Prison Break, 24 and spirituality???

As I mentioned before we are temporarily living in Huntsville, Alabama. We really don't fit in the Bible Belt: not that I have anything against fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. I'm not religious, but I am striving to become spiritual. To me, spirituality is life affirming, being thankful, finding inner peace, being kind, etc. Being religious is adhering to a dogma. People here tend to be on the dogmatic side so we keep to ourselves. Thanks to Netflix, we order movies and TV shows to fill the long, quiet evenings. It's really great watching TV shows without commercial breaks, and not having to wait a week or more for the next addition. Who cares if you have to wait a year before you see the season, we're going to do that with Grey's Anatomy.

Right now we've started season 4 of Prison Break. Seasons 1-3 turned out to be exceptionally good. We'll watch an entire disk in the evening and it gets me all wired up so I can't sleep and I'm thinking about the show and analyzing and trying to second guess where its going to go. My boyfriend is really bad, he cheated and read what's going to happen. He keeps telling me these tidbits and I plug my ears and scream, "Don't Tell Me! Okay, tell me a little. No, no more. Good, Sara and Michael get married."

24 and Prison Break are similar genres. But Prison Break is so much better (as compared the the first season of 24). Although 24 was gritty, edgy and exciting and also wired me up too much to sleep, I didn't really like any of the characters. To me, all the women in 24 were either needy, bitches or in the case of the teenager girl...both. The one female character who seemed to have her act together turned out to be the bad guy. What's more, it seemed like someone was getting shot and killed every 15 minutes. On one CD that would be 16 people a night. I don't know how healthy it is to be watching that many people being murdered in the course of an evening, and it is definitely not spiritual. I've heard that instead of watching crap like 24, spiritual people need to be careful what they view and watch uplifting movies and television programming. So instead of Season 2 of 24, I thought I'd give Prison Break a chance.

Once I started watching Prison Break there was no stopping. It is that good, and my spirituality has gone down the toilet. A lot of people do get killed in this one, but not as much as 24. In fact, sometimes there's an entire show where no one gets killed! Prison Break actually has some character development and I like every single character in that show, even the bad ones. In this case, especially the bad ones. It is fast paced, interesting, gritty and well...I characterize this show as a "manly" soap opera. But I'm female and still love it.

Unfortunately they killed off one of my favorite characters early in the second season. He was the mafia guy who, I don't know his name, but he's actually Swedish presumably from Sweden.

Another one of my favorite characters is Sara. She has such a pretty complexion, it just glows. I wonder if it's her make-up or diet or just good genes. I bet she eats her vegetables.

The show does have its drawbacks. When you watch 4 shows on CD sans commercials the common-occuring, strangely bizarre coincidences that save the day become just a little too obvious.

One of the biggest drawbacks of this show is they filmed most of it in or around Dallas, TX. In Season 2, this became readily apparent. They did not get their geography correct at all. Especially Utah. Instead of looking arid, mountainous and rugged, Utah looked flat and fertile, more like what you would see in the the mid-west as in maybe Texas outside of Dallas. The time, distance and season didn't correspond either. First it's winter then the grass is green and leaves are on the trees. The convicts drive across the country and make it from Illinois to Utah in what seems like a matter of hours. All that driving and they're not even stiff and tired. Then Season 3 this was supposed to take place in Panama, and they're on this dirt road and there's a tree in the background with yellow autumn leaves. Autumn in Panama, hmm. Because they had to film mostly in Texas and couldn't get their geography correct, it gave the show the appearance of a low-budget movie.

Other than that, watching Prison Break is a lot of fun, which either speaks well of the show or how boring life is here in Huntsville. The first and third season has the main characters in prison, and the way prison-life is depicted on this show seems very close to how it would be in real life. It was almost too bad they escaped because the prison dynamics was fascinating, especially with the corrupt guard, Bellick, who is just mean.

Another aspect that makes the program so good is several of the key players are very, very smart. You have the main character Michael Scofield, and he is a genius. He is the good, thoughtful man who thinks things through and wants to see justice and goodness prevail in the world. Couldn't hurt a fly. Then you have the evil genius who in some ways makes the show. That character is often called T-bag, and he played the role so well I actually looked up the actor's name and profile: Robert Knepper. What is amazing is he's been in other movies/TV that I've seen and he went by completely unnoticed. I noticed him as T-Bag.

Mr. Knepper has created a character who is a cold-blooded, sexual predator and murderer from Alabama, but I don't think it's Huntsville. He talks and acts exactly like the people around here. T-bag can be very creepy and very scary and looks out for Number 1. His character is totally believable. Yes, Robert Knepper plays that part a little too well.

I can actually see him watching the show with his wife and kids, and asking her what she thought. And she would say something like, "You did a great job with that character dear. He's very scary. You are so not like that."

Then he would say, "Well, I am an actor." Then they would go to bed and they'd snuggle together and he would say, "I have a confession to make. The acting part is how I am with you, I'm really T-bag."

Then her eyes would get real big and he would hug her and say, "Just kidding, Ha, Ha, Ha."

