Prison Break - The Prisoner's Dilemma - Review: "Quintessential Prison Break" + POLL

So many of my notes for “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” contain the following phrase: “because of course”, followed by “it is” or “he is” or variations thereupon. It is quintessential Prison Break for what happened in this episode to have happened, and for it to have unfolded in the way that it did. The escape route being in Ramal’s cell? Ramal pretending to work with Michael before double crossing him before Michael double-crossed him? Kellerman’s death (*) just after spilling everything to push T-Bag in the right direction? Poseidon being obscured by the tree? Poseidon is Jacob?

(*) I’ve been tricked by not seeing Kellerman actually take the final bullet on-screen before, but, given his two gunshot wounds, I imagine he is dead this time.

All of it, because of course that is the case.

Of those, the only surprising twist is probably Kellerman’s demise, but even that is hardly out of left field. By the time he spilled his guts on Poseidon and established he was not him, there was very little use for his character; he may not be the puppetmaster or even the puppetmaster’s attack dog, but with the action mostly in Yemen and Kellerman who he is, the chance of him doing much more to assist Sara and T-Bag was slim. So he dies, for the second time, and Prison Break loses the entertainment it gets from Paul Adelstein - incomparable to Robert Knepper’s ultra-hammy performance, but fun nonetheless.

And Kellerman is the only surprising twist because the two other major ones - Ramal’s death and Jacob being the man behind the curtain - are less twists than they are plot points deserving of being greeted with a passing shrug. It is far from shocking that Sara’s new husband, fully aware of her past and that of Michael’s, is involved, given the alternatives: he was never going to be completely innocuous and serve the story simply as either her support and/or a further difficulty in her reuniting with Michael and/or become a pawn in Poseidon’s game. At least it makes sense now why he survived the premiere with just a shot to the leg having seen A&W’s face.

To his credit, it is a clever plan. Recruiting Michael - after he somehow survived the electrocution and brain tumour, an explanation the show has, as yet, failed to provide - for his expertise and then marrying his thought-to-be-widow is somewhat genius, particularly if he then betrays Michael and needs to keep a close eye on his family’s effort to break him out of Ogygia. Kellerman’s explanation of Jacob’s ideology is probably as close to a motivation as we will ever get, and it is not the worst. The reveal itself allows for some potentially interesting threads to be explored, assuming Prison Break can avoid getting bogged down in incoherency and not consider itself smarter and more reasoned than it truly is.

As for Ramal… well, that whole thing played out in about the only way it was ever going to. Ramal trusting Michael was risky. Michael trusting Ramal was stupid - and of all the things that he is, Michael is not stupid. Granted, he felt he needed his help to not be instantly killed by ISIL, but that did not get him particularly far. Most importantly, though, he thought he could get the upper hand on his adversary. Michael is often arrogant in that way; he is smarter than everyone else and he knows it, and so he will have confidence in his own plan bettering anyone else’s. Except that is extremely dangerous when dealing with a group of ruthless and organised terrorists, as he found out the hard way.

Aside from the frustration surrounding Michael’s choices, what is perhaps most egregious is that there was an absence of tension. Other than the difficulty Prison Break would have maintaining Michael’s story inside Ogygia, the place was about to be blown apart, and so unless the co-lead character was going to die four episodes into a show based entirely around him being alive, he was going to escape. And it looks like the pre-premiere talk of this season being about his escaping a country rather than a prison is accurate now that ISIL has declared war on him and his fellow inmates for killing Ramal (*).

(*) Again, there was no version of Michael escaping - which was always happening - where Ramal survives longer than the remainder of that episode. One of the two had to die given their proximity, and it was never going to be Michael.

The reunion between the brothers was a nice moment with all the makings of a trademark Prison Break scene: poignant, explanatory, and simultaneously lacking in explanation. The emotion was palpable between the two and, despite any and all misgivings surrounding the very existence of this revival, it was a powerful scene. And it also successfully explained exactly why Michael kept up the charade of Kaniel Outis when Lincoln and C-Note came to find him. But not only did it confuse Whip with the several revelations as to his friend’s past, it went nowhere to suggesting how or why Michael is wrapped up in any of this.

In this instance, however, it is not a bad thing; taking a brief exposition break would have been strange and stupid. But it says a lot about the way this show operates that a perpetual state of confusion over facts is perhaps its most prominent feature.

And it says a lot about either the show or me as a viewer that it is not inherently annoying - at least, not yet.

Notes:

• Van Gogh may be about to have doubts over their mission because of what Kellerman said. That is probably too hasty.

• I never knew that I needed to see T-Bag complaining about kale, but apparently, I did.

• Having watched both this episode and the latest Better Call Saul hour on Tuesday, I got to see two characters trying to loop something over a pole or wire above them on the same day.

• Lincoln appears to be growing a heart, and surprisingly is not adamantly against admitting it here.

• Are we ever going to see Sucre again? He had a five-minute cameo in the premiere and has not been heard of since.

• My colleague Louis Rabinowitz’s first and only reaction, upon seeing the Jacob twist: “Hey, I went to that bike shop they're filming in front of once!” Probably not what the show wanted.

• While Whip was killing Ramal, the guy filming Michael’s execution did not move at all. Surely, he should have tried to stop Whip?

• This is the last of the screeners I got up front. I will hopefully get some more but if not, reviews will be up hopefully mid-to-late afternoons each Wednesday.

What did everyone think of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”? Leave your thoughts in the comments and vote in our poll below!