Our Lady of El Camino

Previously on Prison Break: Michael and Link parted ways with the other escapees. Sucre found out that his girlfriend Maricruz was being stolen away from him by a guy named Hector. C-Note told his family that he’s coming home. Michael and Link lost their escape car and all of their gear. Dr. Tancredi was revealed as a cleaned-up junkie, and then as a no-longer-cleaned-up junkie. Michael talked to Nika, the stripper he married to get her a green card, and Bellick questioned her. The Secret Service dude asked President Patricia Wettig whom he’s working for, and she said he’s working for her. Bellick got fired and then decided to go after the reward money instead of killing himself. Westmoreland told Michael about the hidden money in Utah. And finally, Michael and Link escaped after failing to bust L.J. out of the courthouse, but then Link couldn’t run anymore, because he’d been shot in the leg.

Whew! That’s a lot of previouslys. Know who we didn’t see? T-Bag. Also, no sign of Tweener and sweet young cannon-fodder Debra Jean. This week’s show opens with Agent Mahone still standing outside the courthouse, wondering which brother got shot and leaked the pool of blood on the ground in front of him. Mahone thinks back to a conversation that he had earlier with Ms. Lang, a woman working in the command center that’s been set up to track the escapees. She told him that if Michael and Link seek medical attention, they’ll be caught. As for the other escapees, they don’t seem to have killed anybody yet. Mahone remembers telling Ms. Lang that escapees always make mistakes.Cut to the apartment of Michael’s pseudo-wife, Nika. There’s some frantic knocking; she opens the door and lets in Michael and a wounded Link. Michael asks her for cayenne pepper, rubbing alcohol, towels, and painkillers. Link asks for booze. Mm, sounds like a delicious recipe. Michael does some amateur doctoring and apologizes to Nika for coming there; he says he knows that it wasn’t part of their deal for the green card, but he had no choice. She says she’s been worried about him, and the police have already visited her. Michael announces that he’s going to retrieve their getaway car. Link tells him not to; they can get another one. But Michael says that only that car will do, because it contains everything they need for their escape. I wonder what he’s got in there. My bet is: directions to the city of Utah, and plenty of needles and tattoo ink so that he doesn’t forget his own name on the way there.

Michael leaves the apartment and goes to the place where he and Link had to abandon the car, outside of the hardware store. The car is no longer there, duhviously. Remember how the police were swarming all over that car the last time you saw it, Michael? Well, I’m predicting that they impounded it. Yeesh. However, there’s a bunch of broken glass where the car used to be parked, so I guess maybe now we’re supposed to think that it was stolen. Michael examines a piece of broken glass and then checks out a bar code on his wrist. Oh wow, if a person gets tattooed with a bar code, will it be scannable at the grocery store? That would be pretty cool. I wonder if Michael is priced by the pound. Mm, Grade A Wentworth Miller. Where was I?

Mahone is back in the command center. Some guy brings him a backpack that the police just recovered. It looks like somebody did steal a bunch of the stuff that was in Michael’s car – we see cell phones and fake passports. Michael’s name on his fake passport is “Phineas McClintock,” for those who care about such things. Mahone says that Michael has just made his first mistake.

After a commercial break, Bellick is in a convenience store shopping for beer and jerky. He becomes irate when they don’t have teriyaki-flavored turkey jerky, and he makes the clerk go in the back to look for some. The clerk has the security guard come over to man the cash register, and Bellick’s eyes pop out when he sees that the security guard is Geary – the prison guard who just ratted him out and got him fired. Bellick punches Geary and they start to full-on fight. Of course, all TV directors love fights in convenience stores, because you get to have the combatants knock over the racks of junk food, and that makes a nice satisfying crashing sound.

Convenience-store owners, take note: This is what happens when you don’t stock enough flavors of turkey jerky.

In the next scene, Bellick and Geary are drinking outside on the hood of a car, having obviously both been kicked out of the store. They seem to have put their differences aside. Apparently a good fistfight will do that. I am assuming this is a guy thing, because it sure doesn’t make any sense to me. Bellick and Geary decide to team up to go after the reward money. And I must renew my earlier objection – I just don’t believe that a couple of recently fired corrupt prison guards would be allowed to collect the reward money on a bunch of convicts who escaped from prison on these guys’ watch.

Michael shows up at a tow lot and asks whether his car was brought there. At the same time, Mahone is questioning the guy who stole Michael’s backpack out of the parked car. And here I realize that I was wrong about something, because when Michael and Link fled the hardware store and were forced to abandon their car, I really thought that the cops were giving that car the once-over. Apparently, though, the cops were just congregating at the hardware store, and they never realized that the car parked out front had anything to do with the fugitives. Later, the cops must have left the hardware store; still later, this guy stole the backpack, leaving the broken glass; and still later, the car was towed because the parking meter had run out. Okay, now that has all been cleared up to my satisfaction.

