Sweet Caroline

Prison Break continues to roll out great episodes as they careen towards the end of their season. Last night's episode was once again crammed full of goodness.

First of all, I have to say: thank God they didn't do a lame "they lose T-Bag's luggage" plot. No, instead, he loses his own luggage in a moment of panic and impatience. And now it's set into motion another race for the money. It's the unlikely pair of Sucre and Bellick against T-Bag (who surely won't let it go that easily, no matter how hard it will be for him to get back to the airport unseen).

Speaking of pairings, Mahone and Sara made another good one. Once again, Mahone shows his fierce intelligence, tricking her into leading him back to the brothers' location.

C-Note! Not dead after all! And now caught up in an interesting new subplot. How much longer is Mahone going to be "on the case?" I mean, he now not only knows Linc is innocent, but his office nemesis of several weeks might be getting ammunition against him from C-Note. It's a plotline that can't last forever, but should at least be more entertaining while it lasts than "C-Note on the run with his daughter" was.

But of course, the biggest stuff of the hour was the return of President Reynolds to the screen. Obviously, the show has to keep going, so obviously, something had to happent to render the evidence against the conspiracy worthless. I just wonder if it would have been this specific thing (the President stepping down), had the actress not been so tied up with another TV series. No matter, really. This played as a great development, and it was fun to see another old character back on the show, if only for an episode (like Pope, a few weeks ago).

And then there was the big revelation in the President's plotline, the contents of that tape. What could possibly have been on there that justified them playing the "withholding game" last week and not letting us hear it when the characters did? Well, we found out now, and it actually lived up to the hype. She and her brother were having an incestuous relationship. Yikes! I'm pretty sure no one saw that coming.

As an aside, I was struck as I sat with a friend watching this episode -- if you're a viewer of Prison Break, you're soon conditioned to distrust everyone on the show, and to expect the worst possible thing to happen. So much so, that my friend didn't even trust Lincoln's buddy -- to the point where she's saying, "did he do something to the beer? What's wrong with that fifty he gave him?!" I may not have been that suspicious, but I admit, I didn't trust the guy either. Because more bad crap happens to the characters on this show even than on 24.

(Though maybe not more than on Battlestar Galactica.)