Aw, Craps.

Thanks, Prison Break, for getting “Viva Las Vegas” stuck in my head, which inevitably morphs into “Viva Viagra” and makes me want to kill myself.

Thanks to the beautiful, beautiful miracle that is DVR, I don’t normally see commercials, but I couldn’t help but notice that the Fox promo monkeys have pounced on Stephen King’s love letter to Prison Break in his EW column. So hey, thanks, Mr. King, for giving these guys some blurbs and maybe an extra viewer or two, and as a token of my appreciation I will forgive you for your egregious dismissal of Mad Men, one of the few things the Emmys and I agree on. (I mean, come on! That scene with the Carousel? John Hamm? Those low-angle, one-take shots? Betty Draper’s slow, quiet, devastating existential breakdown? Come on!) Anyway, Vegas! 4.07 Five the Hard Way. In Cole Pfeiffer’s apartment, Gretchen has T-Bag tied to a chair, grilling him about Whistler’s bird book, which she has found in his possession. T-Bag explains that it was a gift from a dear friend. “The only thing James Whistler ever gave anyone was the clap,” Gretchen says, like she knows what she’s talking about. Hear that, Sofia? And, by extension, Linc? May want to get that checked out. She gives him like five seconds to tell her something she doesn’t already know, and T-Bag jibber jabbers about Cole Pfeiffer and eventually blurts out “Scylla!” He doesn’t know what it is but he knows he’s got the key to it. He wonders what Gretchen is bringing to the table in this partnership, and she’s like, oh, I’m sorry, did you not understand why I’ve been holding this knife? She slices his arm up just for emphasis and threatens to spill his hillbilly guts all over the floor, cause he’s messin with the wrong bitch. Cartoon hearts shoot out of T-Bag’s eyeballs. No, not really, but he does look a bit more enamored than frightened. She’s a feisty one!

“I will eviscerate you!” / “I am lost in your eyes!”

Back at Warehouse of Justice, the Superfriends are totally bummed because before they could make their move on Card Guy #5, he took off for Vegas. Self is all “No field trip!” but Mahone is like, well, we could spend weeks trying to sneak into his heavily guarded mansion, or we could spend two minutes next to him at a casino. Self reluctantly agrees to sign their permission slips, but if they aren’t back by midnight they are SO grounded.

Self calls Mahone outside for a little chat about their mutual friend Wyatt. Self is shitting bees, sure that he’s at the top of Wyatt’s hit list. Mahone is all, oh yeah, totally, you’re a dead man. Self is genuinely seeking his advice, though, agent to agent, and Mahone knows that a dead Self means they all go back to jail. He says he’s tracked down killers, rapists, you name it, but a smartypants engineer got to him, because he stopped running. Michael took control of the game, and that’s what Self has to do with the Company.

Speaking of which, Baldy is reminding Wyatt that killing a federal agent is a total pain in the ass, and if Michael is working with the government they’ve got bigger problems than one schmuck from Homeland Security. Wyatt argues that Don Self is the head of the snake in this scenario, and Baldy says fine, knock yourself out. “Make it look like an accident,” he says, like television bad guys always say to television hitmen. Wyatt says his fee just doubled, and Baldy sort of smiles, like “Oh, you rascal you! I can’t say no to that face!”

Bellick gets a call from Booberella, who seems to have reconsidered tattling on T-Bag, provided she can make a couple grand for doing so. They arrange to meet at noon. Roland says that the next card is more important, so they should do Vegas first, then worry about T-Bag. Which is a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but Sucre tells him to shut up anyway, probably mostly out of habit. Mahone offers to stay and take care of the T-Bag situation, and Michael agrees they should split up – Linc, Sara, Sucre and Roland go to Vegas and the rest of them handle T-Bag.

Michael, with his serious face on, asks Sara to promise him something – get him Carrot Top’s autograph! Haha see cause we all thought it was going to be something dire and whatnot. I appreciate the attempt at levity, Prison Break, but you’ve spent three seasons taking yourself very, very seriously, so this kind of thing is going to take some getting used to. Baby steps! But it got Sara to smile, so that was nice. She doesn’t do that very often and it’s very pretty.