The thief is unable to give Mahone a useful description of the car. Meanwhile, Michael is telling the tow-lot guy, whose name is Chuck, that it’s a gray Accord. We cut back and forth between the two scenes, and the thief finally coughs up something useful when he tells Mahone that he saw a tow truck coming to get the car. Michael pays his fine at the tow lot, and Chuck goes to get him his car. Michael is mightily displeased when he sees that the car window is broken and the backpack is gone. Chuck tells him that this happened before the car arrived at the lot.

Sucre calls a friend of his in New York and asks him to help him contact Maricruz. The friend tells him that Maricruz is marrying Hector on Saturday, and today’s Thursday. Sucre loses his shit. He tells his friend to have Maricruz come over; Sucre’s going to come and change her mind. He steals a car and screeches off.

Dr. Tancredi checks herself out of the hospital. She asks the nurse to call her a cab, but the nurse says sorry, no can do, as two cops walk up and arrest the not-so-good doctor. They walk her out of the hospital in cuffs. The evil Secret Service guy is watching (at least, I think that’s him) and says into a cell phone, “Caroline, they’re taking her in. Of course I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Michael is signing some papers at the tow lot when Agent Mahone calls there and gives Chuck the scoop on the escaped convict who may be arriving to pick up the gray Accord. Michael does not catch on and just stands there smiling at Chuck as Chuck sells him out to the FBI over the phone. Mahone mobilizes some people to go over to the tow lot, as Chuck continues to chat with him and look shifty. Michael finally catches a clue, grabs the keys, and cruises off. Mahone gets really angry and knocks a whole bunch of papers onto the floor. Then we get a Highly Significant Close-Up of a head shot sticking out of a folder labeled “Shales, Oscar.” Huh?

This will be important at some point.

C-Note is on the phone with his wife. I have looked everywhere and cannot find her name, so bear with me on that. He’s trying to calm her down as she yelps, “Were you ever even in the military?” This makes me snort with laughter, because, as you may remember, C-Note is the one who somehow convinced his family that he was in Iraq the entire time he was actually in prison. However, we’ve also learned that he was truly in the military at one point – I think during the first Gulf War. C-Note tells his wife that his country sold him out. She asks why she shouldn’t just turn him in, and he reminds her that they have a beautiful little girl together. He says that he has a plan to get the three of them some money; she agrees to hear him out.

C-Note asks his wife whether anyone has contacted her about him. She says no, just as we see that Agent Mahone and his cohorts are listening in on this phone call live. I don’t know whether she’s lying and consented to have her phone bugged, or whether it was done without her knowledge. C-Note asks her to remember the time they spent at the Rainbow Room, and the picture that they took in that spot by the window, and he says he’ll be waiting there for her and their daughter in one week. She cries and won’t say whether she’ll be there or not. She says, “Goodbye, Miles,” and hangs up. Hey! He has a name!

Ms. Lang says that she’ll alert the staff at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. Mahone tells her to also go and have a woman-to-woman chat with Mrs. C-Note. He thinks that the fact that she never visited her husband in prison indicates that their relationship is weak and she may be willing to cooperate. Well, maybe she would have visited him if she hadn’t thought he was in Iraq! Ms. Lang comes across as a total brownnoser as she thanks Mahone for the assignment. He basically tells her not to waste her breath, because the only thing he cares about is results. Then Mahone tells another agent, named Wheeler, to put out an APB on the gray Accord.

Cut to Michael, changing the license plates on the car. Suck it, Wheeler! Michael then picks up Link and says an erotically charged goodbye to Nika. They don’t kiss or hug, but they stare at each other a lot. In case anyone is blind, they like each other, but he likes Dr. Tancredi more. After Nika walks away from the car, Michael tells Link that they are heading west toward the money (in Utah) and L.J. (now in jail in Arizona), but first they have to make one more stop. He asks Link if he trusts him.

Look into my exotic foreign stripper eyes….

Bellick and Geary are back at Fox River, where another guard is nervously risking his own job by letting them roam the premises. They are there to interrogate Horatio Sanz. I have no idea what this guy’s real name is – he was the fat prisoner who was supposed to be part of the escape, but he fell and got caught. I think he’s Sucre’s cousin and he worked in the prison laundry? Anyway, he’s still an inmate, and Bellick is being a real jerk to him, surprise surprise. Horatio Sanz says that he doesn’t know anything about where the escapees were going. Bellick falls back on the usual M.O. of law enforcement on this show, namely, veiled threats of ass rape.

Wheeler tells Mahone that Sucre was seen stealing a car in Defiance, Ohio. Uh-oh. At this point, I really don’t have a good feeling about our little Sucre, vis-à-vis that flaming wreck we were shown in last week’s previews. We see Sucre driving down the highway in his stolen car. The car has a Virgin Mary bobblehead. Hee. Sucre is talking to himself.

