prison Break, nothing ever goes to plan. The Company figures out Michael and Lincoln escaped, and now send their inside people at the F.B.I. after them. Cue Alex Mahone (William Fichtner). Mahone is practically a mercenary hired by the F.B.I. Then you find out The Company really just placed him in the F.B.I. to try and kill the brothers and have a “legal” way to cover the Company’s tracks.
While the brothers goal is to obtain freedom, the Company’s is to stay a secret.
Eventually, the group does get to Panama. But not how they originally planned. They find themselves in the worst prison you could imagine, referred to as ‘Sona.’ Except this time, Michael’s behind bars along with T-Bag, Bellick, and Mahone… and Lincoln’s on the other side.
While season 2 wasn’t actually about breaking out of prison, season 3 took us back to the show’s roots. Michael putting together a plan to get himself out of prison, and once again, picking up frenemies along the way.
Of course, they get out of prison, they always do! Now the group is in full battle-mode against the Company and coming for them.
Then comes Scylla.
Scylla is first known as the Company’s “black book,” but it turns out to be much more than that.
Scylla is how the Company was going to take over the world. It’s all surrounding futuristic intelligence that would let the organization control everything. A big part of that is energy. The research done by the Company puts everything they want to do nearly 50 years into the future of the rest of the world. And when you have that kind of power, money is the name of the game.
Now Michael is ready to go after the Company and its leader, General Kranz. He devises a plan to find Scylla and get it away from Kranz. What I learned from the show is to never bet against Michael.
If I went into every storyline in this show and what happened, you’d be reading for hours and I think I’d get sucked into the computer or something. So let me just tell you that there’s a whole lot more story left in this show, and you’ll just have to watch it on Hulu to find out what happens.
Prison Break might be one of top 3 favorite shows of all-time. It’s fresh in my mind, so that makes it my favorite right now, but I haven’t been as drawn into most of the other shows I’ve seen as I was with Prison Break.
The show ends after Season 5. What you should know, is that in 2009 Season 4 ended. Season 5 didn’t come until 2017. I think they could’ve left things were they ended at the end of Season 4, but I think the fans were blood-thirsty enough that they decided to revitalize it. Plus, let’s just say there’s one very big jaw-dropper at the end of Season 4, that if I were watching “back in the day,” I would’ve been very upset if the story didn’t continue.
So will there be a Season 6? Reports back in 2019 suggested a Fox executive said there would. A year later, and those reports stated the opposite. There has been rumors, as soon as fall of 2021, stating that many of the main cast want to keep the story going and that “if the story was right,” they’d return.
So let me give a couple of storylines I’ve thought up that could work for future seasons.
1: Russia. Who doesn’t love a good U.S. spy story in Russia? At the end of Season 5, the Director of the CIA tells Michael that he’d like to have him work in the Department. Michael declines, but later gives the Director a look that (to me) shows him pondering the decision. Tangle the spy story with modern day tension between the U.S. and Russia, and I think you could have a compelling story. Invite Alex Mahone back into the story, and the Americans head over to Russia on a rescue mission. There they’ll find Americans locked away in a prison and their goal is to break them free.
2: South Korea. In Season 5, Michael meets a man named “Ja” who is from South Korea. He says he just wants to get back to the safety of his own home, but at one point he decides to stay in a little port-side town in the Middle East while everyone else continues to escape. He says he wants to live a quiet life and living in the open land became appealing to him. My idea would be for Ja to be found by South Korean officials after another “Company-like” organization tried to awaken Michael Scofield. This new organization, let’s call them Rogue, somehow alerts Michael that Ja had been captured in hopes to lure him out of normal life. An insider of Rogue is at the CIA, and offers Michael the job for a large sum of cash. Michael accepts and heads out on the mission, but in turn gets captured in the South Korean prison. Now you’ve got another Prison Break on your hands.
3: Northern Europe. One thing Prison Break didn’t show much of (past Season 1) is snow. Alex Mahone is back at the F.B.I. as a Special Agent and is investigating potential conflict at the Finland/Russia border. There he is captured and the CIA alerts Michael they want him to go break him out. Michael agrees only if he can choose his crew to break Alex out, where then he chooses Lincoln, Sucre, Bagwell, and C-Note. I hesitate to put Bagwell on this list because of all the bad blood he has with the team, but at the end of Season 5 he is definitely redeemed and you almost feel bad for where he ends up. So since Robert Knepper did an excellence job acting as Theodore Bagwell and is a huge component of the rest of the show, I say the more the merrier.
Like my ideas? Take them to social media & let the writers know! Send them over to Fox. Start a petition, shoot I don’t know! I’m just letting the ideas flow and seeing what sticks.
All in all, I give Prison Break a 4.9/5.0. The only reason I am not giving it a 5/5 is because I thought Season 4 drug on a bit. After awhile, the story felt like it just went on and on and on. But hey, I love the action and the missions make you think, so I was there for it.
I hope you liked my review of Prison Break, follow me on Twitter at @mattsheehantv and Instagram at @themattsheehan to read more!
Matt Sheehan Official 