Episode Report Card Sobell: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sarah, Plain And Tall
By Sobell | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.07.2007
Mahone sitting behind in a dramatically-lit staircase. Since the direction in this scene is all arty and desolate, that should be our first clue that Mahone's now a junkie. (See also Requiem for a Dream, Sid and Nancy, Drugstore Cowboy.) Our second clue is the empty syringe, along with the matches and the sticky spoon in a grim yellow pool of light. (See? Art direction. Being a junkie is pretty!) And our third clue is that Mahone is rocking back and forth and twiddling his fingers. I would get outraged at how his character's disintegrating, but I'm still worn out from the Dr. Sara snit I threw back at the beginning of the recap.
Michael moves to his new cell. The art in this one includes a woman free of shackles, dancing in flames; it's a lot of phoenix imagery as reinterpreted by very lonely men. Michael immediately begins looking out of the window. He whirls around to find Mahone dopily leaning against the door of his cell, dreamily twirling the black felt-tip pen around. "You left this in your old cell," he says. Michael manages to thank Mahone coolly, and Mahone replies, "It's funny that you could forget something as important as this is." Michael takes the pen and says cautiously, "I'm glad you found it for me." He walks over and Mahone follows him, ostensibly to marvel at a drawing on the wall...but really to plant a shiv about half an inch away from Michael's ear.
Michael takes a big, startled breath, but we do not hear the accompanying tinkle of urine. Bully for Scofield! Mahone pins his other hand on the wall so Michael can't move and says, "You are breathing only by my grace, Michael. Now you remember that the next time you send me onna...on a goose chase." "I didn't," a frightened Michael protests. Mahone begs to differ: "You did. And you think you can manipulate me like you did Sucre and Tweener and Haywire. I'm not your errand boy. I'm going to go with you when you escape, and if you think, in any way, that you'll leave me, I'll put this piece of metal right in that very small space right between your eyes." As Mahone pulls his shiv out of the wall, Michael can't take his eyes off of it. Mahone weaves on out of there. Michael is still too freaked to move.
He eventually recovers enough to go out and visit Linc. The first questions out of his mouth are, "How's L.J.? How's Sara?" Linc pauses before lying, "They told me they're fine." Then Linc has to break the news that the original gravedigger's gone. Michael wigs slightly before Linc reveals that the gravedigger's supervisor could use some extra cash (read: bribes) and sure enough, there's a new gravedigger. The next shot is of Michael rushing back through the courtyard to check out the new gravedigger. We see the boots and pants, and then, as Michael's watching the man lift a body by the shoulders, we see...Sucre. He's grinning at Michael. Michael barely suppresses a smile of his own. Well, Jay has Silent Bob; I suppose we can all agree now that Sucre has Michael. They're hetero life-partners.