Governor Tancredi bails Sara out of jail. She passive-aggressives that he took his time doing it. He lectures her and agrees that he has no interest in hearing her side of the story. He says that somebody is going to go down over what happened at Fox River, and he doesn’t want it to be her – not because he cares about her, apparently, but because it would look bad. He wants her to go to daily recovery meetings and cooperate fully with law enforcement. She says she can’t do that, because she is the one who left the infirmary unlocked. He refuses to believe her; he wants that to be Warden Pope’s fault. The governor ends up threatening Sara, telling her that there will be consequences if she doesn’t do as she’s told. Then he drops the bombshell that he’s about to be appointed Vice President of the United States. She will be invited to the ceremony, but she’s not supposed to attend.

Michael and Link are cheerily cruising along in their getaway car. For the first time, they get kind of cocky and gleeful about their breakout. Then Michael switches gears and brings up Agent Mahone, who, he says, always seems to know what they’re doing before they do it. Michael worries that Mahone will find out about the money in Utah and/or about the plan to go to Mexico.

Changing the subject again, Michael dials a cell phone and says, “It’s me. I’ve got Link and we’re on our way.” He leaves a phone number on somebody’s voice mail. We see that an agent is listening in on the call; Wheeler reports in to Mahone. Apparently, the feds knew to tap into this random cell phone because this is “the voice mail Scofield prepaid for before he went to prison.” Huh? First of all, what is “prepaid voice mail”? And second, are we supposed to believe that Michael purchased this so-called prepaid voice mail with a credit card, making it traceable? A little weak, methinks. Apparently, the phone number that Michael left in the message will allow the agents to track him, as long as his phone is turned on. Which it is, sitting on his dashboard.

Oh dear. Sucre is being tailed by a police officer on a motorcycle. I am highly amused to see that Sucre is driving what my friends and I used to call a “car-truck.” What a stupid invention. Hey, car buyers, check out this sexy new vehicle! It has all the smallness of a shitty car, combined with all the openness to the elements of a pickup truck! It’s the worst of both worlds! Wouldn’t you like to own one? Anyway, the cop tries to pull Sucre over, and at first it looks like he isn’t going to stop, but after the commercial, we see that he did stop. Sucre says that he lost his license, but he shows the cop the registration, pretending that it’s his wife’s car. The cop says that the tags are expired. He walks away to start writing the ticket, but then he starts talking on his radio and it looks like he knows what’s up. Sucre peers nervously at his Virgin Mary bobblehead.

Nice wheels.

Geary asks Bellick whether he got Horatio Sanz to sing. The answer is yes. Those ass-rape threats will get ‘em every time. Well, not every time. They didn’t work on L.J. last week.

C-Note is lurking around like a pervert at his daughter’s school. She’s out in a fenced yard painting on an easel, which strikes me as not really an outdoor activity at your average elementary school, but maybe she’s working on a landscape. He goes up to her and they talk through the fence. No teachers notice that this child, aged six or seven, is talking to a sketchy man through the bars. C-Note asks his daughter to have her mom turn on the porch light at 7 p.m. as a signal that she understood his message earlier in the day about the meeting place (the Rainbow Room).

How do I sign my kid up for this school?

Mahone and Wheeler are in a car following Michael and Link. Mahone gets a call telling him that Sucre has been pulled over. He says the cop should make sure to bring Sucre in alive. Cut to Sucre, who’s waiting nervously as the cop talks on his radio. A train is going by. Sucre shares a bonding moment with the Virgin Mary bobblehead. The cop finally walks back to the car, gun drawn, and Sucre is gone. Apparently he took off on foot while the cop wasn’t looking. We see Sucre running through a wheat field. What I don’t understand is that when he was sitting in his car, the train was crossing right in front of him, but now he’s running through this field toward the train in the distance. Whatever.

Michael keeps looking back and forth from his trip odometer to the bar code on his wrist. When the odometer reaches a certain point, he slams on the brakes in the middle of a bridge over a small ravine. There’s nobody else in sight. Michael and Link get out of the car and start unscrewing the guardrail. Meanwhile, Wheeler and Mahone realize that their prey is stopped in the middle of the road a couple of miles ahead. Michael and Link start taking stuff out of the trunk of the car. They have – something bloody wrapped in plastic? Gross. Wheeler and Mahone get stuck behind a slow-moving tractor for a bit.

Michael jams a stick onto the gas pedal of the getaway car and then recaps the plan to Link. Michael will hit “scan” on the car radio, which will trigger a bomb. They’ll send the car over the bridge and they’ll have thirty seconds before it blows up. I guess the bloody item wrapped in plastic is some meat intended to make it look like Michael and Link were blown to bits. I can’t imagine that’s going to fool anyone for very long.

