After The Rental - Prison Break

The Netflix que is filled with TV series these days. Why? Must of the new moviews that have hit theaters the last year have sucked so much that they aren't even worth renting. Given that, you hear that a series has good buzz, you wait for the season to come out on DVD, and you burn through 23 episodes in three weeks. You can then either stop watching or start the next season caught up top the rest of the world.

This is an especially good method for shows like "24" and "Lost" with their weekly cliffhangers. You think you have to wait a week for your next hit of crack, but then realize that all you ahve to do is hit the "play" button to get your fix.

This was certainly true of the first season of "Prison Break." Fox seems to have Monday nights locked in for serial-action-conspiracy night with both this show and "24" on back-to-back.

We won't rehash the first season's events here suffice to say that the tale was compeletly engaging. How would Michael be able to break out? How much did he squeeze into his tattoo? What about the guards learning of the plot? Why was this warden nice when every other warden in the history of TV and film was always a crook and a prick?

The show came up with engaging characters (Haywire's sceen taking his meds was hilarious), insane plot twists that remained in the realm of mind candy (Michael flooding the escape route), and just a hint of a larger consipracy.

Sadly, once the escape was completed, the show fell off the cliff. One of the reasons the show worked so well was that the prison itself was a character. The walls, the yard, the bolts made into allen wrenches, the guard house. All these added an element of consistency. Additionally, the claustrophobia of the cells and the prisons added to the tension and made it more likely the escape plot could be uncovered.

Now that the excapees are out in the open, the plots have gotten more and more ludicrous. The recently resolved plot of T-bag and his "family" and "C-Note" and his little girl actually made me uncomfortable watching. Hopefully, the writers can get some order and fun back in the show soon.

One of the other missing items is the tasty Robin Tunney. One of Chicago's own, she was killed off early in season two. While her character is not missed, she certainly made the screen better looking in her appearances.

We're probably stuck watching this show to the end of its run. Once invested in a show, we often end up vested. Here's hoping the writers get the fun back into this show or it's going to be a lot of bad lead-ins to "24".