On ‘Prison Break,’ there’s no escape

On "Prison Break's" fall finale, Michael Scofield said the best six words we could have possibly heard: "We're not getting out of here."

An escape would have been satisfying, but sparing Michael's brother Lincoln from death in the electric chair by freeing the prisoners from the confines of Fox River State Penitentiary's
walls would have hurt the FOX series tremendously.

As the story has unfolded, "Prison Break" has, in many ways, set itself up to be the most convincing portrait of prison on television, even more realistic than HBO's "Oz." Its setting
contributes the most: Filmed on location at an older, now-unused prison in Joliet, Ill., "Prison Break" has the gritty, dirty look that we associated with prison life, not the too-new, clean, glass-enclosed prison of "Oz."

Despite being a network series, "Prison Break" hasn't shied away from the rawest parts of prison life: rape, murder, suicide, corruption, rioting, monotony, hopelessness. The limits of
broadcast television have actually helped the show creatively. Although "Prison Break" has had its share of gratuitous violence, the violence and other horrors that stay off-screen are actually more powerful.

After being claimed and raped by T-Bag, a prison gang leader who seems to be the personification of evil, a new, young inmate approached Michael Scofield in the showers and begged for help. Scofield refused, protecting his escape plan. The new inmate later hanged himself. We only saw his pleading and his quick death; everything else was off-camera, letting our imaginations fill in the gaps.

Prepare to suspend disbelief
In many ways, "Prison Break" relies intensely on viewers' imaginations. After his brother was convicted of murdering the Vice President's brother, Scofield, an engineer, planned an elaborate escape; had all of the clues, instructions and blueprints necessary tattooed across half his body; and then managed to get himself locked up at the same jail where his brother was being held.

Suspension of disbelief starts at the execution itself, since Illinois' former governor issued a moratorium on the death penalty and commuted the sentences of those on death row, and since the state executes with lethal injection, not the electric chair. While Scofield's escape plan is relatively simple, he's had to go to extraordinarily absurd means to make it possible. When the reality of prison life interferes with his plan, he has to scheme on the fly, crafting ingenious solutions that play out like some kind of dysfunctional ballet.

Nearly every step has forced Scofield to work with his fellow inmates, starting with his cellmate. He's come to rely and depend upon those incarcerated with him, and it's here that the series has found its life. Watching the pieces of the escape fall into place is entertaining, but it's much more fun to watch as the new "Fish" is forced to rapidly win the respect and trust of everyone from a racist murderer to a mob boss.

Because they're all in such a confined space and a self-contained world, their actions have consequences that reverberate in an increasingly deafening way. No one trusts anyone else, and for good reason, but they all are forced to trust each other, at least when they're not literally or metaphorically stabbing one another.

Last week, when the group grew too large to make escape possible, Abruzzi confronted T-Bag and held a razor blade to his throat. "I'm just an emissary for all the pain and suffering you caused, all the families you ruined, all the kids," Abruzzi told him, and T-Bag showed his humanity by begging for his pitiful life. "Maybe I deserve to die, maybe I do, but you're no better than me," T-Bag said. Then, a few seconds after winning a reprieve, he slit Abruzzi's throat. In a single scene, our allegiance switched back and forth between the two characters, both of whom are horrible people by any objective measure.

No one is good or bad, including the series' hero Michael Scofield, who's been forced many times to make choices that are less than ideal. But Scofield and all of the prisoners are played and written as actual, complex human beings, which makes growing attached to them very possible.

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