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Meet Michael Scofield, who has just spent the last year getting tattooed, building large nests made of newspaper clippings and schematics, and deliberately bungling an armed robbery so he can go to the same prison in which his brother is incarcerated. We find out Lincolnâs due to die in a month for a crime he swears he didnât commit. (Whatever historical misgivings the state of Illinois may have over the possible innocence of death-row prisoners are being eliminated by a shadowy government conspiracy.) We also meet Michaelâs cell-mate Sucre, whoâs doing a dime for heavy-handed exposition, and establish that Michael has an elaborate plan to match the elaborate tattoo on his torso: using a cat-toting inmate, a greasy mob boss, and a faked diabetes condition, heâs going to break his brother out of prison. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
All right! Due to some graphic content, viewer discretion is advised!
The series opens with the buzz of a tattoo needle and Michael Scofield directing his steely gaze to the middle distance. Get used to this look: you will be seeing it a lot. I suggest you not incorporate it into a drinking game, unless you already have a liver donor lined up.
Anyway, Michael tears his eyes away from whatever point he's looking at in the middle distance to check out the final bit of work that the nice tattoo artist lady is doing on his left pectoral. She puts down the needle with a sigh and says, "That's it. Can I just...you know...look at it a minute?" Michael tells her, "You are an artist, Sid." She can't tear her eyes off his tattoo: "You're telling me you're just going to walk out of here and I'm never going to see it again?" Michael does not suggest that she take a picture. Sid compliments Michael's commitment to his skin art: "You got a full set of sleeves in a few months. It takes guys a couple of years to get the ink you got." Well, it helps when you have no blood: Michael's shrugging on a white dress shirt and there is not one drop on it. Anyway, he gets all foreshadow-y with, "I don't have a few years. Wish to hell I did."
Cut to the Chicago skyline, then a close-up of an origami swam sitting on a desk. Michael and his bright white shirt stride into the place, and the camera pulls back so we can see that he's turned his wall o' windows into a giant collage. He begins tearing items down. We see a newspaper clipping, the hed reading "Lincoln Burrows' Final Appeal Denied" and the dek explaining "Execution Will Proceed As Scheduled." My hat's off to the copyediting staff at The Daily Exposition for fitting all that information in a two-column space. The clippings we see are not so informative: "Governor's Daughter Wins Humanitarian Award," "Life Sentence for Mob Boss Abruzzi," and "'D.B. Cooper 'Myth' Still Alive Despite Conviction."
Now the information's more fragmented -- a clipping where all we see is "Scientis--" "Insulin B--" and the circled word "PUGNA." A yearbook photo of Sara Tancredi, who was in Phi Beta Kappa and the Spanish Club, and who advises, "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- credited to Gandhi. Another clipping: "Killer of VP's Brother Scheduled to Die May 11." And then Michael pulls the hard drive out of his computer, walks out onto the balcony of his swanky condo, sighs and stares off into the middle distance, and chucks the drive into the river below. You think he'd run a magnet over it before doing so, if he's that concerned with nobody finding it.
And then the morning, Michael knocks over a bank. We quickly establish that Michael's probably the world's most incompetent robber, and that the absent bank manager is a fiend for White Castle's sliders. He dawdles long enough for the cops to arrive, and as he turns around, we see that he's got the ghost of a smile on his face.
And then, we are in court. This episode is not messing around in setting up the premise at all, is it? Judge Hardass is barking, "Rarely in the case of armed robbery do we hear a plea of 'No contest.' Are you sure about this, Mr. Scofield?" Michael stops staring into the middle distance long enough to snap to and say crisply, "I'm sure, your honor." His lawyer, Veronica Donovan, is all, "Yeah, hold that thought, your honor. My client's confused." Michael inadvertently helps Veronica's case by insisting he's not. Because squabbling with your attorney is never a problem sign in a trial. And then Michael proceeds to sass Judge Hardass. Veronica looks down at him in total amazement, and he's smirking ever so slightly again. Then he catches sight of his nephew L.J., and that chases the smirk right from his mug. L.J. calls his name, and for the first time, Michael is shaken out of his remote resolve. He says, "I didn't want you to come. Go home, L.J. I didn't want you to see this."
