Anyway, yeesh. So, a friend’s convinced me to watch Prison Break with her over the last couple of weeks, and I liked the first season. The science was a little worse than your average show, the acting was a little angstier, but in general it was a decent treatment of an interesting topic.
We got to the second season last weekend, and boy did things go downhill. Predictable plot “twists,” bad acting, hilariously unlikely coincidence… the last is really what’s started to amuse me; despite the fact that the FBI and cons are getting their information from completely different sources, they always manage to figure clues or cryptic information out at the exact. same. time.
Now I know that the default recipe for a drama is to stuff conflict into the plot like so many cats in a sack, give it a good, hard shake, and wait to see what comes out, I really can’t help but wince at the sharp decline in quality.
I think the big problem is that the writers just can’t handle their characters out of prison… personally I would rather have seen season 1’s plot tied up neatly in the season finale, leaving the writers to begin a brand new plot in a different prison with different characters next season. Heck, you could even get all multi-cultural and examine the penal system in a different country each season.
I know it would probably be seen as suicidal to introduce new characters instead of staying with established ones, but I can’t help thinking that PB could’ve been done a lot better than it was.
I’m with Opal. Season two is just as great as the first. Your mistake was not waiting a while to let the whole prison thing get out of your system. It was still too familiar and comforting for you. As a result, you’re missing out on some of the best character development on TV. Especially T-Bag and Kellerman.
I agree with your analysis, and I do still enjoy it enough to watch… but I’m really baffled by the drop in quality. It may just be me, not digging their on-the-run story as much as I did the escape, but I can’t help but feel that season 2 lost something.
Since spoilers are unboxed, this does seem to be the direction they’re heading at the end of Season 2. It looked like they were setting up a jailbreak situation in SONA, the Panamanian prison. I am hoping they do something interesting like model it after San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia. That prison has no guards and is entirely run by the prisoners. It would make for an interesting microcosm to explore.
I thought season 2 took a great turn. The PROBLEM is that the show was only supposed to run 2 seasons, and they had everything wrapped up nicely in the final episode, and would have made a great SERIES finale, but then FOX started begging them for a third season, and the writers panicced and decided to go all Lost on it. That, plus the absence of Kellerman (I’d think there’d be hope for him if the actor weren’t going to another show) makes me not excited for season 3 at all.
I’m getting soft in my old age. 