‘Prison Break’ finds freedom outside of walls

Note: This article contains spoilers from the fall finale.

A few weeks before the fall finale of “Prison Break’s” second season, former prison doctor Sara Tancredi asked former inmate Michael Scofield, “Do you think there’s a part of you that enjoys this? I mean escaping from prison, and being on the run, and the danger, and the fear, and the rush, all that. It feels to me like chasing a high.”

To answer her question, being on the run was definitely a high for the Fox drama, which dramatically reinvented itself for its second season.

After spending 22 episodes trying to escape from prison, and half a season trying to elude capture, Michael Scofield and his framed-for-murder brother Lincoln Burrows found themselves once again in custody, and then in a situation where they were being allowed to again escape and run free.

Fox and the show’s producers did the same thing to their series by actually letting the prisoners in a show called “Prison Break” to leave their prison after just one season. Keeping them locked up for a few seasons, at least, would have seemed to be the logical, sensible network television choice.

However, inside the walls of the prison, the prisoners were mostly treading water. In the closed environment of the prison, there was a limit to the situations the inmates could find themselves in as they attempted to escape, just as there were a limited number of people to interact with. Although the show lost its gritty realism and blue- and gray-toned aesthetic outside the prison’s walls, the world has opened up endless possibilities.

C-Note has a soul? Who knew?
Eluding capture also presented Scofield with an infinite number of problems to solve, and the presence of friends and foes around the country has helped to develop previously one-dimensional characters into dynamic presences. C-Note’s desperation to reunite his family and return to normalcy has humanized him, for example, making him more than just the brutish, demanding prisoner he was when his character was first introduced.

Other characters, too, have been freed from their shackles, both literal and metaphoric. Having been fired for his misconduct, prison guard Brad Bellick spent this season pursuing the men who he blamed for ruining his career and life. As the second season reached its midpoint, he found himself in the general population of the same prison where he used to work, an intriguing turn that was the result of being framed for the murder of one of his fellow guards by one of his former inmates.

Despite being away from the hostile prison environment for the majority of these 13 episodes, the show still managed to be graphic and violent, whether former Secret Service agent Kellerman was trying to drown Tancredi in a bathtub, or T-Bag (the vile murderer and rapist) was having his hand sewn back on by a veterinarian, or tearing it off in order to escape capture.

Others, such as Tancredi’s governor father and Lincoln’s and Michael’s lawyer/friend Veronica Donovan, were surprisingly and violently killed off.

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