And now, time for counsel and client to disagree some more. "He's not going to take this well," Michael frets. "Can you blame him? He's your nephew. He's going to get the idea that anybody he attaches himself to is going to end up in prison," Veronica replies. This is where Michael and Veronica should agree to send her after the poor kid, to maybe head off that assumption. But nooooooo -- we have to set up the backstory between these two. She's all, "I've known you my whole life, and you never once indicated that you'd be so spectacularly incompetent as a bank robber," and he's all, "Lady, step off. Gratitude for your past friendship and compassion only goes so far."
And we have to have Veronica warn, "You put the book in that woman's hand and she's going to lob it like a grenade: justice and punishment are the same thing to her." Well, that puts the smirk right back on Michael's face. He sobers up in time to have the judge hit him with a volume titled Since You Pulled a Gun, That's Five Years in Top-Security State Prison Fox River Penitentiary, straight in the kisser. It does not knock the middle-distance stare off his face. At least it sits well: Wentworth Miller has a remarkably symmetric face.
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 () 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. !
We're back at Fox Hills. The camera pans to a sign reading "SIT DOWN when shots are fired." Unfortunately, the arrow below the stick figure's sitting haunches implies that the convicts will also be changing their drawers once they finish sitting. Michael and Sucre walk past the sign. "What are you in for?" Michael asks. "I'm doing a dime for excessive public exposition," Sucre responds, adding, "Trey Street Deuces got the hoops, the Penas got the bleachers, the Woods got the weight pile. The C.O.s got the rest. I'm telling you, the guards are the dirtiest gang in the whole place. The only difference between us and them is the badge." Michael points to an old guy cuddling a little brown tabby and asks, "Who's the pet lover?" Proving he's a recidivist at heart, Sucre exposits, "He'll deny it, but he's D.B. Cooper. Parachuted out of a plane 30 years ago with a million and a half in cash." Or $200,000, if you're into the facts of the case. But facts may only frighten and confuse us within the context of this show, so let's call it a million and a half and move on.
We move on to Wholesale, thus named because "Black Market" would have raised a lot of problematic associations with capitalism-themed super-villains, and "Retail" would have been too accurate. Michael moves away from Sucre and Wholesale's amiable ball-busting so he can resume his favorite pastime: staring into the middle distance. We see his gaze settle on a fire hydrant placed between two phone booths. Yes, in the prison yard. Because there's no possibility of angry inmates vandalizing the phones or banging each others' heads into a fixed metal object, right? And then Michael stares at a grate that's letting steam out, also in the yard. Then we see another fire hydrant, in case you really, really need to beat the crap out of someone and the other hydrant's already occupied. And we see another grate. Michael drops some magazine down the grate when nobody's looking, and it conveniently lands in an upright position against a grate inside.
Then he tells Sucre he's looking for someone by the name of Lincoln Burrows. "Linc the Sink?...As in, he'll come at you with everything but the kitchen," Wholesale says. We see the aforementioned sink sitting on his haunches in a tiny fenced-in yard. It is not nearly so lush as the one the rest of the prisoners get to stroll around. Sucre exposits that since Linc killed the vice president's brother and is due to fry in a month, he's a man with nothing to lose. And as with all other dangerous death row inmates, the only time he's anywhere near Gen Pop is when he's in chapel or doing "prison industry" (PI), which those of us on the outside also refer to as "sweatshop labor." We also establish that John Abruzzi runs the PI racket. Alert viewers will remember him as the mob boss from one of the early clippings. After he's totally shot the expository wad, Sucre finally asks, "Why do you wanna see Burrows so bad anyhow?" Michael stares hard before answering, "Because he's my brother." Cut to Sucre looking alarmed. There go his plans to sell Michael for a carton of Luckies!
Commercials. Wow, Pam Anderson is looking rough these days. Also, I do not think Victoria's Secret will succeed in making "ipex" a verb.
