I’m starting to watch the first season of Prison Break. The premise is cool and the show is interesting so far. But there’s no way they can stretch this story for 4 or 5 seasons or however long it’s been on now.
American TV shows just can’t quit - they run them into the ground until they’re totally wrecked. So I assume that sometime during the run, the main plotline was resolved and then they just started making up crap to keep it running. Is that about right?
Does it become silly at some point or is it still worth watching? If there’s a clear drop in quality at some point, tell me where - I can just stop watching at that point and pretend it was a limited-run series that fulfilled its plot.
First of all, “making up crap” is the series’ raison d’etre. It’s biggest appeal is in its sheer insanity - I’ve never seen a show with such a high “WTF?” quotient, and I mean than in the best possible way. With most shows I can generally guess what the next plot twist will be, but with Prison Break I’ve been blindsided so often I’ve stopped trying.
That said, Season 2 is better than Season 1, and while Season 3 was a precipitous drop in quality, Season 4 started with a “series reboot” (which was easy to accept, considering the show’s craziness) and is actually pretty damn good. Plus, William Fichtner joins the cast in Season 2, and there’s no such thing as too much William Fichtner!
Huh. That’s dissapointing. I’m 3 episodes in and so far it seems very plot-driven and planned out. If it just gets goofy from here on out I might just give up.
To be fair, the goofiness reaches full bloom in Season 2. I say you should stick with it, if only for the acting (which gets better as more regular cast members are added) and the dialogue, which is often very, very funny.
If you do like Alessan and just enjoy the ride for all its nonsense, keep on watching.
If you are still clinging to he hope that the promise the series show from chapter one, with the excellent cast (What about that Robert Knepper? How good is that guy?) and occasional cleverness will finally settle course and become actually good, like I did for three seasons until I started getting too woozy from hitting my head to the wall so many times while watching season four, don’t bother: last episode of season one is the perfect jumping out point.
It’s very fun but in a totally preposterous way. Seasons 1 & 2 were good; season 3 was slightly weaker; 4 has been more caper-ish but with interesting (and ridiculous) twists.
The best parts are some of the actors, especially Fichner and Knepper. Wade Williams (who plays prison guard Brad Bellick) also has some memorable turns.
Season 1 is very planned out and tightly plotted. I’ve heard (and it seems likely) that they could have ended it halfway thru Season 1 if they were cancelled, but they weren’t and so extended the season, with no drop in quality (and tightened up a lot of what might be termed loose ends but that most shows wouldn’t even have bothered with).
One late episode in Season 1 (the flashback episode) seems solely to have been created to set up Season 2, and this combined with the ever-expanding overall arc makes Season 2 fairly planned out and tightly plotted as well (slightly less so than Season 1, but definitely still up there). If you really absolutely must stop watching for fear of having your luurve of the show dashed, then stop at the end of Season 2 and pretend that the last few minutes or so of the last episode in Season 2 didn’t happen.
However, I don’t really understand that logic (the same people who say things like Buffy ended at Season 5 and there were no more or the ilk). Season 3 changes the location and brings along enough players and continuing character traits and such that it is also interesting, although by this time you can tell that it gets less tightly plotted and they have to leave some loose ends and such (tho I imagine this also has to do with the fact that the writer’s strike left them only able to make that season half as long as the other two). Overall, since Season 3 is only 13 episodes, has Robert Wisdom in it, and continues the excitement of the other two seasons, I would recommend continuing watching.
Season 4, like the others have said, is a complete reboot and is well-worth watching for the different situations it puts everyone into. Plus, I haven’t heard for sure or not yet, but I’m almost certain that this is the last season, and they are close to ending the main series-long arc. Of course, they’ve done a few things I don’t like, but overall I think the entire thing has been well worth watching.
One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that the same writers that have been with the show since the beginning are still there, at least most of them. I haven’t heard anything about a change of show-runners or other things that some people could argue would completely change a show, and so this makes the plot twists and dialog of a similar consistency thru-out. As I’ve said before, the plotting gets a bit less tight after Season 2, but the writers do the best they can and I think ultimately successful (even tho there are a couple things I wish they hadn’t done). And of course, the acting is almost universally excellent all the way thru.
Just as an example of the show’s insanity: at one point in Season 3, a bunch of people are discussing an urgent assault on a target, one of them says “we can get a Sergeant York!” - and is promptly ignored.
Now, the fact that these guys would have access to a failed 1980’s anti-aircraft system - probably one of a handful still in existence - is utterly preposterous. The fact that the show’s writers thought to use it as a throwaway line is pure genius.
