Episode Report Card Sobell: A | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT He is a man of constant smirking
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 08.28.2005
We then pan to Fox River State Penitentiary, which hunkers by the shore of some river in Joliet, Illinois. We pan over the long, low buildings and across the 18th fairway of the prison golf course and -- oh. My bad. That's evidently the prison exercise yard. I wonder what miracle of fertilizer offsets the constant treading of inmates' feet?
And then it's time to establish that prison dehumanizes you by stripping you naked, sticking you in lines, and shouting orders at you. Also, Michael's tattoos are less likely to impress his fellow inmates since many of them sport their own expansive body art. Michael's already been through this process and is now meeting nemesis number one: prison guard Brad Bellick. We get Michael's back number (94941) and then we have this exchange:
Bellick: You a religious man, Scofield?
Michael: Never thought about it.
Bellick: Good, 'cause the Ten Commandments don't mean a box of piss in here. There are two commandments and two only. The first is, you got nothing coming.
Michael: What's the second commandment?
Bellick: See commandment number one.
Michael: Gotcha.
Bellick: You talking out the side of your neck?
Michael: Come again?
Bellick: I said, are you being a smart-ass?
Michael: Just trying to fly low and avoid the radar, boss. Get in and get out.
Bellick: There isn't any flying under my radar.
Michael: Good to know.
And this is where Michael's staring comes in handy, because he's not openly snickering at Bellick's B-movie patois. But Bellick stares himself for a while as the music gets all ominous, and then we pan down to Michael's clipboard, which tells us he has Type I diabetes.
We then get a shot of the general quarters -- row upon row of cell, each filled up, all these people pacing and talking, stacked on top of each other. Michael's standing at the bars of his cell, which are so far apart as to appear largely decorative. He looks from one end of the long hangar-like facility to the other. Two prison wits engage in this repartee: "Can we get some air conditioning up here, man? It's hotter than a crack ho's mouth." "To hell with the AC, man. Give me the crack ho." It's like the prison version of the "Take my wife...please" joke. We see prisoners lobbing contraband at one another.
Michael is finally looking around like, "This was a bad idea." Watching someone get shanked on the floor of the prison while other inmates compliment him on his pulchritude does nothing to ease his misgivings. Michael watches the shanked prisoner bleed out and his cellie, Fernando Sucre, smirks, "Welcome to Prisneyland, Fish." Well, I guess if you're confined in a cell 20 hours a day, you'll cook up that bon mot eventually. For the first time, Michael looks terrified. As if to emphasize how overwhelmed he feels, the camera pulls back so we can see how he's just one tiny element in a seething mass.
Meanwhile, on the outside...Veronica and Victor Von Doomed are have a nighttime chat. Yes, Victor has a real name. No, I don't feel like learning it; the point of this scene is to establish that while she'd like to think she's moved on by getting engaged to a fine upstanding fellow like himself, she really hasn't, and it's beginning to chap his ass. We all know that eventually, Veronica will put Michael and his brother first at the expense of her personal life, and this relationship is doomed. Next!