Mahone reminds Michael that he better stay alive inside Sona. He's Mahone's only hope of getting out clean on PRISON BREAK: Orientacion.
© FOX Broadcasting
Mania Grade: B-
Starring: Domonic Purcell, Wentworth Miler, William Fichtner, Wade Williams, Sarah Wayne Callies
Created By: Paul Scheuring
Starring: Domonic Purcell, Wentworth Miler, William Fichtner, Wade Williams, Sarah Wayne Callies
Created By: Paul Scheuring
PRISON BREAK: Orientacion
By: Stephen LackeyReview Date: Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The summer can be a really long break for shows like Prison Break. The show has a very convoluted plot with many crossing story threads and a fairly large cast so it’s easy to forget different parts of the two previous seasons. To make things worse, the season three premiere kicks off with no “previously on…” This was a terrible mistake from the creators because it would have been easy to do a quick two minute recap and just showing the important bits from the previous season. Due to that, it took me a few minutes of the episode’s running time to re-acclimate myself to the world of Prison Break. Once I was settled in, I was happy to be back in this world though. The creators had previously stated that this would be the last season of Prison Break with Season one being “in the prison”, season two being “on the run”, and the final season being “back in prison”. My first impression of the new story arc introduced in this premiere was “ok, here we go again” but I’ll get to that complaint in a minute.
The episode starts by reintroducing most of the primary characters with Michael, Bellick, Mahone, and T-Bag in Sona, a bad ass Panamanian prison, and Linc on the outside going through proper channels to try and rescue his brother. Linc has been exonerated of all of his charges so this season Linc and Michael have flipped positions. Michael just plans to ride out the day because Linc has been able to get help from the Consulate to move him to a more comfortable prison but things change quickly. Linc gets a call from A.J. and learns that he and Sarah have been kidnapped and will be killed unless Michael helps someone inside Sona escape. This is frustrating because again Michael has to rescue someone who is basically in solitary confinement and escape. Here we have season one all over again with some noticeable differences, mainly the team he will end up working with and the prison he must escape from. Sona is so violent that there are no internal guards, just sharp shooters surrounding the prison. Here’s an interesting question: how do inmates know that they have visitors if there aren’t any guards to go and pull them from the yard for visitation? Obviously it happens somehow because Linc and a mysterious company man have both visited Michael.
Bellick’s situation cracked me up in this episode. If it continues, I may find myself feeling sorry for him but at least for this episode seeing him beat up and walking around the prison in his underwear was hilarious. I spent a lot of the episode wondering where the heck T-Bag was, and when he finally made an appearance in the prison, I wasn’t disappointed. In a matter of minutes, he figured out who the leader of the prison is and he kisses butt pushing his way into the leader’s group. Lechero, the leader of the prison, fears Michael’s charisma and his celebrity status so he sets Michael up as a thief by planting drugs that belonged to another inmate. The way these fights are settled in Sona is a fight to the death in the prison yard. Michael fights and wins but he refuses to kill. Just before the inmate can stab Michael in the back, it’s Mahone to the rescue. He steps out of the crowd and snaps the man’s neck. Mahone knows that he needs Michael alive if he’s ever to get out of Sona alive.
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