Episode Report Card Sobell: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jacob Have I loved, Yet Esau I Have Hated …
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 19 | Aired on 05.01.2009
Aaaand now Team Lincoln is making another tactical error by having Don Self be the guy sweet-talking the bank teller at Dade-Miami Bank into accessing a safe deposit box for the account number they've got. It does not go well, mostly because Slick has just taken off with the safe deposit box. Also, there is now security camera footage of Lincoln glowering in the lobby. Again: that surely will not come back to bite Lincoln in the rear!
Mahone, Lincoln and Don Self begin sprinting after Slick, who drives off with the box. They pile in a car, and a car chase commences. As Slick drives, his mobile phone rings and he picks it up. It's our guy from last week -- the one at the Indian embassy, now identified as "Mr. Bannerjee." He asks to talk to "Christina Hampton." Slick lies that she's in a meeting, and Bannerjee says, "If I don't talk to her before five, the deal is off." Slick is too busy trying not to drive into anything to reply.
Speaking of Christina, we're on round two of her talks with Michael. He cuts loose the tape that's binding her to the chair (her hands are still restrained) and says, "This is my final offer. You're going to take me to Scylla. Then you can walk. No questions, no-one tells the General, you can live the rest of your life like this never happened, but Scylla is mine." Christina says Linc won't allow that, and Michael's like, "Who's bringing Lincoln into this again?" Christina persists, "Even as children, you couldn't agree. You fought about everything." As most siblings do. That is the POINT to being or having a sibling: to spend your childhood fighting with them, unless someone else wants to, because then you have to kick the outsider's ass. Anyway, Christina continues smack-talking Lincoln, and while Michael initially protests, once she starts in along the whole "You're better-looking and smarter and nicer than him" line of flattery, he ceases protesting. Dr. Sara eavesdrops. Christina says, "You know what I'm getting at, don't you? ... You've always known it deep in your heart. You've just had no-one to confirm it. Lincoln isn't your brother." We cut to Dr. Sara gaping, as if to say, Wait a minute: isn't this whole series' premise predicated on the notion that these two brothers will go to extraordinary lengths for each other because they're each other's family?
To my eternal disappointment, Michael does NOT say, "Blood doesn't mean a thing. You and I are biologically related, and it's done nothing for me. But Lincoln -- Lincoln was the guy who has been there for me my whole life, and so far as I am concerned, he is more my family than you ever will be." Instead, Christina is allowed to keep nattering on about how Linc is, in fact, a souvenir of one of Aldo's One World Conspiracy trips to the Philippines -- "his parents worked for the [One World Conspiracy]" -- and Christina always resented the little Lincoln. Michael has his back to Christina, so that he doesn't have to show her he's crying, but he chokes out, "I can't believe you're playing this card." You and the other three dozen people who are still watching this show, Michael. Anyway, Christina continues with a monologue that should just be rewritten as "Jacob have I love, but Esau have I hated." And she concludes that Michael's pissed away his life -- because she never told him that he had no fraternal obligation to Lincoln at all.