''You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear someone call me that.''
Warning: Full spoilers for the Prison Break season finale below.
When Prison Break originally wrapped up in 2009, the death of Michael Scofield gave the otherwise happy ending a touch of poignancy and tragedy. The conclusion of the Prison Break revival goes to a similar place, but this time, Michael gets to live. And the big death seems even more unnecessary than before.
Of course Whip was the one to die. The Ogygia gang was expendable from the start, and Ja only managed to survive because he decided not to leave Yemen. The show made a few attempts to build up Whip into a primary character, yet he never quite took hold. Even the finale tried to create a bond between Whip and his newly disclosed father, T-Bag. However, the connection felt forced, as did Whip’s untimely demise... which Michael and company only seemed to care about in the moment rather than mourn for their friend later.
Out of all of the returning characters, T-Bag was the one who was screwed. Apparently, we were meant to take T-Bag’s redemption at face value. T-Bag never felt like he fully earned his heroic turn; which made it hard to take his suffering seriously. Just think: all of the build up for T-Bag’s robot hand was for the way he snapped A&W’s neck in the finale. That was a moment of dark and possibly unintentional humor.
There was a bizarre sense of urgency in the subplots of this episode that seemed rushed even for a finale. Particularly the final confrontation between Lincoln and Luca. It was so anticlimactic that it made Luca’s presence on the show completely unnecessary. Basically, a badly wounded Lincoln was able to bring down Luca without much effort at all. Giving Lincoln his own nemesis wasn’t a bad idea, but the execution was lacking.
The one thing that really worked in the episode was the last battle between Michael and Poseidon, as well as their continuing attempts to one-up each other. The reveal of the complete image on Michael’s hands was also a nice touch, and the fight between Michael and Poseidon was worth the wait. Even Michael’s plan to frame Poseidon for a murder that he actually committed was charmingly outrageous. It shouldn’t have worked, but it very amusing.
A huge suspension of disbelief is required to buy the idea that a high profile CIA prisoner like Poseidon would be placed in gen pop at Fox River just so T-Bag could get his revenge. It was funny for a moment, but a bit contrived. That was obviously Michael’s personal request during his debriefing, and it’s also somewhat cruel to T-Bag. If Michael really believed that T-Bag was deserving of the “grace” that he offered him, then he could have secured his release as well. Instead, T-Bag was simply a weapon that Michael chose to point at Poseidon on more than one occasion.
It almost seemed as if the creative team was hinting at a possible continuation of the series with Michael working for the CIA, even though he turned down their interest almost immediately. There was also some restraint in the way that the Prison Break revival didn’t follow the example of The X-Files or 24: Live Another Day by placing the leads in jeopardy in the closing minutes. Instead, Michael, Lincoln, and Sara received the happiest ending that they could ever hope for out of this show. There’s really no need to revisit Prison Break after this episode, but we’ll see if FOX has other ideas for the show.
The Verdict
The season finale of Prison Break rushed through most of its subplots in order to wrap everything up after only nine episodes. Only the showdown with Poseidon managed to feel worthy of series wrap up. If this is the last time that we see Michael, Lincoln, and Sara together then at least the core trio got the endings that they deserved. However, this show needs another long break, if Fox really is insistent about keeping it alive.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire