Episode Report Card Sobell: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Michael and Lincoln -- not dead!
By Sobell | Season 2 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.03.2006
Michael finishes ministering to Linc and tells the big lug he has to go back for the car. Linc grits out, "Forget the car -- we can get another" because it has not yet hit him that A) Michael is something of a planner, and B) if Michael says he needs something, he needs it. You'd think that the events of the last two months might have made more of an impression. Michael puts his Cubs hat on again and sighs, "In that car is everything we need to disappear." That's right -- David Copperfield is in the trunk!
Actually, it looks like David Copperfield is now working parking enforcement in Oswego, if the gaping space on the street where Michael's car used to be is any indication. The broken glass indicates that someone also took the trouble to break into the dingy little jalopy before it was hauled off. Michael hunkers down to pick up some glass, and that's when the camera zooms to a heretofore-unexplored area of Michael's tattoo -- the bar code around his wrist. The product code at the bottom reads 38 312 1037.
At FBI headquarters, Mahone rushes to meet with a vagrant who has Michael's backpack. I...I sort of can't believe that Michael or Linc went anywhere without that thing anyway. I mean, did we not just see an episode where Michael's all, "Check out the backpack with our fake Ids and lots of cash"? And since it's a BACKPACK, what was to stop either one of them from wearing it during their silly Operation Free Yet Another Guy Named Lincoln? It's not like they wouldn't have had their hands free while wearing a BACKPACK. I just...aigggh. It seems totally inconsistent with Michael's character is all I'm saying. The whole point to this scene is to establish that the brothers are kind of hosed without the magic backpack. Mahone knows this. And we know that Mahone knows this. He smugly says, "Looks like we got our first mistake."
Credits, then commercials. I am still seething over that backpack business, but seeing the Rock giving inspirational speeches has snapped me right out of that. Can you smell what the Rock is cooking? Does it smell like chocolate-chip cookies to you too?
And now we're back on Bellick. He is in a local convenience store, picking up a six-pack and some jerky. Insert your own quip about jerky for a jerk here. Anyway, Bellick's hassling the counter jockey over the store's sad lack of teriyaki jerky -- and asking the dude to get him a bottle of Early Times, because lord knows Jim Beam's for stuck-up college boys like Scofield -- when who should wander out of the can but the store's security guard, Geary. Bellick asks, "How goes it, Roy?" right before punching him in the face. Cue the brawl.