We knew this was coming. Once Michael started having nosebleeds, it was obvious that his illness was going to play out at some point this season. I thought it might be some company-inflicted disorder that would lead to a season-ending cliffhanger, but it’s just an old (and rare) genetic disease that he inherited from his mother. And this little disease has horrible timing.
I mean, really, what are the odds that he would need surgery just as he and the gang are about to crack Scylla?
“Even though I’m with Sara and have everything to live for, I’m going to stubbornly put off getting treatment for the brain disease that killed my mother.”
In many ways, this was just a filler episode with one big twist. First, Sucre steps on a land mine and it takes twenty or thirty minutes of screen time to save him. And seemingly every character spends a few moments reminiscing about Brad Bellick, who was a total asshole in Season One, for those that don’t remember. Bellick’s death got to Sucre so much that he started yelling at everyone in Spanish.
However, we did learn a juicy little tidbit about everyone’s favorite receptionist, Trish Ann – she’s a FBI agent working for Don. As soon as she let it slip about Whistler, the cat was out of the proverbial bag. Now T-Bag knows her secret, so it will be interesting to see how the two play each other as the season wears on.
Another plus with Michael sidelined (and Morpheus presumably dead) is that Mahone gets to shine. At this point, he’s probably the show’s most interesting character, so it’s nice to see him on the front lines in the planning and execution stages. His scene posing as a Company man trying to extract info from David Baker was pretty sharp.
“Prison Break” strikes me as a show that would be a lot tighter if it were limited to a 13-episode run like “The Shield” and “Rescue Me” on FX. The creators of those shows don’t have time to mess around will filler episodes and, as a result, every week there is something compelling going on. The good news is that the gang has an impossible task to complete in the next day or so and their leader has to undergo emergency brain surgery. It’s ridiculous, but hey, it’s “Prison Break.”
