Episode Report Card Sobell: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Happiness is a warm gun
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 12.01.2008
Herb from Homeland Security then walks into Senator Dallow's office and gets his official ass-chewing from the elected official: "We're in the middle of a manhunt, and it's just you and a couple of agents trying to reign in these cons! It's madness!" Herb points out that "no one knows -- and that's the way it's going to stay." Cue a knock at the door and a heavy-jawed younger man introducing himself as Richard Souter of the U.S. marshals. Souter explains, "I've been sent at the request of deputy direction Easemar to get to the bottom of the Scofield/Burrows supermax story. I'm hoping you gentlemen can help?" Cut to the senator looking horrified. However, Herb recovers and decides to fill Souter in -- off-screen -- on the whole sordid Team Scylla mess as he understands it.
In the One World Conspiracy board room, General Von Baldy's set up a white board with mug shots that's a mirror image of the one Michael had set up for him. After introducing everyone to Herb, Von Baldy says, "We've got a record of all incoming and outgoing calls from Homeland today. Stanton received a call lasting approximately one minute that connected to no-one -- no-one we could identify." Some eager young stooge hypothesizes that it's Self's phone. Meanwhile, the head goon from last week comes in to report that an L.A. traffic camera's picked up Gretchen. Also, some unnamed guy comes in with a future plot reference regarding some scheme General Von Baldy's got percolating in South Africa. I mention it here only so we can all shout, "A-HA!" later when everyone on screen is shocked -- shocked! -- by whatever plot contrivance hinges upon this seemingly trivial mention.
And now, it's time for the park meeting. All the Team Scylla members are scoping out the park from different angles, communicating via walkie-talkies, and Michael settles down to wait for Gretchen.
He'll be waiting a while because Gretchen is at Rita's place, playing, "Who's got a gun? I do!" as she stalks from room to room. When she hits the den, we see that T-Bag's got a gun on Rita and Emily, and Don Self quickly disarms Gretchen, then mocks her assurances to Rita that this will all work out. Not that Michael Rapaport doesn't do a believable job as a spiteful meathead, but I'm not quite buying the Dr. Jekyll-to-Mr. Hyde transformation from amiable meathead to malicious one. There should have been more foreshadowing. Anyway, Don attempts to blame this hostage situation on Gretchen, because if she hadn't sent him into Fang's House of Guns, then there wouldn't have been a shootout, and he'd have had a Scylla buyer. Now, he needs a Scylla buyer, so he wants Gretchen to find one. He then checks her received-calls log on her mobile phone and is kind of irked that she's been talking to "Scofield and the boys." I like how Lincoln is in her contact list. Don asks how Team Scylla is. "They're good and pissed," Gretchen says. Don is not too concerned about this, but he would like to know where everyone is. "Gee, Don, I don't know. I'm not their mother," Gretchen snaps. Don doesn't appreciate this sort of impertinence, so he orders T-Bag to be all creepy around Emily, and Gretchen promptly rolls over on the guys. Don's delighted, as he can call this in as a tip to Homeland Security.