When we return, Michael is folding origami swans and going into flashback: he's talking to Linc shortly after Linc's last appeal is denied, and Lincoln's insisting he didn't kill the man. Michael says, with heavy resolve, "The evidence says you did." Linc rebuts, "I don't care what the evidence says. I didn't kill that man." Choking back manly tears, Michael replies, "Swear to me." Lincoln does. This does not help Michael's composure. He asks, "How did they get it wrong then?" Sadly, this is where Prison Break fails to take a cheap shot with, "I don't know: there was some bearded guy and a lady with a brand-new face, I got railroaded, I just don't understand..." Lincoln can only say that he thinks he was set up, and the people behind the scheme want him dead ASAP.
Back in the present, Sucre interrupts Michael's staring to ask him, "What's another word for 'love.'" Michael replies, "What's the context?" Sucre replies, "You know -- I would love to have sex with my new cellmate." Oh, he does not either. He says something nearly as amusing: "You know -- 'I love you so much, I am never knocking a liquor store over again' context." Michael grins. Sucre adds unnecessarily, "Except, you know, classy." As it turns out, he's proposing to his lady via letter. And he's got an elaborate scenario in his head for how all the reading's going to go down. Oh, this will not end well. Michael advises him, "Try passion." Sucre is very excited about that choice until he gets to the spelling -- "Is it p-a-s-h?" Michael shakes his head. He looks as if he's only now realizing he'll be the only one competing in the prison spelling bee. Sucre's like, "No H?"
Meanwhile, back on the outside...L.J. is interviewing for a new after-school job as a drug dealer. He is about as good at getting away with breaking the law as his uncle was.
Now, back to Green Acres. The inmates are all mingling outside; I suppose the warden is one of those people who believes in the curative power of fresh air. Michael strolls over to Abruzzi's poker game and says abruptly, "I need you to hire me a PI." Abruzzi tells him to beat it, and Michael stands his ground with, "Maybe you ought to hear what I got to say." Abruzzi says that Michael has nothing he needs, and Michael puts down a swan before saying, "A PI, Abruzzi. You might find that I can be of more assistance than you think. Mull it over. Come find me when you're ready to talk." Abruzzi is not impressed by either Michael or his origami.
Meanwhile, back on the outside...we see some beefy guy named Maggio working, appropriately enough, in a meat locker. A man the FOX website identifies as "Mobster Gavin Smallhouse" comes in and tells Maggio that he's got photos of "the son-of-a-bitch that fingered Abruzzi." "That's Fibonacci?" Maggio asks. Yes, it is. And the photos came to the mob courtesy of some anonymous correspondent, whose only calling card is -- wait for it -- an origami swan. But on a completely different note: Gavin? Who the hell names a mobster Gavin? It's like naming a porn star Nigel. ["And…'Fibonacci'? What's his alias, 'Gold N. Meaney'?" -- Sars]
Back inside, Michael's making eyes at the pretty doctor lady while she's making small talk with him. Alert viewers will notice that this is Sara Tancredi, star of yearbook and newspaper clips. You will also notice that she's observant herself: she notes that the tattoos are fresh, and "as a diabetic, you're used to needles." Michael prods a little with "Tancredi like the governor? You're not related, are you? Wouldn't have thought you'd find the daughter of 'Frontier Justice Frank' working in a prison. As a doctor no less." Dr. Tancredi is goaded into responding, "I believe in being part of the solution, not part of the problem." Michael looks thoughtful, then says, "Hmmm. 'Be the change you want to see in the world'?" Little pink and red hearts erupt and begin circling around Dr. Tancredi's head. You can practically hear her thinking, "Who is this Gandhi-quoting stranger? And would it be awkward to change my name to 'Dr. Mrs. Michael Scofield'?" As Dr. Tancredi leaves him alone so she can go write "SARA + MICHAEL TLA" on her chart without him catching her, Michael dives for the grate and drops one of his origami swans down it. It's now swimming on the current in the prison sewer below. As Dr. Tancredi comes back, Michael asks her, "So, how do we play this? You give me a week's supply?" Nope -- no needles on the jail floor. Michael assures her, "I'm the farthest thing from a junkie. Trust me." She shoots back, "I got news for you, Michael: 'trust me' means absolutely zero inside these walls." Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we've just been introduced to one of the show's leitmotifs. She continues, "The only way you'll be getting that insulin is if I'm administering it." Michael flirts, "I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other, then." Dr. Tancredi's mouth is saying, "I guess so," but her eyes are saying, "Oh, yes!"