“You silly billy! You know just what to say to make a gal forget that just a couple of days ago her last remaining friend was murdered for helping her and now his killer is after her too! You’re almost as funny as Carrot Top!”

Michael and Mahone are waiting to hear back from Bellick, who’s meeting with Booberella and should have her intel any minute now. He calls saying she wants more money, and that they should probably come talk to her in person. Come on, nobody’s spidey sense is tingling between you two geniuses? Mahone’s kicks in a little too late, as they walk right into T-Bag’s trap. He is just tickled freaking pink to be holding a gun to Michael’s head, and Michael all but rolls his eyes, like, oh for fucksakes, this guy again? Booberella dutifully zip-ties everybody’s hands and loads them into the van, but Mahone gets away, much to T-Bag’s chagrin. Back at Cole Pfeiffer’s apartment, Bellick and Booberella are handcuffed on the lovely blonde maple floor, but Michael is special, so he gets tied to a chair. See, T-Bag would totally love to do terrible, terrible things to Michael for his own enjoyment, but it turns out he needs him. He whips out the famed bird book and demands that Michael figure it out this instant. Michael’s all “Why, I haven’t the faintest!” but T-Bag knows they hunted him down for this book so he best get to decipherin’. If he wants his brain to remain inside his skull, he’ll write down everything he already knows about Scylla, and everything he learns from the book. As T-Bag sashays away, Michael remembers his ankle monitor. Oh, right. I feel better.

Self isn’t checking his GPS just at the moment, however. He’s in a storeroom, digging through musty old files. He finds what he’s looking for: It’s a file labeled “The Comrie Group.” Is that supposed to mean something to me? Meanwhile, Wyatt is loading his Kellermanâ„¢ Brand Body Disposal Kit into his trunk. Really, Wyatt? Lye? How the hell is lye going to figure into your “make it look like an accident” plan? (Headline: HOMELAND SECURITY AGENT KILLED IN FREAK SOAPMAKING ACCIDENT.) Anyway, Self grabs his file and heads to a clandestine parking garage meeting with Mahone, who fills him in on the whole “Michael and Bellick are being held hostage by a one-handed batshit nuts serial killer nursing a serious grudge” development. Self offers to go with Mahone on his rescue mission, but Mahone just says to “stick to the plan.”

And hey, Vegas! Incidentally, everything I know about Las Vegas I learned from Showgirls, the most bafflingly, stunningly ridiculous film ever made. I suggest you watch it immediately. So here we all are in um. Some casino not featured in Showgirls. Sara’s a little worried that they haven’t heard from Michael yet, but Linc is all business, ready to get the card and get out. Roland is positively giddy about his awesome field trip, but the security staff watching the monitors recognize him right away as a troublemaker.

“Nooo! Not my brain! My boobs can’t survive without it!”

Michael is piecing together the individual bird book pages, revealing what looks like a map. He sets aside one page that just says “GATE” on it, which I totally remember from last season, so hey, cool trick with the bird book continuity, writers! He asks T-Bag what Gate is, but T-Bag thinks Michael’s just stalling till he can “think up some McGyver way to get your ass out of here.” Heh. He needs Michael alive, so as incentive he threatens poor innocent Booberella, all “how far gone is Michael Scofield?” It works, and Michael relents. He tells T-Bag it’s not a map, it’s a blueprint. We see that Gretchen is secretly observing the proceedings from another room, and dammit, she notices Bellick’s ankle monitor. T-Bag’s phone rings, a signal from Gretchen, and he ducks into the bedroom, where she tells him that Bellick’s wearing a government-issued monitor and Michael’s probably got one too. Feds will be streaming in there any second now. And hey, speaking of, there’s Mahone, standing right outside the apartment building with his GPS tracker thingy, staring at the little blobs marked “Bellick” and “Scofield.”

