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The Series:
Ahhh, Prison Break.
If the producers only had the nerve to end the show on their own
at the
end of season two, it would have gone down in history as one of the
best TV
shows ever. It
accomplished what few other shows have ever
been able to do: after a tense and
suspenseful first season, the show reinvented itself and had an equally
exciting second year's worth of episodes.
At the end of year two the story the creator's originally
intended to
tell was over, but since the program was getting high ratings they
couldn't
just stop while they were ahead. They
went on to a generally poor third season where they basically told the
first
season's story over again, with one difference:
this time it sucked.
There was a writer's strike that year however, so I was
willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt.
Surely the story would have worked better if
they had a full season to flesh it out.
Right? Actually I wasn't so sure,
but maybe they were just going over a rough patch.
In any case when Season 4 arrived I was eager
to see what happened. Unfortunately my
worst fears were realized; the show had jumped the shark a long time
ago and
season four is a poor reflection of what it once used to be. If anything, it's actually worse than season
3.
I'm assuming that anyone who's reading this knows the basic
premise of the story, so I'm not going to recap everything from the
beginning. If not, you can read my
reviews of the earlier seasons here.
Spoiler Warning:
There really isn't any way to review this set without revealing
some
twists that occur in the first episode of the season.
These are revealed, but I'll avoid any other
major spoilers.
When the previous season abruptly ended, all of the main
characters were out of jail and pretty much free. Michael
Scofield (Wentworth Miller), having
freed his unjustly incarcerated brother, Lincoln (Dominic Purcell), and
gotten
him to safety, he sets off after Gretchen (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe.) She was the woman who killed the love of his
life, Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies), and left her head in a box for Lincoln to find.
Lincoln
was reunited with his son, and Whistler (Chris Vance) an agent for the
evil
society known as "The Company" is free to do his evil.
T-bag has a duffle bag full of millions of
dollars and is living the good life; drinking, whoring, a basically
enjoying
his freedom.
Well, forget all of that.
In the first half of the opening double-length episode Gretchen
is
killed and so is Whistler. That's not
too distressing however because Sara is actually alive!
It turns out the head that Lincoln saw was a fake (yeah, that's
easy to
do... and why go to all the trouble? Why
not just tell him she's dead?)
Apparently Sara escaped from her captors and left Lincoln's son
behind then, instead of trying
to contact the man she loves or his brother, went back to LA and has
been
living there quietly for nearly a year.
T-Bag meanwhile gets his money stolen from him while he's trying
to
leave the safety of Central America and go back to the US
where he would certainly be
arrested and thrown in jail for the rest of his life.
What is his reaction to the money being
stolen? Easy come, easy go.
He's not that upset about it at all. Apparently
he's undergone a personality
change while the show was off the air.
Okay, let's cut to the chase: Nearly
everybody gets arrested once again
including Lincoln who has apparently forgotten about his son. Instead of shipping them off to a maximum
security prison, a Homeland Security agent named Donald Self (Michael Rapaport) pulls some strings to get
them all released (including the next to useless supporting characters)
and
makes them an offer: if they take down
"The Company" he'll wipe their records clean and give them a fresh
start. How do they do that?
By obtaining "Scylla" an encoded set of data
being held by a member of The Company, and decoding it.
It sounds easy, but as they start to
investigate The Company and Scylla they find that the job is much more
complicated than they imagined. To add
to their problems The Company is after them too, and has sent one of
their best
assassins after the group.
They started this season out with a fast an furious pace in
the hopes people wouldn't notice how impossibly dumb the original set
up
was. Most of the characters underwent
personality changes simply to get the story moving in the direction
they wanted
it to go. T-Bag wasn't mad that his bag
of cash was stolen? After whining about
his son through season 3 Lincoln
doesn't care about him any more? And
what's all this stuff about people coming back from the dead (including
a
surprise character part way through the season)?
I could possibly swallow that if the story was good, like
the first two years of the show, but it isn't.