Meanwhile, back on the outside...we're now in Washington, D.C. Okay, then. We're at the Secret Service HQ, and two agents are busy talking about how Lincoln's scheduled to fry...except for the pesky Bishop Morrow. Apparently, this confidante of "Frontier Justice Frank" is a problem, what with his staunch moral opposition to the death penalty and his influence with the governor. The blond guy, Agent Hale, says, "The closer it gets, the more worried I am that the bottom is going to fall out of this thing." His compadre, the shifty-eyed Agent Kellerman, suggests a road trip to the bishop's house.
Then we're in chapel at the prison. It's a very sparsely-attended service. A manacled Lincoln is attending the service; despite being in chains, he's not attended by any guards. As he leaves, he runs right into his brother. Lincoln does not look pleased to see Michael; Michael looks nervous, like he's bursting to tell Lincoln something. Lincoln sidles over and asks, "Why?" Michael pulls it together and says, "I'm getting you out of here." Lincoln tells him, "It's impossible." "Not if you designed the place, it isn't," Michael replies. Ding-ding-ding! Another leitmotif!
Commercials. Is it just me, or does "Never-Ending Pasta Bowl" from the Olive Garden seem to have been devised as a punishment? Also, I have yet to see a Lexus commercial that doesn't make would-be Lexus owners out to be rapacious jackals.
Meanwhile, back on the outside...Veronica and Victor Von Doomed are busy trying to pick out stationery for the wedding that'll never happen. Victor wonders if maybe Veronica's stalling, and she tacks the sail before resuming her cruise down the river Denial.
And now, Sucre is busy ripping on Michael for alienating and confusing his girlfriend with words like "passion." Michael is unruffled. Well, it helps when the prison doctor is busy doodling hearts all over your medical chart. We then find out that Maricruz (the girlfriend) is scheduled to come for a conjugal visit, but she hasn't dropped the customary phone call beforehand. Sucre huffs, "You spooked her." Or someone in the Illinois penitentiary system finally realized they were giving conjugal visits to someone who is only now proposing to his lady. Before this discussion goes any further, a cranky guard comes by and tells Scofield to pull it together because "Pope wants to see you." Sucre nervously exposits that an audience with the Pope is generally not considered a blessing.
Hey, it's Mike Hammer! He's now the warden, Henry Pope. He opens with, "Top of your class at Loyola. Magna cum laude, in fact. I can't help wondering what someone with your credentials is doing in a place like this." What he's doing is five years. Or so Judge Hardass thinks. Anyway, Pope explains that he called Michael into the office because "I noticed in your I-file, under occupation, you put down 'unemployed.' That's not true now, is it? I know you're a structural engineer, Scofield." Then the music gets vaguely eastern as we head over to a model of the Taj Mahal, made entirely out of coffee stirrers. Or toothpicks. Tiny slivers of wood, at any rate. It's a mind-boggling testament to the power of weird hobbies. Pope explains that "Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a monument to his undying love for his wife. My wife is quite fond of the story. It appeals to the romantic in her. Being married to someone in corrections [is] a terrible job. I wouldn't wish it on anyone." And it never occurred to him to quit? Oh, I'm interrupting a giant chunk of establishing monologue. Pardon me. Here we go: "And yet, in 39 years, my wife has never complained. And the worst part of it is -- I've never thanked her. So because I couldn't say it, I thought, you know, I could build it. Come June, it's our 40th anniversary. But look -- the problem is, I build anymore, it's all going to come down like a house of cards. And that's where I hope you can be of assistance. I'll give you three days of work a week in here, and it'll keep you off the yard."
