Deal or No Deal

I found tonight's Prison Break episode fairly entertaining overall. Lots of characters were squirming this week, and that was pretty fun to watch on all fronts. But I did have a couple of quibbles with the way the plot unfolded.

One was with T-Bag's role in the story. He's all about self-preservation. And he's not a stupid man; he's only really been duped in situations where he thought he had the upper hand all along. (Pun not intended.) In short, he can't be so stupid as to believe that Self would give him any share of the profit for selling Scylla -- or to give him anything at all for that matter. Just last week, when things got dicey at GATE, he was ready to give up on his money to cut and run and save his own hide.

So the minute Self left him alone at the house of Gretchen's sister, why did he not hightail it for Mexico? What gain could he possibly see in staying there to hold the sister and daughter hostage? I think he'd either kill them or tie them up, and then run as far away as possible. I can't conceive of any character motivation that would keep him there helping Self. It's purely a contrivance to keep the character on the show and in the plot, and isn't doing justice to the character.

My second complaint was with the reveal at the end of the episode, that Michael had broken off a piece of the Scylla component and kept it hidden. Now don't get me wrong -- I do believe he would have done that. He is "Mr. Plan Ahead" and always has been. No matter how much he trusted Self before the betrayal, I believe he would have taken some kind of steps to ensure the deal for his group's exonerations would go through.

But all that said, then why did he act so surprised for the entire episode that something had gone wrong? He clearly didn't trust Self to at least some extent, so why the shock? And why hide from everyone else the fact that he had some kind of plan in place for this contingency? Once again, this seems like completely out of character behavior, and once again, it was done simply to service plot.

The quality of the characters of Prison Break is what has kept me watching through some pretty outrageous plot twists over the years, and so it stinks to see that thrown away in moments like these. I hope these lapses are only momentary and things get back on track soon.

Speaking of characters, this isn't really a complaint, but an observation. Two minor but recurring characters were killed in the course of the story tonight, in ways that imply to me that the writers really are planning toward this being the last season. The two actors playing them, Michael O'Neill and Jude Ciccolella, certainly aren't household names. They're possibly not even recognizable names to any but the most incredible TV geeks. But they are recognizable faces to anyone who watches even a moderate amount of TV. These guys make the rounds as character actors, appearing on tons of shows, and they're very good at what they do. I can't see the writers just throwing them away if there was even a chance they might be useful later in the story.

Then again, these are the same writers that I think were untrue to the characters this week, so maybe I give them too much credit.

Still, it was a decent episode, despite my dwelling on some of the bad parts. We'll see how the saga continues next week.