Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unquiet riot
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 09.25.2005
Cue all the inmates going inconveniently quiet. Don't you hate when that happens -- when the room goes quiet right as something you don't want people to hear gets blurted out? T-Bag hates it too. Bellick leans forward, a malicious smile on his face: "That's right, Teddy. I read your psych records about how your daddy raped his mongoloid sister, and then nine months later, little Teddy pops out." Oh, please. Even Catherine "Cannibals ate mah cousin!" Holly would find this backstory a little too Southern Gothic. ["And the phrasing a little too nineteen-forties. 'Mongoloid'? Reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor lately, are we, Bellick?" -- Sars] T-Bag quietly goes to his angry place, and then explodes, throwing his body against the gate and screaming that he's going to kill Bellick. (Dang, Robert Knepper is good. Scary, but good.) Bellick smirks, conveniently forgetting that T-Bag is the same person who slaughtered a kindergarten's worth of kids, so he's got to have reserves of focused violence that could be very inconvenient at a time like this. He begins rattling the gate and bellowing, "Get on the train!"
Meanwhile, Lincoln's speaking with his counselors, and he discovers that a questionable phone call won't be sufficient to overthrow planted evidence. Nick the legal beagle's all, "So! Lincoln, I can totally track down the false witness in D.C. for you…if mean, suspicious Veronica will let me." Oooh, he's good.
The inmates are making progress on getting that gate down. The COs watch this with increasing trepidation. What was that again -- kick their asses or don't bother to pick up a paycheck? Twenty unruly inmates are easier to control than 300? Bellick orders the COs into his office as T-Bag bellows, "Just what I thought -- the piglets are scared of the big, bad wolf!" Nice nursery tales allusion -- it's a subtle way to reference his old habit of preying on children. The gate rattles some more. Wow, Michael's firm did a really crappy job on this prison. Michael, who is walking through his secret passageway with Sucre, thinks as much when he stops to listen to the riot in progress. Another nice touch: the low rumbling noises he hears from his location really do evoke a train on distant tracks.
Well, the inmates get the gate down and are now running free in the control booth. Then, thanks to flustered nameless CO guy having left his keychain behind in his hasty retreat, the inmates have the keys to the place. T-Bag opens everyone's gates, and inmates on the second and third tiers pour out. Marilyn sees her chance and runs for it too. Westmoreland shouts, "Marilyn, no!" as she gallops off. HA! At last, she acts like a real cat -- contrary and prone to doing the most inconvenient thing possible. Westmoreland stands in the doorway of his cell, agonizing over whether to stay in relative safety where he is, or find his cat. Anyway, the upshot of all this chaos is that Bellick finally has to radio for help, admitting that A-wing has devolved into chaos.