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Prison Break: Progeny

"I'll always be a step ahead of you."

Fathers and sons. And reveals. And a cliffhanger.

Much of this episode was about Michael and Jacob trying to outwit each other, and unfortunately, Jacob seems to have won. Jacob said that Michael's emotional state would make him screw up the details. Maybe (gasp) Jacob was right.

The flashbacks to six years ago did fill in some of the blanks in their relationship. Does Jacob really not understand why Michael, an expert at breaking out of prisons, kept going to the zoo? Did Jacob actually believe Michael's explanation that his new ink was just to fill up empty skin? Come on. I thought it was funny that Jacob said never to let anyone know what you have up your sleeve (tattoos, ha ha) and that the secret to real power was to never let anyone see your face, just as he entered his secret HQ using... um... facial recognition?

There's no question that the conflict between Jacob and Michael feels deeply personal now, though, and Jacob is working for me as a villain. In fact, I'm getting creeped out about whatever he's doing with Sara. We didn't see her at all in this episode, but Van Gogh was actually disturbed by whatever it was that Jacob did to Sara in their basement. And then the scenes where A&W was sitting quietly in another room wearing a Sara-like wig so that she could trap Michael, plus the scratch marks and bloodstains Sara left in the trunk of the car — is anyone else having flashbacks to a head in a box? If Sara dies in next week's finale, I will be extremely unhappy. They wouldn't do that to us, would they?

Van Gogh keeps asking questions, while A&W is still following orders. Is it me, or do they seem to be getting less intelligent as the series progresses? I suppose we'll see next week if either or both of them have changed sides. That might be the answer to the double shooting cliffhanger suggested that Michael and Linc have both been taken out.

Moving on to the B-plot, we have T-Bag and Whip on the shores of Lake Michigan, where they have dramatically discovered that they are father and son. The "whip hand" thing really should have pointed at Whip having a relationship with T-Bag, who has always longed so deeply for a family that he kept creating fake families out of his victims. What has Michael tasked T-Bag to do? The suggestion is that Michael wants T-Bag to take a life, but that certainly won't be Whip. And what on earth does it have to do with a bottle of blood concealed on a buoy in the middle of Lake Michigan?

Whatever it is, it smells like redemption. Why else would they bring such an evil, unrepentant murderer and pedophile like T-Bag back for the revival?

I have to say that the T-Bag situation might have seemed a bit more probable if we also hadn't gotten Abruzzi's son Luca as Linc's former employer. Linc told Michael that he and Sofia did open a dive shop seven years ago, but it didn't work out and without Michael around to stop him, Linc edged back into a life of crime. Way to take responsibility for yourself, Linc.

Next week, the final episode. Unless it isn't. There's some talk that Fox is thinking about more Prison Break. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If they use it as an excuse to leave us with a cliffhanger, again, I will be extremely unhappy.

Bits:

-- C-Note and Sheba had some nice moments. I particularly liked Sheba's moment in the car where she pretended to be an innocent bystander. Or maybe the correct term is "by-driver."

-- The airplane deception with the cellphone was fun, especially Sucre's smile when he saw Van Gogh and A&W take the bait.

-- "Steganography:" According to "Thoreau," it's concealing information in code inside of digital files. Sort of what Michael does on paper all the time. The word makes me think of dinosaurs, though.

-- Even though the pirate ship map was a trap created by Jacob, little Mike is apparently a lot like his father when it comes to cleverness and coding.

-- The Elvis stuff still hasn't been explained, but somebody had to have put that bottle of blood on the buoy in the middle of Lake Michigan. Unless Michael did it between assignments? I'm confused.

-- This week's mythological reference was the fact that Jacob sees himself as a Hydra. That's not a good look, Jacob.

-- Didn't we learn at some point in the original series that T-Bag is sterile?

-- Is the wound on Dominic Purcell's face in this episode real? I remember that he got hurt during filming.

-- Sheba: "It's the punch you don't see coming that knocks you out."

While I seem to be complaining a lot, I enjoyed this episode. Three out of four black SUVs,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

2 comments:

  1. I bet they will do a cliffhanger like the X-Files revival and annoy everyone but the head executive who thought that up... I'm also on the fence about a next season because I don't want Heat Wave writen out of the Berlantiverse.

    There are still things to clear up: what was Michael showing to the Elvis impersonator, who nabbed Mike and then let him go in the last ep, who is T-bag supposed to kill and who did Jacob call and refered to as sir. All of that can serve as cliffhangers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Steganography:" ...The word makes me think of dinosaurs, though.

    Psychic link intact.

    Van Gogh and A&W both have asymmetrical ears. It's an odd coincidence.

    ReplyDelete

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