Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's so hard to find good conspiracy participants
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 09.18.2005
It's now 5:58 PM. Sucre's having a mini-meltdown in his cell, doing everything he can to ensure that genetic predisposition toward hypertension is getting everything it can to succeed. The gate opens and he looks absolutely miserable.
Meanwhile, Michael scampers up to the rooftop and scales the roof. Or, more accurately, tries to: he slides down and into a vent right as a floodlight sweeps over the roof. It's exactly 6 PM.
Bellick's doing the count. He gets to Michael and Sucre's cell and notices that Michael hasn't popped out. He looks at Sucre's stressed-out face. And then he bellows, "We got a runner!"
Commercials. So, is NetZero's Dennis Miller in some sort of freakish Dorian Gray arrangement where he shows the years that Bill Maher's theoretically aging?
When we get back from commercials, an alarm is pulsing at a pitch designed to set nerves on edge and a new bank of floodlights blazes on, startling both Michael (on the roof) and Pope (in the chapel, reading his Bible). The guards are running across the green but having difficulty making speedy progress, what with sinking up to the knees in the lush grass. From his subterranean hidey-hole, Linc notices the prison's in a bit of an uproar. The inmates have seized on this excuse to go wild. Bellick has seized on this chance to bully Sucre, threatening to turn him into a piñata lest Sucre reveal where he is. Sucre's look says it all: I have no idea. But if he turns up, I may just help you kick his ass, for what he's been doing to my stress levels.
Cue the guard in the front office saying, "Call it off. I've got Scofield right here in Pope's office." Bellick snarls, "You looking at him? Stop trying to nail the secretary and check the office." Well -- that makes the courtship of Officer Patterson and Becky slightly more awkward. Patterson takes a very cursory glance into the room -- not bothering to check the table below the Taj Mabadidea or anything -- then concludes that Michael's gone.
Perched on the roof like a bargain-basement superhero, Michael logs the direction that the guards come from and checks it against his watch. Then he notes the direction the patrol cars come from and checks that against his watch. Why, it's English Road! And there's more cars coming down Percy Road. There's no prison-based The Dating Game after all. You can't imagine how disappointed I am. Michael, however, seems pleased to note that Fitz Road is as still as the grave.
After a scene in which we see guards running along the same prison corridor as Michael traversed earlier, we see Pope bursting into his office, hollering at Bellick, "A man just can't vanish, Deputy!" Pope confirms with Becky and Patterson that Michael never checked out with them, and opens his office door while he's saying, "How the hell did he --?"