Television Update 4: Straight-to-DVD Finales

A few shows that have recently ended or been in danger of ending have seen episodes or even feature length movies be put out on home video instead of the airwaves, at least in the USA. Here's what I think of them.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan


Edward James Olmos, who directed this movie, claims it won't be the end of the Galactica saga, and he's not talking about Caprica. In any case, it felt less like a real film and more like a very long, somewhat informative filler episode, giving a lot of background on what was happening with the Cylons in secret in the beginning of the war, within the context of what we know from the end of the series. Cavill and Simon have the biggest roles, with the former orchestrating nearly every move made within the walls of Galactica in the first couple seasons, and the latter having a genuinely intriguing character arc, adding some purpose to a model which was hardly used at all during the regular run of the show. The new footage is heavily interspersed with clips from earlier episodes, although the new perspective was enough to prevent it from feeling like a recap show to me. Not great really, but had some interesting nuggets.

Dollhouse - "Epitaph One"


Because of filming two pilots, the season order got a little screwy for Dollhouse's first season. Only the first twelve regular episodes ending up airing in America, with an extra thirteenth filmed cheaply and shoved onto the DVD. Epitaph One could have been the last episode of the series until it was somehow picked up for a second season, and it jumps into the show's future, showing an apocalyptic world torn apart by the organization's apparent poor business practices. It's pretty fascinating, though it will probably end up becoming frustrating when the show eventually does get canned before the plot can really get this far along. Despite some real clunker episodes, it's brilliant, original science fiction like this that makes the show worth watching every week, although unfortunately there won't be another new episode until December.

Prison Break: The Final Break


I believe this was originally intended to be the show's final two episodes, but they ended up packaging them together into a separate movie, which honestly feels like the right decision. It just doesn't really jive with a series ending, feeling more like a little bonus adventure that's not really relevant to the story arc. I guess it really is the ending anyway, but oh well. It features one last jail break, this time from a women's penitentiary. It fills in some details missing from the ending montage in the series' final episode, and provides an adequately tense and interesting story, although it seems weird that they are able to get in so quickly after the series' other two breaks both took at least a dozen hours of television to pull off. Prison Break was always a second tier series to me, and this does little to change that, but has a nice send-off for the characters.

Prison Break - Season 4

Prison Break's fourth and final season continues the series' pattern of every odd year being a jailbreak with the following year being more of a conspiracy thriller. It would be funny to see if they kept with the same pattern if it continued, but it's probably for the best that it's over now, besides a remaining couple episodes that won't air (Attention FOX: stop doing this). It's not that the show is really bad yet, it's just clearly running on fumes by the end. It starts out fairly strong as Michael and his fellow crew get the opportunity for exoneration by perpetrating a series of high-risk robberies against the shadowy "Company". A well-done heist is always a lot of fun, so there's enjoyment to be had even if the plot twists and betrayals will cause a couple eye-rolls per episode.

But at some point they get close enough to the goal that things apparently have to get crazy, because what follows is a whole bunch of nonsense as the same people get captured and leveraged and rescued over and over and over again, and things get really monotonous before they're finally allowed to end. I wonder if FOX stuck the show's final six hours on the Friday night wasteland because they knew it wasn't really worth a decent time slot (How in the hell did Dollhouse survive that?). The show's end isn't as bile-enducing as say, Heroes, it just refuses to be at all clever in its death throes. That's not completely true, as Michael has a few more clever practical ruses to pull off as he cheats death and imprisonment before the end, I just stopped caring long before. And the whole subplot with his mother's reveal and turn as a villain was awful. None of it worked at all. Once all the character arcs are finished in the show's final musical montage though, I remembered how it was usually more enjoyable than not. It's a really ballsy ending too, letting the viewer know that yes, this is over, and it isn't coming back. It was never a great series in my mind, but never boring either.

Prison Break - Season 3

After escaping from prison in the first season and running from the law in the second, where could the show go next? Back to prison - in Panama! Season three was a bit of a retread, sort of an accelerated remake of the first, except the conditions were worse. Most of the old characters manage to find their way into the situation, some former criminals now helping from the outside and old law enforcement now in jail. The show's running low on good female characters, which can happen when you keep killing them off. I think the actress who played Michael's love interest must have quit, because she didn't even show up to film her death. Luckily, the new snarky evil agent that's in on the conspiracy is female to help balance it. Except I always hate those characters.

While it's a little convenient for them to have to break out of jail again, it's hard to be bothered too much by the contrivance when the show is called Prison Break. It's still entertaining to watch Michael's schemes come to fruition, I'm just not sure how much longer the formula can hold up. Now that they're out of prison again, hopefully they can stay out and the rivalry between them and The Company (ooh!) can actually develop and go somewhere. Serial shows like this have to change to stay good because there's only so many ways you can make running away from something interesting. The third season wasn't worse in a significant way, the story just wasn't compelling since it was a retread of old ground.

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.

Prison Break - Season 1

Prison Break is a solid, entertaining thriller with a fairly good, complex story running through the whole way. I don't think it's saying too much that they break out at the end of the first season, considering they say as much with just a glance at the cover art of the second. After all, how long can you really stay in jail before the show gets boring? Michael is a genius engineer who gives up his normal life to save his falsely accused brother Lincoln from the electric chair, a job that is made easier by the fact that he happened to help design the place. He schemes and prepares before he purposefully gets caught attempting robbery to make his way in, and starts to working. That's not all it is though, as a big part of the show is the huge conspiracy that landed Lincoln on death row in the first place. While their friends on the outside try to prove his innocence, they get chased by government agents and men who work for the "Company" (real original there, guys), who will do anything to keep things quiet. Despite all the planning, pretty much everything that can go wrong does, and the brothers have to recruit several hardened criminals to their cause.

The show does a good job of ratcheting up the tension, carefully laying piece after piece of the puzzle into place as things go wrong and time starts running out. Despite the unsympathetic nature of many of the characters, they're all at least interesting in some way, even if it's just how really messed up they are. I honestly much prefer the prison break aspect to the conspiracy aspect, because they treat everything in the jail so deliberately and realistically while all the lies and backstabbing on the outside seem a little unbelievable in contrast. Also, Lincoln's son is a gigantic idiot. I don't understand half the things he does. I also don't like how they don't give the audience much credit for remembering plot details. I get the need to keep people who can't watch every week in the loop, but most of it can be followed without that much help, and when every somewhat-obscure scene is accompanied by a glaringly obvious flashback, it seems cheap and unrewarding for people who watch closely. Despite some minor issues, it's a very promising first run of an enjoyable show.