Director: Dwight Little
Spoilers. Everybody loves Bellick. Or so you'd think, based on this episode, which plays like a syrupy eulogy at times -- with flashbacks, anecdotes and violin music interrupting events as people reminisce about the man who (let's not forget) spent season 1 as their hated prison warden, season 2 as a bounty hunter causing trouble, and season 3 half-naked drinking from puddles…This week, Michael (Wentworth Miller) receives the rest of Whistler's blueprints of Scylla from Gretchen (Jodi Lynn O'Keefe), but is at a loss to decipher them. There seems to be an intentional gap in the logic of the schematics, with a hidden codeword providing the name "David Baker" (the architect of Scylla's security). Unfortunately, Michael collapses and is rushed to hospital by Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies) to undergo a brain scan, leaving the team to go it alone…
Mahone (William Fichtner) tracks down David Baker (Keith Szarabajka), poising as a Company employee who needs the missing Scylla schematic information to carry out changes. Linc (Dominic Purcell) and Sucre (Amaury Nolasco) continue to try and break into Scylla underneath GATE, coming up against a thick concrete wall, where Sucre accidentally triggers a pressure-sensitive booby-trap on the floor.
Above ground, T-Bag (Robert Knepper) can't defer his business activities with GATE any longer, as he's pressured into giving a pitch to a roomful of businessmen as salesman extraordinaire Cole Pfeiffer. At the same time, T-Bag's collaborator Trishanne (Shannon Lucio) arouses his suspicions when she mentions Whistler (a name she shouldn't be aware of), and her true identity is later revealed…
I'm always impressed by how much content the writers can cram into episodes; hitting their act-breaks with decent climaxes and gradually building a corkscrew of momentum. It's a trick the show has become very adept at -- sweeping you along to make you forget just how utterly ridiculous it all is. Scylla is still a big macguffin (although we do see it for the first time, and it doesn't resemble a bomb), and now Whistler's map is attributed to a different man to further extend the mission.
If there's one thing Prison Break needs to get a handle on, it's making the threat posed by the Company more substantial. We understand the characters are fighting for their personal freedom (although even that sometimes drifts from your mind), but the haziness surrounding the Company's plans is just becoming irritating. This is possibly because the writers don't quite know themselves. Of all the TV dramas on-air, Prison Break is the only one where it feels like they're making it up episode-to-episode.
The subplot are what they are: Michael and Sara spend the episode in hospital, both actors struggling with poor material; Mahone gets some action in David Baker's luxury home when real Company agents arrive to ask David how to dismantle Scylla's security quicker, so they can move it; Linc, Sucre and Gretchen have to disarm a booby-trap (unaware there's a simple off-button behind a wall panel!), and T-Bag somehow gets through his pitch by using his prison experiences and relationship with Bellick to captivate his audience.
Indeed, the abiding memory of this episode is the rather corny deference to Bellick -- a character the writers clearly have great affection for (two of them cameo in the T-Bag "eulogy" scene), but it just begs the question: why was Bellick allowed to become totally redundant from season 3 if they liked him so much?
Awkward flashbacks are used to try and make us feel Bellick was a really great guy at heart, but it doesn't really wash. He was certainly sympathetic at times (like when we discovered he was a mollycoddled mummy's boy back in season 2), but for the most part he was tedious and unnecessary character. It was nice to give him a heroic end last week, and obviously his death had to be felt and mentioned in this episode, but the reactions were taken to an extreme that made it feel comical.
Overall, "The Legend" (not referring to Bellick) was a typical episode of Prison Break: two subplots nudge important mythology along (Michael's tumour, Scylla's blueprint), while the other two are just there to crank up a bit of tension in the episode (T-Bag's pitch, Sucre's booby-trap). The revelation that Trishanne is working for Don Self (Michael Rapaport) was probably not planned from the start (or am I underestimating the writers?) and doesn't seem to make much sense. I mean, how did Don know to send her undercover at GATE? Wasn't Scylla's location beneath GATE a big secret, only discoverable if you have Whistler's bird book?
11 November 2008
Sky1, 10pm
Cast: Wentworth Miller (Michael), Dominic Purcell (Lincoln), Michael Rapaport (Don), Amaury Nolasco (Sucre), William Fichtner (Mahone), Jodi Lyn O'Keefe (Gretchen), Robert Knepper (T-Bag), Wade Williams (Bellick), Sarah Wayne Callies (Sara), Leon Russom (General Krans), Shannon Lucio (Trishanne), Keith Szarabajka (David Allen Baker), Dan Sachoff (Aide), Jude Ciccolella (Howard Scuderi), Michael Bryan French (Gregory White), Stacy Haiduk (Lisa Tabak) & Jennifer Hetrick (Elaine Baker)