I do think that Season 3 was the worst, mainly because they turned William Fichtner into a worthless character. You could really skip season 3 all together, most of the storylines get neatly wrapped up when the 4th season begins. I think they realized that it just wasn’t as good.
Season 4 has been really good. One of my least favorite things from the first 3 season is that they would go into practically every other commercial break with a cliffhanger that would end up being nothing. (AKA Micheal is hiding behind a door that a guard is about to open. Cut to commercial. When it comes back, just before the guard opens the door, he gets called away.) They have pretty much done away with that in Season 4.
Some very minor spoilers to give the OP a frame of reference of what to expect.
Season 1They escape from Fox River
Season 2It’s a cross-country manhunt for the escapees
Season 3New prison, new escape plan
Season 4Goofy conspiracy thriller business
And in each seasonat least one principle character dies, but usually more
I think each subsequent season has been slightly worse than the next, but I’m still watching the show and enjoy the individual elements (the character interactions) even if the “story” (I use the term quite liberally) goes off-the-rails from time to time.
Seasons 1 and 2 were both great, and season 3 was absolute crap. The current season is watchable, but nothing to write home about. I’d recommend watching the first two, and if you want to see more, skip 3 and go right to 4.
I actually don’t agree with this, the character is certainly at a low during parts of this season, but I think they continue to show his cleverness (second only to Michael and possibly McGrady’s pop (heh)) and he really redeems himself at the end of the season and into the 4th season.
Also, as a last ditch effort to endorse Season 3, I have to mention the beautiful Danay Garcia in that season. I really like her…
I’m curious to these multiple references to season 4 being a ‘reboot.’ Could someone spoiler a few more details on this, for someone who never really watched the show? Do you just mean that the starring characters are in a completely new situation, that doesn’t bear too much on the plot of seasons 1-3, or are they very literally being brought back to the beginning?
I’m trying to think of any other examples of a tv show rebooting with a particular season, and the only example I can come up with was Series 8 of ‘Red dwarf’… wherein they find themselves once again back on a fully populated Red Dwarf ship, just as it was before the accident
"Remember those cliffhangers at the end of last season? Well, they were resolved either off-capema or right at the beginning of the first episode. And those guys who used to hate each other? They’re friends now. Oh, and the entire premise of the show has changed: instead of being about a bunch of guys each doublecrossing each other while trying to escape the authorities,
now those same guys are working with the authorities against someone else."
It’s jarring at first, but it’s a real improvement.
Partly inspired by this thread, I started watching Prison Break from the beginning last week. I’m two episodes into Season Two now. So far it isn’t terrible. There are other shows I regularly watch that are far worse. It has it’s eye-rolley moments in every episode, but what show doesn’t anymore? There is one core issue I have that is starting to bug me though, and I’d like a general spoiler.
Season One spoilers below:
Does Michael ever reach to a point where he must come to grips with what he has done? With the enormity of the chain of events he set in motion, and the havoc he has wreaked upon so many lives? The growing body count, etc? IMO, he has a longer list of victims than anyone else in the show.
This first bugged me when he began recruiting Sucre, who only had 16 months left to serve. It got much worse when he started a prison riot that resulted in the death of a CO (and who knows what other suffering). After Bob the Guard was killed, he seemed pretty broken up, and I thought he might have understood it was partly his own fault … but it turned out he was just really upset at T-Bag (Worst Prison Nickname Ever, with Tweener a close second) and wanting vengeance. He got a little mopey for the Dr., but he could have seen her fate coming when he cornered her into giving up her career for him and his brother, and went right on through with it.
By Season Two, he is responsible for some seriously dangerous people being let loose on society. No doubt he has a plan which covers every contingency(!!) to round them back up:rolleyes: … but to me that is no excuse. I hold him responsible for everything they do while free. Does this ever occur to him in the slightest? Or are we expected to go on watching this guy shit on every person’s life that he enters, and then ride off into the sunset as if it’s all the VPs fault? It’s all justified to save his brother? I ask myself how many people I would condemn to death to save my brother, and I think my brother would want me to answer zero.
Now, I’m heckling him out loud every time he fucks over another random person. I am hoping that at the end of Season Three he has a total psychotic meltdown from the mental stress of actually being The Problem while firmly believing he is The Solution. That’s too much to hope for isn’t it? A general spoiler is fine. Either: Yes, he matures a lot, or No, he remains an oblivious, arrogant, human tornado.
He does stay fairly tortured about his actions throughout the length of the series, but only to the extent that it doesn’t hold him back from solving the innumerable problems he constantly is confronted with.
