I’m a Prison Break addict. I watched the entire first season in the space of about 72 hours like I was a crack addict and Prison Break was a big heap of really potent crack. It’s a little strange, I think, to be addicted to such a show. Sure, the plot’s action-packed and suspensful, but the scripting is terrible. The cast deserves accolades for not sounding like complete morons onscreen. The drawback to the bad scripting is, no matter how good the actors are, the only way to say some of the lines is in an unrealistically dramatic manner. Example:
[Michael Scofield and Alexander Mahone are talking. For some reason, both are sweating profusely]
Alexander Mahone: I saw it happen
[Long pause in which both characters squint at each other]
Michael Scofield: No… You… Didn’t
[More glaring. Cut to commercial]
Spoilers Beyond This Point
So for the entire episode, the viewer is stuck with this uncomfortable feeling because everything that happens in the show is made out to be really intense. Nevertheless, I was totally psyched for season 4, which aired this past monday. I was pleasantly surprised by the first episode. No, they haven’t gotten better script-writers, and yes, it is still overly dramatic, but I like the new direction of the show. That is, I like the idea that they’ll be breaking into a place instead of out of one.
If you’ve never seen the show, this might seem like a silly and relatively negligible difference. Learned viewers, though, know that this is really the first time in the show that Michael isn’t running away from someone. This time, he’s the hunter. It reminds me, sort of, of a post by Sam Hughes at qntm.org. He suggested a TV show where people pull Ocean’s Eleven-esque heists. In Prison Break they aren’t stealing from a bank, but they are stealing.
