Lincoln Burrows

Sort of a weird episode of Prison Break, wasn’t it? There really was no theme or consistent tone set. Maybe that’s because of the screwy FOX scheduling which is forcing our beloved show to take a 6 month hiatus after next week’s so-called “Fall Finale.” Who knows… The show still kicked ass and held a few surprises. Like the fleeting cameo from the man himself, Jesus Christ. Yes, fresh from his appearances on the wall of the underpass in Chicago and the gap in Margaret Perrin’s front teeth, the King of the Jews paid a visit to Fox River Prison.

The show opened inside the prison where Michael was busy in a drainage pipe fiddling with a stash of clothes he had swiped from his possession locker previously. He had secreted a rope inside his jacket lining and reached a room that required its use. However, securing it to the grate at the top would prove to be a problem as it was 20 feet overhead. Hmmmm.Another problem was that there were still too many people in the group slated to make the break. Unfortunately Michael and Lincoln were discussing this fact a bit too loudly and Suge Knight overheard. (Yes, I know his name is C-Note, but the only way I know that and the only way YOU know that is because you checked FOX’s website or imdb or something. I don’t think they’ve ever said it on the show. So I’m sticking with Suge Knight. Deal with it.)

Of course everyone agreed that it would be T-Bag who wouldn’t join the escape so when he entered the room, he immediately picked up on the anti-T-Bag sentiment. Gee, wonder why. Maybe it was the fact that he had tried to kill Michael a few weeks ago? Maybe it was the fact that he’s an avowed racist which I can’t imagine sits well with Suge and Sucre. Maybe it was the fact that he murdered a young guard in cold blood a few weeks ago? Maybe the penchant for pedophilia and gang rape rubs the others the wrong way? Poor, poor T-Bag.

Alas, the inbred redneck had figured on this so he created a little insurance policy for himself; he’d called a contact on the outside and told him of the plans. He would call him 5 minutes before the escape and then 20 minutes afterwards. If that didn’t happen, the guy would call the warden to report an escape. Pretty slick there, T-Bag, pretty slick. Meanwhile, Suge was trying to plant the seed in Sucre’s head that they were the odd men out. Neither really had much to offer in the way of compensation to Michael and they were both minorities. Two words, Suge: Jesse Jackson. Give him a call and you two will be all set. Heck, he’d love the fact that, “Let my people free” would have a double meaning.

Out in the free world, LJ and Veronica had driven Nick to the hospital to get some much needed care. Nick has seen far too many Rambo movies, however, and implored Veronica to just, “Pull the bullet out.” Riiiiight, Nick. As if Veronica would jeopardize getting blood on her at this point. She’s just been living in a grubby cabin for days, been tied up and mildly tortured, and was 2 feet away from a bomb blast and still looked freshly scrubbed. You think she was about to jeopardize her nails at this point? Ewwww, yuck!

At the prison hospital, Michael was somehow poking around his escape hatch that he’d been corroding successfully for a few weeks now. Y’know, just a convicted felon left alone in the infirmary… No big deal. Even Bellick didn’t really think so upon finding Michael there. He was more intent on being the dick he is; “Hey Michael, how’s your whore wife? That’s right, I met your stripper wife from Wuzzitstan and asked her about the credit card she gave you.” Damn, that’s a tight spot to be in – caught alone in the infirmary when he should have been in his cell AND cornered about some contraband he was supplied from the outside. Is it all over for Michael?!

Nope. Dr. Tancredi arrived and shooed that pesky Bellick away with a wave of her magical hand. I know I stopped pointing out the absurdities several weeks ago but this one was hard to ignore, sorry. This afforded Michael another opportunity to woo the lovely Doctor. He told her he’d gotten married solely to give Nika a greencard but she wasn’t buying it. She gave him his shot and simply walked away. And fortunately for Michael, Bellick is like bad guys in old school Nintendo videogames – once he left the room, he apparently completely forgot about the felon he’d found outside of his cell with a credit card he’d gotten from his wife-on-paper only stripper whore wife. Straight up Mega Man, man.

(Props to reader “Bob” for alerting me to Holly Valence who plays Nika. She is much hotter than she is on this show. I’ll let you do the Google Image search if you wish. For the record, I wished.)

