Prison Break Season 3

If you’ve never caught Prison Break, the Fox Network hit television series, you have been missing out. What at first appeared to be a straight forward, brother commits crime to get into prison where his brother is on death row for killing the brother of the Vice-President in order to break his brother out story that we’ve all seen done before, has turned out to be a show that keeps you glued to the set the entire forty-three minutes and leaves you wanting more, be it at the end of the latest episode or the dreadful cliff-hangers that have kept America waiting for more for two years. Now in it’s third season, Wentworth Miller (who plays Michael Scofield, the brother who committed the crime to break his brother out of prison) and Dominic Purcell (who plays Lincoln Burrows, the brother who was framed for the “murder” of the Vice-President’s brother) lead a cast into the depths of a Panamanian Prison known as “Sona”, the worst, vile, despicable place on the face of the Earth. Scofield being put there as a pawn by “The Company”, a clandestine pseudo-government agency pulling the strings in this drama, in order to break out a fisherman and sea boat captain who may have vital information for them.

Inside Sona is also Alex Mahone (played wonderfully by William Fichtner), an FBI agent who had it all but lived with the guilt of killing an known killer and instead of reporting it buried the body in his own backyard. An agent we saw kill young Tweener last season, a kid barely old enough to vote thrown into Fox River Penitentiary in Illinois for stealing some collectable baseball card. Michael Scofield pulled a fast one on him and now he’s in the same Panamanian Prison because Michael made a deal to have drugs placed on the boat he gave Mahone to make his “clean break”, only it got him in Sona.

The old prison guard from Fox River who lost his job, a recovering alcoholic who met Prison Doctor Sara at an addict meeting, played by Wade Williams as Brad Bellick, has his hands full because after twenty years as a guard now he’s a prisoner in the worst type of prison in the world. Don’t trust him. Other cast members this season include Robert Knepper as Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell (a Southern speaking child molester and murderer, who bullied his way into the original Prison Break group and turned snitch for The Company last season before being left hung out to dry by the same group), Amaury Nolasco plays Fernando Sucre (who was Scofield’s cellmate inside Fox River and now is on the outside trying to help Burrows get Scofield out of the Panamanian prison), Jodi Lyn O’Keefe plays Susan B. Anthony (a military vet who now works for The Company as a hired assassin and who is Lincoln Burrows’ contact), Chris Vance as James Whistler (the man The Company wants sprung and the reason Michael is in Sona in the first place), and Robert Wisdom plays Lechero, the head man in Sona (a Latin American drug lord who is being hung out to dry by his co-horts in crime both inside the prison and outside).

The series is filmed in Fort Worth, Texas at an abandoned jail or on soundstages in Irving, Texas. So far this season we have seen Michael’s would-be girlfriend killed by The Company, as payback for Lincoln trying to save Sarah (the would-be girlfriend) and his own son, being held as incentives for Michael to bust Whistler out. We’ve also seen Michael work his magic inside the prison to get what he needs to get the job done. In two weeks the show returns for a 2-hour episode in which the bust out begins, and from there on out the action will heat up extremely. Having watched this show from the beginning, I have waited patiently during the build-up to the excitement. The first season was awesome as the brother with a head for breaking down things and using what he needs to get his brother out of Death Row and the second was just as fulfilling to watch them, and their fellow cast members, scramble to try to find the money hidden by D. B. Cooper (who was inside Fox River under another name but Michael, always the thinker, figured it out) and make it to safety while the net tightened around them. This season has had me waiting for another throw down between inmates, like we saw in the season premiere when Michael had to fight another inmate when he was accused of being a thief, a ploy by Luchero to test the mettle of this newest visitor to the Sona prison. We will have to wait for the 2-hour episode to see if it will happen.