Sunday, February 24, 2008

Prison Break - Season 2



Unlike the first run, season two of Prison Break doesn't feature much breaking out of prisons. What it does feature is lots of running, backstabbing, smarmy government agents, and a plot that's less a story and more an endless string of twists. It's still enjoyable, somewhat thrilling entertainment, although it's probably not healthy to watch 22 episodes in less than a week. You can start to lose touch with reality.

At the end of the first season, Michael, Lincoln, and some other inmates had broken out of jail, and were running for the hills. They pick up right where they left off, after introducing Mahone, an FBI agent who's pretty clever in his own right and played by Bill Fichtner, who you'll probably recognize from every movie ever made. Mahone works on tracking down all the escapees, but, huge shock, he's been ordered to kill them all instead of bringing them in. Seems he has a shady past of his own and is working to keep it under wraps. I'm all for Government conspiracies, but I don't really love how the show handles it. Instead of just covering their tracks, they seem to go out of their way to cause as much pain as possible. Last season, one of the threatening government guys had a pretty unique personality, and he was interesting. But pretty much everyone else in that position just has that annoying, untouchable smirk on his face that pisses me off when I see it.

The show also has some logic problems here and there. Almost all shows and movies exaggerate how quiet suppressed gunfire is; the sound is just limited in range, not completely silenced to a little burst of air. So when a character hears a shell casing landing on the ground instead of the gun itself firing, it really hurts the scene's believability. Some of the side characters are really tiring by this point, and someone has to tell the writers that seasons should end with either some sort of conclusion or a particularly shocking twist, not absolutely nothing happening. Despite the problems, I still like it and will keep watching.

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