Episode Report Card Sobell: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Veronica -- dead!
By Sobell | Season 2 | Episode 1 | Aired on 08.20.2006
Mahone is now visiting Michael's old apartment. He walks around the empty, pristine apartment -- having killed or removed the new occupants, one presumes, since the odds of a luxury loft with waterfront views staying on the market for long are tiny -- and begins brainstorming to Ives: "Mother's dead, father's a deadbeat...you got nothing in the whole world but your brother. So you plan..." Mahone lets his voice trail off as he runs his fingers along the wall, which is pocked with pinpricks from Michael's elaborate planning. Because, again, this is the sole luxury loft in the downtown Chicago area that has not been seized upon by home-staging professionals. We get about a minute of slickly overlapping images of Michael pinning things up and studying his plans, and Mahone trying to imagine Michael's actions. Mahone muses, "You scheme for months, until you get it right, every single element. And then you destroy all the evidence." How fortunate for Mahone that his powers of imagination include the ability to flash back to season one, because otherwise, how would he know to look out the window and imagine that Michael's chucked his hard drive into the Chicago River below? He tells Ives, "I want divers down in the river." And you know, while I really, really like the idea of Mahone being smart enough to figure out Michael's plan, I really, really dislike the idea of him figuring out every element on the first try. So I hope that when the divers bring up that hard drive, they discover that Michael has either affixed refrigerator magnets reading, "Good luck, suckers!" to the drive's outer case, or he's filled the drive with enough malware to bring down the FBI's network.
Meanwhile, up in beautiful Blackfoot, Montana, Terrence is woozily telling Veronica that the cell phone reception sucks up here. Veronica tells him to shut up, and he snaps, "Just trying to save you some effort. It's like a web with these people -- the more you struggle, the worse it gets." Unfortunately, Veronica decides now is the time to be incredibly suspicious of Terrence, instead of mulling the possibility that the old saying "In Percoset veritas" has any truth to it. She snaps, "It sounds to me like a coward trying to justify his actions." Terrence points out, "If I stay out of the way, I stay alive. That's what they said. That's what they told me." Veronica asks, "And you're willing to live like this? In a hermetically sealed box, while everything out there goes to hell?' Frankly, she makes that option seem alluring. Terrence tells her, "Self-preservation is a strong motivator." "So's the truth," Veronica rebuts. She...must not have wowed them in her trial classes, because that's a pretty weak rejoinder. Also, it's going to an audience that's just admitted it would rather live like a coward than die for a principle, so exactly how effective is it going to be? Veronica then punches the button, and turns her back on Mister Self-Preservation-Is-My-Strongest-Moral-Imperative. Clearly, self-preservation is fairly low on her list. After a few woozy protests, Terrence decides putting the barrel of his pistol to the back of Veronica's head might be a more effective form of protest.