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang is all dolled up, roaming the floor of the casino looking for their guy. And I don’t fully understand this exchange between Linc and Sara, but I had a sudden revelation as it unfolded: Linc? Is kind of a dick. Anyway, Sara for some reason feels that his assertion that “Vegas isn’t his town” is out of character, and she won’t let him gruffly mumble his way out of telling her what’s on his mind. “Michael ever tell you about Mom?” he asks. “No,” she says, like it just occurred to her that Michael didn’t just spring fully formed from the Beautiful Genius Factory. Well, long story short, Mom’s where Michael got his big smart brain from, and hers had tumor in it that killed her when she was 31. Her first symptom was nosebleeds, and Michael, who just turned 31, started having them a couple of days ago. Happy birthday, Michael! Sara is understandably troubled. Sucre calls to say he’s spotted their guy, and Linc abruptly leaves her there to absorb the huge cancer-shaped bombshell he just dropped on her. What a dick. I mean, okay, he’s had a rough few months, but so has everybody else. Jerk. Oh, who am I kidding, I can’t stay mad at you, you big sexy oaf!

“Uh, I have a couple of followup questions about the whole brain tumor thing, if you have a sec? No? Okay, I’ll just stand here then.”

Mahone is sneaking around the apartment, but when he gets there he finds the ankle monitors lying around, without Michael and Bellick attached to them. He also finds a totally awesome s1 throwback origami swan – it’s the page of the bird book with “GATE” on it, so I guess Mahone is supposed to be smart enough to figure that out?

They’ve relocated to Booberella’s apartment. Michael has the whole book pieced together, and it is in fact a blueprint of the Gate building. T-Bag is positively salivating over it, and Michael says he’s done all he can with the book, now he needs to see the building. He’s all “you can smell that Scylla money too, just like me!” and Michael says yeah, whatever, I’m in it for the money, we’re exactly alike, blah blah can we just go there now?

Wyatt pulls up at Self’s house. “Brunnnggg!” says the soundtrack. The house has recently been abandoned in a hurry, and he calls Baldy to let him know Self has cleared out. “Well, call our people inside the Bureau and LAPD!” he says, omitting the implied “duh!” at the end. Baldy’s assistant interrupts this conversation to let him know that Don Self is here to see him. Cool.

So Sucre has spotted Cardholder #5, and it’s Linc’s job to sit next to him at a poker table for two minutes or so. But there is an unforeseen issue with the Data Sucker Upper; you see, there is so much Data within Suck Upping range that the memory fills up right away. They’ll have to get to him when he’s not around so much Suckuppable Data, is the point, which won’t be easy with all the slot machines and whatnot.

Gretchen pulls up from running an errand. “Did you take care of our troll problem?” T-Bag asks her. She opens the trunk to reveal a tied up, gagged, and beaten Andy, the smarmy guy from Gate.

Back in their hotel room, Roland is explaining what happened with the card, and Sara realizes that the Data it’s Sucking Up includes the slot machines, and when they’re about to pay out. That’s pretty much what he invented the thing for in the first place, right? He’s all “heavens, no, it’s totally unforeseen!” Before Linc can bully him around too much, Sucre calls from the pool: he’s spotted their guy, but he’s wearing a really gross tiny swimsuit so there’s no way he has the card on him. Now they have to find a way to get into his room.

“ROLAND SAY TOO MANY WORDS! LINC SMASH ROLAND NOW!”

Self is let into Baldy’s office, but before he can get a word out, Baldy starts monologuing, all “How did this moment play out in your head when you rehearsed it? Did you think you would be this nervous?” Oooh, scary mindgames. Whatever. Self says he didn’t think much past giving him these files. The General thumbs through them and is unimpressed. “Berlin, Nigeria, The Comrie Group,” he reads. He says this is all old news. Self explains that sealed copies of these files, plus a letter summarizing his investigation of the General in these matters, were mailed to five lawyers around the country. So if anything happens to him they’ll be opened. The General blows him off, saying they’ll find cold trails, nothing linking him to any of it. But Self is all, ha, it doesn’t matter, because if a government agent is found floating in a river somewhere and you’re the guy he was investigating, there will be surveillance and media coverage and you’ll have way more trouble conducting your nefarious dealings with all that attention, so how about you back off. Awesome. He even mentions Laos, and Baldy can’t hide a quick “aw crap!” expression. He gathers himself and tells Self he’s not the first person to come to him like this. Most of the people who have are now his colleagues. Self says thanks but no thanks, and Baldy’s all “we’ll see.”