The dumbest thing in this whole episode is that we get a shot of Michael’s barcode as Michael reminds Link that he’s going to be pressing “scan” on the radio. In other words, Michael has a barcode tattooed on his wrist in order to remind himself of the word “scan,” so he will remember which button in the car triggers the bomb. You know, Michael is an awful lot like that guy in Memento, whose entire shtick was that he couldn’t remember anything unless it was tattooed on his body. I’m thinking that the creators of Prison Break saw that movie and said, “Let’s copy it, except the plot won’t move backward, and our guy won’t have amnesia, he’s just a regular guy with a sort of crappy memory.” Incidentally, I sure hope Michael had some system for making sure that Link didn’t innocently press “scan” while they were driving around before Michael informed him of this plan.

No-brain scan.

Michael and Link send the car over the bridge and start to run away, but then they notice that the car radio is no longer scanning, which means that the car isn’t going to blow up. This is unacceptable, because they are counting on the blown-up hunk of meat to convince everyone to stop looking for them. So even though they hear the sirens of approaching law enforcement, they still walk down below the bridge to un-stick the car radio. Oh, this is a brilliant plan, guys. What are you going to do, poke the car with a big stick until it blows up in your faces?

Link sticks his head into the upside-down car and asks Michael how many stations there are between 102.1 and 103.7. You see, the radio is stuck on 102.1 now, and I guess it will blow up when it hits 103.7. By the way, some of these numbers are on Michael’s bar code, along with the mileage to their current location (I think). So the tattoo does suggest a little bit more than just the word “scan.” Link presses “scan” again and the car explodes just as Mahone is driving up. There’s a big ol’ fireball, and Mahone seems overly confident that the bastards have been nailed.

After commercials, Sucre’s friend is alone in his apartment in Bed-Stuy when Sucre arrives looking for Maricruz. But whoops! Maricruz and Hector are getting married in Vegas, not in New York. The friend tried to tell Sucre that over the phone, but Sucre hung up too fast. The friend says that Maricruz and Hector left for Vegas “a few hours ago.” Sucre is big-time stressed. Then he grabs the keys to his friend’s motorcycle and cajoles him into letting him take it to Vegas. The friend hems and haws about how the motorcycle is a 1952 something-or-other. I’m assuming that it’s also a time machine, since Sucre started out with two days to stop this wedding, and so far in that time, he has traveled from Defiance, Ohio, to New York City via some combination of driving and running through a field, and now he’s going to travel from NYC to Vegas by motorcycle. Two days, my ass.

They should have made it a DeLorean.

Sara is in a twelve-step meeting. She says she’s an addict. Yawn. The next guy who introduces himself says his name is Lance and he’s an addict, but he’s really the evil Secret Service guy. Dun-dun-dunnnn!

Mahone and a few trusty sidekicks are examining the wreckage in the ravine. They seem to think that there’s one body in the car, although Wheeler thinks both brothers might be dead. Mahone flashes back to the file folder and the photo of Oscar Shales and even mutters Shales’s name, and again, I have no idea what I’m missing here. Wheeler fills me in a little, telling one of the other cops that Shales was a “nasty bottom-feeder” whom Mahone tracked in the past and never found. Mahone takes one of those pills he keeps hidden inside his pen.

Cut to Michael and Link scaling a cliff; the accident scene is visible in the distance. Well, how about that – neither one of them is dead. Michael says this will buy them some time, and Link agrees, provided their transport to Mexico comes through before the lab results from the accident get back.

C-Note is lurking again; this time, he’s across the street from his wife and daughter’s house. Inside, his wife is looking at their sleeping daughter, and we see that her bedroom is decorated with rainbows. There’s a family picture on the wall near the window. So it looks like when C-Note was talking about the Rainbow Room, he meant that his wife should meet him in the spot where this picture was taken, and he successfully tricked Ms. Lang et al. into thinking that he was talking about the restaurant in New York. Well played, C-Note, well played. The wife turns on the porch light to signal her understanding, and across the street, C-Note smiles. Then we see that Ms. Lang is sitting in the living room in the midst of a meeting with the wife. We are left hanging as to whether the wife will rat out the fact that C-Note is across the street waiting on her signal.

The Rainbow Room.

Nika drives up and saves the day for Michael and Link with a new getaway car. Michael thanks her and says he’ll send her $13,000 as soon as he gets to Mexico. Nika wants to know if he’s meeting Dr. Sara there. Ooh, catfight! He says he doesn’t know. All three of them get in the car and drive away; they’re going to drop off Nika in a nearby town where she can catch a bus. Then the camera pans around to … Bellick and Geary, sitting in their own car and watching from the top of a hill. Bellick turns to Geary and says, “I knew the little whore’d lead us right to ‘em.” DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNN!!

No previews, because my recording cut them off, if they were aired at all. But Sucre didn’t die! Yay!