Prison Break

NYPress.com
GIVE A BROTHER A BREAK
Pros hunt for cons on ‘Prison Break’

If they gave an Emmy for Creepiest Performance in a Forgotten Drama, William Fichtner surely would have won last year for playing the alien-infested sheriff in ABC’s “Invasion.” Now exorcised of space creatures, but with the same heart-stopping glare, Fichtner is Alexander Mahone, the FBI agent assigned to capture eight escapees in the fine second term of “Prison Break” on FOX.

Season One was tense and macho. Lincoln Burrows (how’s that for the name of a righteous runaway), was sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. His brother, Michael Scofield (preferring his mother’s maiden name), botches a robbery in order to get to his brother’s keeper and hatch an escape. As played by Wentworth Miller, Scofield oozes sweaty calm like a young Clint Eastwood. He also happens to have blueprints of the prison mapped on his body, disguised as an elaborate tattoo. As the days counted down to zero for Burrows, Scofield and a gang of six, managed to free Lincoln, scale the wall and flee into summer replacement season.

September finds the convicts scattering in various directions, Mahone’s nerves all atingle and Scofield stuck with some pretty insinuating skin art. The most outlandish of the other criminals is T-Bag, an Alabama rapist and animal abuser who spends the better part of two episodes toting his severed hand in a beer cooler before forcing a veterinarian to reattach it to his bloodied stump. Fresh from a kill, T-Bag partakes in an amusing bit of product placement as he activates the OnStar Hands-Free Calling system of a stolen SUV and asks for directions. Meanwhile the brothers head to Utah, where there might be some buried cash, and the rest avoid being killed off, with varying degrees of success. Additionally, there’s a redneck prison guard out for justice, Stacy Keach wandering around as the forlorn warden, and a secondary plot involving assassination, a house with no exits and the vice president’s brother.

Despite such unlikely scenarios and hilarious villains, the writers manage a cohesive intelligence. Fichtner’s honed performance brings it out in scenes such as a press conference in the premiere episode, where he lectures on John Wilkes Booth and then perfectly encapsulates the prison show genre by observing, “In 140 years, the fundamental mind of the escaped man has not changed. He is still afraid. And he will stop at nothing in his attempt at flight.”

- Stan Friedman   September 13, 2006