So back at Chez Booberella, Gretchen reads aloud from the resignation letter she’s written on Andy’s behalf. Andy, whose face is all kinds of fucked up, signs it and says he doesn’t even know who she is, so she could just let him go. She tells him to shut up and he starts crying like a little girl. And for good reason! He’s saying “I’m sorry!” as Gretchen grabs a cool piano-wire garrote and tells Bellick and Booberella to consider this a warning. We don’t see her strangle him, but we hear it, but also, that’s piano wire, so she very well could be slicing his neck instead. Luckily, or perhaps not, they leave that to our imagination.

T-Bag takes Michael into the Gate office, blah blah top salesman in the Northeast, blah blah. Michael ignores him completely and looks for the 8×10 room that was supposed to be Whistler’s point of entry. “That’s a closet,” T-Bag says. “No,” Michael smartmouths, “it isn’t.”

Poor Sara. She’s sent over to the poolside bar to try to get into Cardholder #5′s room, and she’s all hot and cleavagey and smiley. She tells him that omg, she’s so embarrassed to ask this, but she’s at a bachelorette party and there’s a scavenger hunt and she’s supposed to get her picture taken in a “whale’s suite.” He’s all “I’m a whale! But no, you can’t come to my room, sorry.” Ouch! How many undercover missions are going to involve crushing Sara’s ego? The bartender tells her not to worry about it, she’s not his type; apparently, before she showed up, Card Guy asked him if he wanted to party. Immediately we cut to Sucre, telling Linc “No, absolutely not!” Roland encourages him to take one for the team; Maricruz never has know! Ha. Sucre is not as amused as Roland and I are, but Linc says all he has to do is get to his room and stay there for two minutes, no funny business necessary. They don’t have any other option. Sucre reluctantly takes the Data Sucker Upper and heads to the pool.

Michael digs around the storage closet, and T-Bag’s like, duh, there’s nothing back there, I checked. But of course Michael finds a hollow spot in the floor right away. He rips up the carpet and ta da! A trapdoor. “You and me in a dark hole,” T-Bag muses. “Just like old times, pretty!” Yuck.

Damn, you make it out of Fox River with your virtue intact, and now this.

Speaking of yuck, Card Guy is laying out by the pool, wearing entirely too little clothing for a gentleman of his advanced years. Sucre puts his game face on and takes the chair next to his, removes his shirt, and starts with the small talk. Oh dear, he’s broke in Vegas, whatever will he do? But hey, Card Guy might be able to help him make an easy thousand bucks. Well that was quick! He invites Sucre up to his suite for some cognac.

Michael and T-Bag drop down into some kind of utility room thingy. Your average Prison Break secret hidey hole, you know the drill. Anyway, T-Bag wants to know what’s next, and Michael’s all “I don’t know, I’m done helping you.” T-Bag points the gun at him as incentive: “What’s next?” Michael is standing next to a caged-off area of some kind, and he just looks idly at it and muses, “I think I’ll lock you in this room, and you’ll go back to Fox River.” T-Bag laughs, until he turns and runs face-first into a pistol-whip from Mahone. Heh. They take his gun and lock him in the storage cage thingy. Mahone says Self’s on his way, so I guess this is the plan he was referring to in the parking garage earlier. “Got your message” he says, showing Michael the origami swan. Wait, what? So Mahone figured out what “Gate” meant, then told Self, then wandered around the office till he found the open door, then the open trap door? I mean, sure, I guess I can buy that, why the hell not. T-Bag is absolutely rabid, yelling like a crazy person, and they just kind of ignore him and walk off.

Sucre and his new sugar daddy are in his big fancy suite, chatting about Vegas and how any form of pleasure is acceptable there. Sucre is squirmy. At one point Card Guy opens the briefcase he’s keeping his card in. Roland notices the Sucker Upper is filling up and says Sucre must be in close proximity, probably getting oiled. I am finding these sophomoric gay jokes amusing, but Linc looks like he’s about to grab Roland and snap him in half over his knee like a really annoying twig. Card Guy takes one of many thousand dollar chips out of the briefcase and asks if Sucre’s ever been in the military. He’s all “no sir,” which I also find amusing. Well, Card Guy was in the military, and long story short, he got a purple heart for a friendly fire exchange that left him with nonfunctional man parts. Sucre is confused, and so am I. “I’d like you to meet my wife,” he says, and a woman who is the very definition of “cougar” stands grinning in the doorway. He can’t have sex with her, so he pays other people have to do it for him. Sucre, at this point, does not say, “oh, wow, misunderstanding, I’m totally gay and those pneumatic breasts do not appeal to me in any way so I’ll be going now, kthanxbai!” Sucre considers. This is a different proposal entirely! He looks at the chip and makes a “eh, might as well!” face. I have to say that I really didn’t see that twist coming at all, and I love it when that happens.

Meanwhile, we see the others, obviously impatient, waiting for Sucre. He walks in and heads directly for a beer. Linc doesn’t ask any questions, just tells Roland to download the card info and then it’s time to go. Roland can’t resist asking what happened. “His wife was up there.” “And…?” “Stays in Vegas” he says, handing over the Data Sucker Upper. In all fairness, it was a pretty sweet deal. As they’re headed out of the casino, Roland, all shifty-eyed again, says he’s gonna hit the head and catch up with them. Oh, you are not. He consults his Sucker Upper and finds a slot machine he can tell is about to pay out, and sure enough it does. Also, he literally could not look more suspicious. The security guys from earlier corner him pretty quickly, calling him by name and reminding him he wasn’t supposed to show his squirrely face around there again. In the entire state of Nevada, even. Oh, and also, they confiscate the Data Sucker Upper. Way to ruin everything for a few quarters you didn’t even get to keep, genius. LINC ANGRY. Roland says the data’s already downloaded, but Linc reminds him that he said he’d need a month to make a new one, so card #6, which I guess is Baldy’s, will be a lot harder to get without it.

You can go ahead and make your own “helping hand/lending a hand/give him a hand/you gotta hand it to him” joke here.

This scene with T-Bag should not be as funny as it is. Props again to Robert Knepper for doing such great things with such an absurd role. He’s trying to unlock the door to the cage, and he’s using his rubber hand as an extension of his good hand. Which is funny. But then the rubber hand falls to the ground on the wrong side of the door, which is extra funny, and he loses his shit, screaming incoherent obscenities like Homer Simpson. Self, Mahone and Michael listen from the comfort of Cole Pfeiffer’s office. Self says Bellick and Booberella are fine, and he’ll keep T-Bag in protective custody until they get Scylla, then give the Fox River guys an awesome, batshit nuts present. Which, what? Why not send him there now? How can he help with Scylla, and why does he have to do it in federal custody? Anyway, Michael explains that the secret room is just the beginning – there’s a tunnel entrance down there that goes to the building where Baldy’s office is. Michael says the substructure is easy as pie to get into, but they’ll need access to Gate for a couple of days. Mahone suggests that if Self can get them some IRS IDs, they’ll be able to spend as much time as they want in there and nobody will bother them.

During this walk-and-talk outside the building, a phone rings. From an envelope under a trash can. Oh, that’s never good. Sure enough, it’s Gretchen, doing the whole “I can see you but you can’t see me! Muahaha!” thing. Also in the envelope is a page of the book Michael hasn’t seen. Gretchen tells Self that if she doesn’t see T-Bag, they don’t get the rest of the pages. What does she still need with him? I hope I’m missing something, otherwise this is the grossest ‘ship ever. Anyway, Michael grabs the phone, all “who is this?” “Hello, Michael,” says Gretchen, who didn’t kill his girlfriend after all but he’s still got a pretty serious bone to pick with her. Huh huh. Bone.

We’re off next week for baseball-related reasons, so we have awhile to think about all this. How will they get the last card, the über-card from the über-cardholder, without a Data Sucker Upper? I would guess that Self could call up the casino and just say Homeland Security needs to confiscate it and they’d hand it right over, but that wouldn’t be very interesting and it certainly wouldn’t fill up 15 more episodes. I look forward to seeing how long they can draw it out. See you after the National League Championship!