Heading into this “two-hour event,” I was wondering how the show was going to take off in a new direction once the boys escaped Sona. Would they join (or chase) Whistler and Susan as they looked for whatever it is they want on the bottom of the ocean? Would they try to find the money (from the first season) that’s sitting in a bag at the bottom of the cove as they dodge the Panamanian law? Would Michael discover that Sara was dead and seek vengeance on her murderers?
What we got was four more days in Sona. Oh, and the big twist – Susan’s real name is Gretchen and she knows Whistler. Apparently, he’s her boss. Yawn.
For someone who wants her boss out of Sona safely, I find Susan to be grouchy and unhelpful. First, she kills Michael’s girlfriend, which was a really risky move. She didn’t know that Linc wasn’t going to tell his brother about her death, and if/when Michael found out, he’s just as likely to freak out and stop planning the escape as he was to keep pushing forward to try to save LJ. The best she can do on the photo is give the brothers the same one she gave them before, which is pretty sketchy considering all the resources the Company is supposed to have. I don’t know if these plot holes are intentional or just a natural part of the series, but they sure are distracting.
Apparently, the purpose of Tyge’s arrival at Sona was so that he could be killed, creating suspense around whether or not Whistler would be available for the escape. This is also a very fishy plot point. Is Tyge really just this random guy that got thrown into Sona and just happened to recognize Whistler? Come on.
I’ve got to hand it to Linc. He went almost a whole season without making a boneheaded move then, on the day of the escape, he lets it slip that “something went wrong drugging the guard, but it’s OK now” when he could have said nothing and Susan wouldn’t have known about the daylight escape attempt. Way to go, Linc! I love how he told Michael that “she figured it out.” Yeah, right. She figured it out because you told her, you dolt!
The writers are being a little heavy-handed trying to humanize Bellick. First, Tyge embarrasses him in line and then he’s devastated by the news of Sara’s death. Suddenly, he’s this compassionate, misunderstood guy. Did anyone else suspect that he was in fact Tyge’s murderer? I know Michael found the knife in Mahone’s cell, but that could have been planted. I wonder if that’s going to come up again.
Speaking of Tyge’s death, what does the betrayal of Luchero’s man (discovered via the cigar stub) have to do with Whister? In other words, why did Luchero let Whistler go after killing his man? I don’t know what one has to do with the other, especially when Luchero goes on and on about whatever justice he thinks exists in Sona. I think that the writers sometimes use shocking moments like that as misdirection so that we don’t notice them shoving a bunch of shit under the rug.
How about that brutal fistfight between Michael and Whistler where each guy lands like 10 punches yet neither guy gets a bloody lip or a black eye? I’m sure this had something to do with not wanting to give pretty boy Michael a black eye for the next five episodes, but it’s just too silly to ignore.
As you can probably tell, I wasn’t a big fan of these two episodes. Once Michael sent Whistler back up the ladder, I knew we were in for several more episodes in Sona, and it’s starting to feel a little tedious. This part of “Prison Break” is starting to drag out, and the show feels like one big tease. They tried to kick things up a notch by having Luchero’s power taken away from him, meaning that he now wants to escape, and by revealing that Susan/Gretchen really works for Whistler, but after almost two hours of teasing, it just feels like too little, too late.
