Monday, November 21, 2011

Television Review: Prison Break, Season 2

One of the things depicted in the first season of Prison Break, which I didn't mention in my original review [1], was that the worst thing about prison is the other prisoners. Most of the violence depicted is between prisoners. However, the show also portrays the prison guards as having the same quality of character—they're merely on the other side of the bars. In fact, several of the prisoners are portrayed as the heroes and the guards are portrayed as the villains (many of the prisoners are villains in their own rights, though). This theme continues after the breakout. Several of the prison guards who have been fired for misconduct become bounty hunters who are chasing the escaped prisoners. And they engage in all sorts of criminal behavior to try to achieve their goals. Fortunately the justice system eventually takes notice of their misdeeds.

My verdict: (Side note before I get started: I never understood why a guy with a Russian accent, Peter Stormare [2], was considered to be believable as a ranking member of the Sardinian mafia.) This season has some nice twists and they manage to maintain my interest in the show despite the fact that they're all out of prison, now. I was disappointed that about a third of the way through the show Michael's tattoos quite suddenly cease to be a part of the plot (with one retconned exception [3]). I really liked that gimmick and was sad to see it go. As for the finale, I didn't think that anyone needed to go to jail for the shooting of Mr. Kim. They could've easily claimed self defense. (But then we wouldn't be confronted with a new prison break next season, would we?) The image of Brad Bellick at the end was more than a bit shocking.

BONUS: At one point they do some digging in a woman's garage. There's something shocking about that woman (a physical feature). See if you can spot it.


Notes:

[1] You can read that review here.

[2] He's actually Swedish, but his accent doesn't sound Swedish to me. But it definitely doesn't sound Italian.

[3] It shows Michael's tattoos, but the new clue they reveal is derived from data recovered from his hard drive, not the actual tattoos since they lack a feature hastily added to the hard drive images.

No comments:

Post a Comment