Episode 2.1: “Manhunt.” Agent Mahone of the FBI is getting a recap of season one. Eight prisoners have managed to escape from Fox River Penitentiary, including the guy everyone thinks killed the Vice President’s brother. D’oh! Last season we left our felonious pals with Bellick et al right on their heels. A fortunately timed freight train saves the day – everyone crosses the tracks just before the train rolls by. Everyone but Sucre and Michael, who actually jump the train and run through to emerge on the other side, because that’s how they roll. Plan A is all shot to hell, but putting a freight train between Bellick’s gun and your escaped felon ass is a step in the right direction. Agent Mahone reminds the press it took twelve days to catch John Wilkes Booth back in 1865. Which, yeah, it also took twelve days to get a postcard across town, and most Americans kept pots of urine under their beds, but okay, point taken. The mind of the man on the run has not changed, is what he’s getting at. Looking over your shoulder all the time takes its toll.

We get enough shots of Mahone’s pen to suspect it is one significant writing instrument, and it turns out he keeps a nice stash of tiny little pills inside. T-Bag and his gross, gross stump pilfer a camper’s ice chest to keep his gross, gross hand from rotting. Gross. An unfortunate veterinarian is enlisted to reattach it, to the extent that medical tools designed for spaying and neutering can do such a thing. Dr. Sara wakes up in a hospital bed after her subconscious reminds her about that totally hot inmate she left the infirmary door open for. Mahone already knows about this little oversight, and on top of that, he’s figured out that the whole plan is in Michael’s tattoos, demonstrating right out of the gate that he’s smarter than pretty much everyone else on this show. Naturally, this fact makes Bellick all bitchy about having him on the case. Mahone figures out that Michael has a storage facility in Oswego, which happens to be where the cons are headed in their stolen Jeep.

In the first of many totally awesome fakeouts, the feds open the storage unit to find precisely jack shit, as the cons are opening a similar door at a graveyard across town where Michael has buried some nice suits and other Fed-fleeing accoutrements. But wait! Mahone totally figures it out based on his blueprints of Michael’s tattoos. A bit too late, but not by much. Sara finds a little origami bird with a note from Michael telling her there’s a way to make all of this right. Poor dumb Veronica, you’ll recall, has tracked down the ostensibly dead but actually just toothless Terrance Steadman, who interrupts her lecture on responsibility to ask if she thought maybe it was a little too easy finding him and just walking right in to his super secret hideout. She smugly calls for help, then calls Linc to tell him she’s found Steadman. Linc’s still on the line when the “Sheriff’s Department” skulks in all menacing-like to save the day! Just kidding, they totally shoot her. RIP, Veronica. Live by the Stupid, die by the Stupid.