Here's to Swimmin' with Bow Legged Women: Prison Break Recapped

Thank God the Writers Strike is officially over.

Thank God most of the television shows I watch will come back with aborted five-to-ten episode runs during April and May.

Thank God there are only two weeks left in Prison Break.


This is a television show that hasn't just jumped the shark, but a show that has gloriously exploded the shark. You can almost hear the writers of this show taunting you like the late Chief Brody, as you rot your brain while watching: Smile, you sonofabitch!

Tonight's Prison Break promised to deliver on the "break" part of the title. And based on the "previously on," it also promised to tell us all about the dangling plot points from 2007, like, what the hell were Sucre and Linc doing with that Goddamn boom box!?

The escape.

Only Prison Break could have it's main characters escaping amidst an entire prison lock down. With lights spraying the yard at what seemed like 4-second intervals.

Seriously. I'm supposed to believe this Fantastic Four was able to escape without any problems? There were guards and prison trucks riding all around the prison yard and no one noticed Michael, Mahone, Whistler and the Panamaian Tracy McGrady breaking through fences? No one? Note to self: if you ever get arrested in Panama, it will be very easy to outsmart the local authorities.

Whistler: The second biggest idiot on the show.

Let me take you through this scenario. You're James Whistler, the inert catalyst for this season of Prison Break. You have a book of rare birds that has information both trite ("Mahone: family?") and excessively important (the "coordinates" that the Company so desperately want). The sole reason why you're being broken out of this prison is so that you can use this book to trade with The Company for your girlfriend's life. As you can see, this book is important. So what do you do? Shove it in your back pocket and have it fall out during the escape, of course!

Are you f'n kidding me? If I have a laundry ticket in my back pocket I make sure it's there a few times an hour. This guy is rolling around on the ground and doesn't think to see if the book is still there? Really?

And once the book is left in the dirt underneath a truck, what happens? Well obviously T-Bag ends up grabbing it! (Don't ask.)

About the only good thing Whistler has brought to the entire season was when he fell down and uttered the immortal line: "It's my ankle! I've torn it apart."

You think so doctor?

Sucre: The biggest idiot on the show.

Freakin' Sucre. So last week he gets captured because his alias had an outstanding arrest warrant out for him. This week, of course he's the most important piece of the escape! Umm, why would you leave Sucre in charge of picking you up in a boat?

(After you apparently swam fifty miles with an oxygen tank as big as a one-liter bottle of seltzer.) (Again, don't ask.)

Well obviously, you wouldn't. But since the show needs to create road blocks and problems for Michael and his merry band of escapees, Sucre becomes a lynch-pin to the whole affair.

In the coming attractions for the season finale, Sucre is shown being buried alive. Rarely have I been so excited for a plot development on Prison Break.

The house in the woods! The boom box!!!!!!!

Finally! Prison Break created it's very own "Who Shot J.R.?" with the cliffhanger at the end of the 2007 Fall Finale. What the hell was that boom box for? Well tonight I got my answer. Linc and Sucre had taped gunfire to use as a diversion for The Company, while they escaped out the back of the house in the woods, and thus, turned the tables in their favor for the Whistler/L.J. exchange.

How did they know that they'd be faced with that predicament, you ask? Great question. Especially since in the scene before they holed up at the cabin in the middle of the woods (with a set that looked directly ripped off of Cabin Fever), Michael and Linc were shocked, SHOCKED, to find that gambling was going on in this establishment. (Casablanca reference!)

No, actually, what I meant to write was that they were shocked that The Company managed to track them. So if they didn't think The Company would find them, why go through the trouble of making the gun fire mix tape? I guess I shouldn't question the logic, and only revel in the fact that the diversion gave Linc and Gretchen the best one-two line combination in the history of the show:

Gretchen: Linc, got to commend on you that boom box trick. Very sophisticated. Did you steal that one from Home Alone?

Linc: You fell for it, bitch.

Shakespeare would be proud.

The random acts of vengence.

Out of nowhere, Linc decided that he had to avenge his father's death at the hands of Mahone back in season three. This happened so long ago, I'm almost positive that it took place in 2006. And now, as the two brothers are about to complete their mission, Linc feels the need to kill Mahone right this instant!

Too bad the standoff between Linc and Mahone (looking quite spry for a heroin addict just two days out of using) allowed Whistler the diversion he needed to escape. And that escape allowed Mahone to escape. Oh drats! Now what are Linc and Scofield going to do?

Well, according to the previews for the "shocking" season finale, Whistler will be back with the brothers. And Mahone? Presumably he's out looking for Jack Bauer and the Salazar Brothers to get another hit.