It is absurd. Now the show was
never one for being incredibly realistic, but in the early years you
were
always able to suspend your disbelief.
Not so in this set of shows. The
coincidences, unbelievable luck, and down right impossibilities are
just too
much to swallow. For example, in one
episode
they have to break into a heavily guarded house. Everyone
looks at the security measures and
declares that it is totally impossible to get in, what with the locks,
security
system and private guard patrolling the place.
Yet Our Man Flint, I mean Michael Scofield, figures a way in: he sets off an alarm across the street, and
when all the guards run over there and the owner turns off the alarm
system so
he can see what's going on too, they just walk in.
Yeah, right.
Most of the breaking and entering this season is like that. I especially liked the way they were able to
drill out a cobalt-steel safe in the middle of the day inside of a
federal
building without anyone noticing.
*Sheesh* And don't get me started
on the magic cell phone-like device that can copy data from any data
storage
system within a 10-foot radius, whether it's powered on or not.
The hallmarks of this show are the cliffhanger endings to
each episode (and often before commercial breaks) and the frequent
twists and
turns that plot takes. That's still
present, but they are so ridiculous and over the top that it's hard to
take
them seriously. They repeat the same
cliffhanger several times too. I lost
count of how many times they were stealing data and the copy bar read
95% when
something happened where they'd get cut off a second later. Every time the resolution would be an
enthusiastic "Yes! We got it!" The first time it was mildly
suspenseful. By the third time it was
boring.
One thing I will give this season however, is that they do wrap up the entire story by the end of the season. You get to find out the fate of all of the main characters and that is very satisfying, especially since there's a little surprise at the very end the is reminiscent of the show's earlier, better seasons.
The DVD:
The
22 episodes that make up season 4 arrive on six discs that are housed
in a single-width keepcase.
Video:
The 1.78:1 widescreen image looks very good though the Blu-ray versions
of
earlier seasons were more crisp and detailed. It's really too bad
that
they aren't releasing this season on Blu-ray.
As it is thought, the picture is sharp, and the contrast and
black
levels are all excellent. There are a lot of low light scenes, and
these all
looked fine, though grain was more evident than in the exterior shots.
Details
in the shadows are good, though not outstanding. During the exterior
scenes the
lighting is much brighter, and in these shots the colors are more vivid
and
solid.
Audio:
This DVD comes with a DD 5.1 track that sounds good, but isn't as
intense as
the HD tracks on the earlier season's Blu-ray releases. The show
is
mainly dialog driven, with an occasional gun shot, but nothing more
than
that. The sound effects and incidental
music come through strong and clear and add a lot to the atmosphere
that the
show has. While the audio doesn't have the same impact and richness as
a
theatrical feature, it does suit the show well.
Extras:
After skipping commentary tracks on the (horrible) third season, I was
a little
surprised that they returned with this season.
Yet here they are, an impressive nine tracks on various episodes
by
members of the cast and crew, though most of the lead actors are not to
be
found including Wentworth Miller, Amaury Nolasco, Robert Knepper, and
Wade
Williams. (Michael Scofield, Fernando
Sucre, T-Bag, and Brad Bellick respectively.)
There are
three featurettes too, all found on the last disc.
These start out with Fade out: The Final
Episode (12 mins) a look at the end of the series and the last telecast
story. Next it The Plan, The Execution
and The Bullet (11 mins) a breakdown of one of the action scenes from
the
middle of the season, and finally we get Director's World (13
mins)
where executive producer and director Kevin Hooks discusses the look of
the
show and how each season's overall mood is different due to the
changing
settings.
Final Thoughts:
This season of Prison
Break is much worse than the previous one, and that wasn't very
good
either. It's like the writers took the
worst parts of Mission Impossible and The A-Team and put them together. With ludicrously inane break-ins and thefts,
all the while running from the people they are pursuing, the show is
just too
convoluted and over-the-top for its own good.
If you like very, very mindless entertaining this might be worth
a
rental, but when all is said and done this show has run it's course.
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