Tweener was summarily shot down when he asked to join Michael’s elite group. The Bagger was razzing Westmoreland about the escape and imploring him to back out of it. “The world is all scary out there, old man. There are silicone boobies now and you wouldn’t know what to do with them.” I could think of a million other consequences of the modern world that may confuse Westmoreland more than fake tits, but who knows, T-Bag may be right. Think about it – I’d figure a strip club or a porno magazine would be one the first things a con would experience once on the outside. In the 30 years Westmoreland has been on the inside, all the women in the porn industry have gotten giant fake boobs, shaved off all of their body hair, and made lesbianism de rigueur rather than something a few acid-tripping Amazons would do once in a while when The Strawberry Alarm Clock played Helsinki. So yeah, score another point for T-Bag.

T-Bag’s friend on the outside turned out to be his cousin. Abruzzi found this out somehow and had launched a fairly simple plan to have one of his men on the outside kidnap the guy and hold him captive until after the escape. Meanwhile, Abruzzi’s men on the inside would “take care” of T-Bag. So much for your brilliant plan, T… They’ve chopped off a toe before and screwed out an eyeball. I’m thinking for T-Bag, they should give him an eponymous procedure. Tie his hands back, cut off his sack and stuff it in his mouth and let him choke to death on it. Happy Thanksgiving!

Ahem. Abruzzi’s guy on the outside arrived at the cousin’s house which was a perfect depiction of everything Jeff Foxworthy has taught me. Ok, not everything, as Jeff has taught me oh-so much more. I owe everything to him. All hail Jeff Foxworthy! So… You might be a redneck if you’re related to T-Bag, the son of his father and sister (seriously). You might be a redneck if you read that last sentence and said, “Why did he write ‘seriously,’ at the end?” You might be a redneck if you are still stuck on the word, “Eponymous.” Anyway, the whole kidnapping thing went awry and the mob guy ended up killing T-Bag’s cousin and his 5 year old son. Whoops.

Across the state at the hospital, the ER doctor had some serious questions for Veronica. When a guy comes in with a bullet wound in his back, this is part of the routine. I’d guess a cop would also be involved, but what do I know? The doctor really grilled Veronica who gave the excuse, “He was in the garage and accidentally shot himself.” Puh-leeze… Amazingly, the doctor bought this absurd story and let Veronica go about her business. Concurrently, Veronica let LJ go about his business, which meant taking the car over to his mother’s funeral where Secret Service Agent Pussy was awaiting him.

Agent Pussy watched LJ’s tortured reaction at his mother’s gravesite and didn’t act. He followed the boy to the hospital and up to Nick’s room and didn’t act. His eyes welled up and he pulled out his Little Mermaid kerchief and dabbed at his eyes, careful not to muss his mascara. He pirouetted, snagged some estrogen pills from a passing supply cart, and skipped to his loo right out of the hospital, into his car, and home to his “wife.” We knew this would happen; it was just a matter of when.

At the prison, Michael slipped into the walls again to complete some more prep work for the escape. But this time, Sucre was a bit more suspicious thanks to Suge’s earlier warning. Not only that, he had met up with his girlfriend again who informed him that she was pregnant with his son. Not only that, but Sucre’s nemesis Hector had proposed to her and she was thinking about accepting if only to give the boy a father. In other words, Sucre really needed to escape, so if Michael was playing him, he’d go loco.

Meanwhile, Abruzzi was staring at a rust stain on his cell wall. I mean, really staring at the stain. I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, what is he staring at?!” His boys asked him when, where, and how he wanted T-Bag disposed of but Abruzzi didn’t care – he was too lost in thought staring at that stain. Hey Abruzzi, EdHill’s got some BVDs you’ll just love. He drifted off to sleep and dreamt about the child his hitman killed by accident. He awoke drenched in sweat and once again began staring at that stain on his wall! “Good Lord,” I yelled at my TV, “For the love of God, what IS it?!”

Oh. It was the Good Lord, Jesus, the son of God. Actually, it was totally the head shot press release from “The Passion,” but whatever. It was weird. Abruzzi had found Salvation in, like, 5 hours. Oh boy, wait’ll this gets leaked to the press. The last thing Michael needs is that crowd of true believers showing up at the prison to catch a glimpse of the rust stain. (I believe the last time Jesus (His mother, actually) appeared was in a water stain underneath a highway overpass where… In Chicago!) Oh Jesus.