Then she would say, "That wasn't funny."

He'd apologize, "Yeah, bad joke. Sorry."

He'd roll over and go to sleep. She'd be wide awake and sneak out of bed, snatch her purse. Tiptoe and wake up the kids and whisper, "Kids, get in the car. Quiet now. No daddy's not coming. Shh,shh,shh, I'll explain once we're safely in a hotel."

Prison Break Season 4

Well, well, well. The final season of Prison Break is non-compelling to say the least. It starts out pretty good, (3 stars) but dwindles down to 2 stars. I would give Season 1 and 2 five stars because those seasons are worth seeing again.

The first season of the show was absolutely phenomenal. I don't think I've ever seen better TV programming. What is aggravating, is they didn't need to break out of prison so quickly. Season 1 could have been the first attempt that failed. Perhaps Sara unlocked the door, but someone else locked it back. Linc's attorney manages a stay long enough for a second Season 2 they're still in prison and Scofield uses his tatooed blueprints to figure yet another way out.

There was plenty to work with the prison to maintain the intensity and drama for two seasons within the prison. Linc could have gotten a stay right at the end of season one allowing him to escape execution until the end of Season two. More could have been developed with the mafia-guy (aka my Swede) and I could have enjoyed watching him for two seasons instead of one. Who he was and what he was doing didn't make a lot of sense and that could have been clarified.

More could have been done with Bellick. Wade Williams was perfect in that role and it would have been interesting to develop his character more. Here's this big, bully guard on the take, acting all macho and living with his mother. Do something with that. Don't treat him like a cartoon. Let us meet his Bellick's mother and let us learn more why he can't cut the apron strings.

When Linc's lawyer got stuck in that house with the VP's brother, she was immediately killed off. Wait a minute. A house that you can enter and not leave is an interesting concept. Explore it a little bit. Let her be in there for a few episodes trying to get out. Wouldn't the VP's brother be horny and try and rape her? Or would he not do that, but seriously enjoy the company? Would she be able to convince him to do the right thing? Maybe they would try to escape together. See the title of the show is Prison Break, and prisons don't always have to be actual prisons.

Season 2 brought in the brilliant FBI agent Alex. He was able to second guess what Scofield had planned. This was fascinating. Yet, they didn't work with that, they just quickly moved all the cast into Utah (which didn't look like any part of Utah, I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of Utah) and made Alex a dirty cop and a drug addict. It would have taken at least two days of heavy driving of 10 hours or more to go from Chicago to Salt Lake. Yet, these guys seemed to magically arrive in a matter of hours and still have time to start a romance, have a hand sewn back on, and other exciting adventures.

It would have been just as thrilling to allow them a normal amount of time to get to the destination. Come on, these guys are wanted by the law. Some people would recognize them, many wouldn't. They would be leaving a trail, Alex could systematically sniff them out. A few are dangerous, Sara's having a nervous break-down and losing her job. Oh, yeah, and the crazy guy, he was great. I loved him, he could caused all kinds of problems and befuddled the cops because he had no logic. Why didn't they milk this stuff? No, they decided to drag out season 4 which was predictable, cliched and unexciting. Okay, it was a little bit exciting. But the only real reason to watch Season Four is because the characters were so good and interesting we had to find out what happened to them, which was almost exactly how I predicted.

My guess was "Can't hurt a Fly" Scofield was going to kill T-Bag. It didn't quite happen like that.

Probably because I watched Season 4 through Netflix, sans commercial four shows a night, it was easy to catch all the flaws in logic. Scofield has almost superhuman powers in determining his next move, which gets kind of old. Does he really have to be perfect?

Here's some things in Season 4 I didn't believe:

That Self would kill his partner then be good again.

That Bellick would give his life for the cause.

That T-bag cared so much for his mother, when it seemed like she was never really in his life.

They seemed to really contrive some situations in order to keep T-bag in the picture.

That the General would be unguarded with all this stuff going down at the end.

That Scofield's mother would have that much antagonism toward Linc.

That Linc would be 5 hours near death, and then with a little patchwork from Sara be ready to go.

That Kellerman and those two other guys would magically reappear to save the day.

I had problems with Gretchen in Season 4. When she first appeared (Season 3?) she started out as a weak actress and I didn't believe for a minute she was a mean person. Then her acting improved dramatically and I was entranced by how wicked she could be. Although too contrived in putting Gretchen and T-Bag together, their pairing was fun. I wanted to understand their relationship better. Then Self comes on the scene and it was like Gretchen lost her evil edge. Were they goofing off between scenes and she couldn't get back into character?

Neither the General or Scofield's mother were interesting characters. Their quest for world domination and with Michael's super-brain power made this seem more like a Batman movie gone wrong.

This final season dragged on and on, and they decided to milk it some more with the Final Break, which I have not seen, but read about and it sounds stupid. First, I can't believe that given the circumstances Sara would end up in prison for killing Scofield's mom. Didn't she sign a release that gave her immunity from all that anyway? Oh well, it's somewhere down my queue and comes when it comes.