Prison Break: "Going Under" - Episode 415

Oh boy! A dream sequence! Some of my favorite TV silliness comes in the form of a good (or bad) dream sequence, and this week, Prison Break joined the fun with 'Going Under'. Bobby Ewing never showed up, but hey - sweeps month is coming! More Prison Break after the jump...

 

 

MICHAEL - Our boy spent the majority of the episode in a dream sequence prison cell with Charles Westmoreland/DB Cooper yakking it up about old times, but first, let's take a look at how he got there. When last we left him, he was being used as a bargaining chip by The General to get Lincoln back on Scylla's trail. Linc has no option but to agree, so Michael's surgery begins. Sarah's a little concerned about how she's never seen this type of surgery before anywhere, but there's little she can do from behind that thick glass wall as the surgeons start poking and prodding into Michael's brain. After prattling on about who knows what for most of the episode, Charles makes Michael realize that much like Dorothy, he's had the answer to what he's been looking for all along. Michael scrawls the word 'BARGAIN' on a blank piece of paper hung on the wall of the dream sequence cell. He's not quite sure what it means inside of his waking dream, but upon being resuscitated after nearly dying, he realizes that the letters in the word itself are actually a series of chemical elements. When combined, those elements form to create a top-secret solar energy source, which is actually what has been hidden inside Scylla this whole time.

 

MAHONE - Locked in the back of a unmarked police car headed back to prison, Mahone concocts a plan to escape. He asks Agents Wheeler and Lang to pull over so he can take a piss, but while in the bathroom, he steals a pipe from the sink without making any kind of a sound at all. Nice job, Alex. The car ride continues, but as soon as Alex finds a decent spot to make a break for it, he uses the pipe to break out the car window. Mahone runs, but Lang catches up to him and holds him at gunpoint. She tells him she'll shoot his ass if he even thinks about making a break for it, but with his belief that Lang still cares for him no matter the circumstances, he takes off into the forest anyway. Lang takes a shot, but only to convince Wheeler that she actually tried to take Mahone down as he fled. She tells him that Alex has escaped, but once Wheeler returns to the car to tell headquarters what happened, Lang looks into the forest and sees Mahone standing there. She lets him go, and Mahone flees.

 

LINCOLN, SUCRE, T-BAG, GRETCHEN, AND DON SELF - In the episode's B-story, the General has made an agreement with Lincoln to go after Scylla in exchange for him helping his brother. Linc rounds up Sucre, and the two head off after Gretchen and Don Self. However, Lincoln also has another accomplice in his mission to retrieve Scylla, and that person is the recently captured T-Bag. After a rather bloody sequence in which Linc pulls out a few of his teeth with a pair of pliers, T-Bag gives Linc what he's after - the drop-off location of a nearby pier that Gretchen and Don are now headed to meet their buyer. 

 

Linc and Sucre show up at the pier just minutes behind Gretchen and Don, but they find their cell phones and Viken's smashed PDA. You remember Viken - the contact of the buyer that Don shot and killed last week for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Don and Gretchen hightail it to a nearby store where she buys a new cell phone to contact their buyer with. They set up a new drop point (an abandoned warehouse that looked a little too much like the warehouse Michael and crew used to call home), and as they leave, Linc and Sucre are hot on their trail. Linc pounds the head of the store cashier into the counter a few times to get the receipt Gretchen left behind, and with the assistance of his contact back at the Company, he uses that information to find out where Don and Gretchen have gotten to. A traffic camera has spotted the two of them, so combined with that and the tracked whereabouts of the recently purchased cell phone, Linc and Sucre head off to the abandoned warehouse they're now headed to.

 

Gretchen and Don hand over Scylla to check its contents when the buyer arrives. He confirms that it's the real deal with his Get Smart briefcase computer, but Don is confused when Scylla doesn't seem to be what it's been described to him as. What's with all the crap in there about energy sources? Hmm. Linc and Sucre attempt to sneak up on the group with guns drawn, but when that goes awry, the buyer takes a few shots at his customers and sends Don sprawling to the ground. He's alive, but he's out long enough for the buyer to escape. You'd think Lincoln, Sucre, and Gretchen would've stopped pointing their guns at one another long enough to at least take a shot or two at the guy escaping with what they're all after, but apparently not. Linc and Sucre capture Don and Gretchen, and the only thing keeping them alive is their knowledge of where the hell the buyer who just stole Scylla might have gotten off to.

 

Linc meets back up with the General to discuss what's next, and the General tells him that he's now an employee of the Company with the sole mission of retrieving Scylla. To add insult to injury, he has to work with Gretchen, Don, and T-Bag to do it, too. Linc heads back out to the car, and while Sucre is waiting for him there, he's not exactly on board with what's next. Sucre tells Linc he's out, and that he wants to get back to living his own life. Wait, isn't he still a fugitive? Where's he going to go, Mexico? Oh right... Mexico. That's exactly where he's headed.

 

BITS AND PIECES - 

 

Yeah, for some reason I'm not buying The General's 'empathy' speech explaining why he's going to save Michael. It's hinted at in the preview for next week (and also in that bottle that Sarah kept looking over), but I think the 'experimental' surgery he's undergoing is turning him into some kind of Company automaton. Extracting information, giving him new directives and priorities, the works. Kinda like Reggie Jackson in 'The Naked Gun'. You must kill the Queen...

 

So the power of love really DOES work on bringing people back from the dead! Well done, Sarah. You should start singing karaoke with Huey Lewis to celebrate.

 

So Michael and Lincoln's former Company employee of a mother is still alive! I wonder if she'll be bald, too.

 

You'd think that Gretchen's sister Rita would be a little smarter than to hide with her daughter on the front porch of a house directly across the street from where they nearly got themselves killed. Worst faux-mother ever.

 

I really want to see who the hell this buyer of Scylla is going to turn out to be. I'm thinking it's going to be the General himself for some reason, and because that answer makes little sense, I'm betting it's right on the money.

 

So what's the over/under on how many episodes it's going to take for Sucre to pop back up? What about Mahone?  The only way people ever seem to stay gone on this show is if their decapitated heads turn up in a box, and... Oh, wait. That's not right, either. See you soon, guys!

 

-littlebigmouth.