Episode Report Card LTG: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Cellular Degeneration
By LTG | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.04.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Michael, now sans toe, continues with his plan to break out of Fox River. This week's step involves testing Sucre, his cellmate, to see whether he can be trusted to keep a secret. That test involves letting Sucre see where Michael hides a cell phone, and then waiting to see if he squeals. Sucre doesn't squeal, and loses his conjugal visits as a result. But he finds that his sacrifice was in vain when he discovers that the cell phone is actually carved out of soap, and he transfers to a new cell. Michael gets a new cellmate who apparently never sleeps, which creates a small obstacle to Michael's nocturnal activities. I mean, his escape-related nocturnal activities. Michael does get some good news when Abruzzi agrees to help him out. Of course, before he does that, Abruzzi sets Michael up to be raped by T-Bag, and then saves him from said rape. Linc's son's parole officer requires him to make a weekly visit to his dad, leading to a touching scene in which Linc asks his son to be present at his execution. And on the outside, Veronica convinces Leticia to come to her office to give an affidavit. After giving her testimony, but before signing the affidavit, Leticia takes a smoke break. Agent Kellerman chooses that exact moment to drop by Veronica's office, and takes the opportunity to kidnap Leticia while he's there. He's such a multi-tasker. Veronica ends up being dumped by Sebastian, while Leticia ends up murdered in the woods. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
When I was offered the chance to recap an episode of Prison Break, I leapt at it. I mean, prison rape, shankings, race riots, shower scenes -- those things hardly ever happen on The West Wing. But when I actually watch the show, they dangled both a shanking and rape in front of me, and then chickened out. Stupid Fox ruins everything.
And I know people have been complaining about how implausible this show is turning out to be. But I've seen a lot more implausible things in the real world in the last two weeks. Like the fact that the President appointed a man to run FEMA who was forced out of his last job running horse shows. If that can be true, who's to say a death row prisoner might not be given unguarded time alone with his brother?
We start up right where we left off -- with Michael about to get one or more toes cut off. And…then they get cut off. You thought they wouldn't do it, didn't you? There's been some debate over whether Michael lost one or two toes to the gardening shears. I really didn't examine it too closely, because when it comes to the sight of blood, this little recapper goes wee, wee, wee and hides his head under a cushion. I can say that in the shot from the previouslies, it really looked like there were two toes between the blades, but the shot immediately after the cutting was inconclusive. So if they come back some time later and say that he only lost one toe, I think they would have a leg to stand on. So to speak. When they cut his toe(s) off, Michael is, of course, staring into the middle distance. But for once, that actually makes sense. I do like how the guy holding him down near his head is laughing -- bodily mutilation is fun. A guard comes in and starts yelling. Abruzzi's gang let Michael go, and Abruzzi crouches down and scoops the toe(s) into a bloody sock. The guards take Michael out, and Bellick comes in. He asks Abruzzi, "I thought you were going to have a conversation with him." Abruzzi is still holding the bloody sock in plain view as he tells Bellick that "things escalated." Or maybe he said that things were espaliered. Either one might apply.
Two guards hold Michael up and lead him into the infirmary. Dr. Tancredi is on call (of course). Michael sits up on an examining table, and Tancredi kicks the guards out of the room. There are three little cuts as she's speaking to the guards, and in each shot we see Michael raise his hands to his forehead in exactly the same way. Whoops. Michael is doing some great repressed crying -- it's all very "little boy bullied in the schoolyard," and I mean that as a compliment. Kudos to Wentworth Miller, who I usually think of as only capable of acting distant and vaguely menacing. He might turn out to have some talent after all. Tancredi unwraps the bloody sock from around the wounded toe(s), and we see that it was two toes cut off, after all. Michael lies back, crying, but he calms down as soon as Tancredi asks him what happened. He tells her it was nothing, and when she persists in asking, he tells her, "Don't make me lie to you, please."