Then there was a commercial for the new season of “24″ coming in January. Since Jack Bauer is “Disappeared,” I’m hoping he’s now Zack Lauer. That would be cool, that’s all. Then some guy handed Suge Knight a bunch of postcards from Arab countries. Then Warden Pope told T-Bag his cousin nephew were murdered. Then Abruzzi talked to a priest and asked for forgiveness and accepted Jesus into his heart. Then Bellick learned about how Tweener stole the other guard’s watch who had stolen it from Michael’s stash. This paragraph is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever written. Time to move on.

Later, out in the yard, Michael was able to scurry away to turn on a huge water pipe to fill up the room below. The “room below” is the room in which he needs to tie the rope up onto the grate to facilitate the escape. He had calculated exactly how long it would take to fill the volume of the room with as much water as he needed. How he did this without knowing the rate at which the water was flowing is beyond me, but hey, I’m not a genius. A genius who tattooed my entire torso in order to remind me of one phone number, the name of a brand of toilet and a screw, the names of the roads outside the prison, and a couple other dumb things.

Bellick was trying a new tact to get to Michael. He sequestered Tweener and began noisily eating his cheeseburger and fries. He even dunked a fry into his vanilla shake, which he declared, “Mmmm, good.” With the recent spate of Food Network posts here on TVgasm, my thoughts immediately turned to Paula Deen watching this at home thinking to herself, “Mmmm, all he needs to do is add some butter to his shake, y’all!”

Bellick wanted to know whatever Tweener knew about Michael – since he knew that Tweener stole the watch from his guard buddy for Michael. Michael, Michael, Michael. Bellick is so obviously in love with him – dude, just admit it already. Anyway, Bellick was able to bribe Tweener with a cheeseburger. A regular Jeff Probst, this Bellick.

Agent Pussy had arrived home by this point and was noticeably edgy. He rambled on to his wife about how they should move “Out west” like they used to talk about. Like, now. Right now. He then phoned Veronica and cryptically told her to meet him the next morning at some diner where he would spill the beans on the whole conspiracy against Lincoln. Why, oh why, couldn’t he just tell her over the phone I don’t know – nor do I care, really, as I’m fairly certain Agent Kellerman will be taking care of his partner before he can spill the beans.

Well, Things were moving fast at the prison, with Michael running through the final preparations for the escape. He stripped down to his boxers and tattoo shirt, dove into his flooded room and did his best Lara Croft impression from Tomb Raider 2. Swimming underwater while his breath meter dissipated, he was able to tie the rope to the grate, climb out of it, drain the room again, and poke a hole up through the corroded pipe to the infirmary. The path to freedom was now unbroken! Yay! What could go wrong now?

Things were going horribly wrong for T-Bag, as Abruzzi’s men were beating the crap out of him. Abruzzi arrived fresh from his absolution but still held a knife to Bagger’s neck. “Back out or die,” seethed Abruzzi. “Give me your word!” Suddenly T-Bag’s word carries weight? Abruzzi went on to talk about Jesus and forgiveness and all that good stuff while T-Bag did and said whatever he could to save his life. The two reached an agreement and embraced in a warm man-hug. Awww, ain’t that cute. Satisfied, Abruzzi turned to walk away – but T-Bag had other ideas. He produced a razor blade from his shirt cuff and proceeded to brutally slash it across Abruzzi’s carotid artery. This produced a lovely splash of mobster blood across the walls and floor. Hey, I think I saw Buddha in that pool of blood by Abruzzi’s head! Call the faithful!

In the end, Michael made his way back to the work group in the guard break room just as a guard was approaching to check on the progress. Uh-oh, the boys were deep into the pipe they were breaking through and couldn’t hide the floor hole quickly enough. The lookout, Lincoln, had to stall the guard. He tried his best to waste the guard’s time but he wasn’t having it. In fact, he threatened Lincoln with, “Stop or you’ll be sent to solitary!” Um, dude, he’s scheduled to DIE in less than 48 hours – I don’t think that threat carries much weight. And by the way, was Ted Bundy on a work detail 2 days before his date with the chair more or less unsupervised? In the end, small talk didn’t work too well so Lincoln did what came naturally. He punched the guard in the face… Smart, real smart. Sure, it protected the hidey hole but it resulted in Lincoln being taken away under heavy guard.

Whatever will they do next weak to escape? Will Agent Pussy be able to live long enough to help out Veronica? Will T-Bag successfully join the escape? Will Tweener give up any pertinent information? Will we be interested in the continuing saga in May when the show returns? Will you forgive me for what I feel wasn’t my best recapping effort this week? What if I wish you all a Happy, Fun, and Safe Thanksgiving and say that I think you’re all wonderful people?