Michael winces. You can tell it's killing him to say no, because the warden is the one guy nobody wants to piss off, but for whatever reason, he needs to be on the yard and in Abruzzi's PI crew. Pope is surprised, disappointed, and very curt as a result. ["Probably because the writers saddled him with one of Gandolfini's 'personality traits' from The Last Castle." -- Sars]
Meanwhile, back on the outside...in a very nice little house with window boxes, L.J. is getting what for from his mother with, "Two pounds of pot -- what were you trying to do, set a record?" "Yeah -- record for most glaucoma patients treated, Mom!" he shoots back. Oh, not really; the kid lacks the smart mouth. He does pull off a nice smirk when his mom's ineffectual, detached, yuppie-weenie squeeze comes in for a plate of food, which sets L.J.'s mom off again. She's all, "Where is this coming from, L.J.? Last semester, you were getting almost all As, and now --" And now, he's a few weeks away from his dad getting the chair, so he's acting out. L.J.'s mom finally realizes this. She is not that quick on the uptake, what with having had an entire appeals process to anticipate this, is she? So she decides that a visit to Linc will scare L.J. straight, or resolve his issues in re: his dad's impending death. Riiiiiight.
It's visiting day at the prison. Veronica is there, and not because she's hoping for Michael's expert opinion on which invitation she should choose for her impending nuptials. She asks him what would have happened if he had been sent anywhere else, and Michael smart-mouths, "I think I'd be doing the same thing I'm doing here: eating Jell-O, drinking Kool-Aid..." He smiles. Veronica is not amused; she's figured out that "it's not luck of the draw that you're in here with Lincoln. You forget that I know you, both of you. You two have the most dysfunctional idea of love I've ever seen. What, he beats you up to get you off the streets, and you get yourself tossed into Fox River with him? To what? Save him? I deserve to know. I loved him as much as you did." Michael says, "Past tense for you, maybe. Not me." Oh, Michael, I'm sure Victor Von Doomed would be happy to work with your on your verb tenses in re: Veronica and Linc.
For some reason, instead of telling Michael to cram it and that the details of her relationship with Linc are between her and Linc, Veronica says, "I gave him a shot when I got back from college. I did. Even with all the stuff that was going on with him, I did everything I could to make it work, and he threw it away." Michael rebuts, "You ever think maybe he was hurt that you left in the first place?" "Ever think that healthy, functional people don't begrudge their loved ones opportunities?" Veronica shoots back. I wish. Veronica shifts the conversation back to Michael's case; he's not at all happy about this, and says, "You want to do something, find out who's trying to bury [Linc]."
Visiting hours end, and these two go into a long hug. From the depths of the couch, Mr. Sobell bellows, "No touching!" Yeah, I'm not sure this prison is anything like the one George Bluth, Sr., was in. As they hug, Michael whispers, "Someone wants him dead, Veronica. There's more to this going on here." Veronica's not buying it yet. Michael says, "I'm not watching him die. I won't do that." Veronica stalks out, just in time for Linc to fix her with a stare of what I presume is unrequited longing.
Meanwhile, back on the outside...Agents Hale and Kellerman have shown up at Bishop McMorrow's place. Suffice it to say that his diocese has done very well on the real estate front. The three of them decamp to a study done entirely in some sort of wood that, if it wasn't endangered at the start of the project, surely was by the end of it. Kellerman tries to put the squeeze on the bishop, and is not at all successful. McMorrow asks, "If the inmate appeals to me for intervention, how can I turn my back on him?" Kellerman says, "You have a habit of answering a question with a question." "And you have a way of asking questions that beg more questions," the bishop shoots back. I like him. He's toast. Don the red cassock, father -- you're going down. Kellerman's thuggish attempt at blackmail more or less confirms it.
Back at Green Acres, Abruzzi is using the pay phone (yes! Apparently, people who engineered things like a criminal mob that relied on communications between many people can use the phone any time they please!) -- anyway, Abruzzi's chatting with Maggio. The fat man's telling him that "someone's found Fibonacci. I'm looking at the photos right now." And this someone was an anonymous correspondent who included an origami swan.
Michael's drifted over to one of the grates, where the swan he had dropped in the infirmary has been blocked from drifting further by the magazine that he dropped earlier. Michael looks over and D.B. Cooper, a.k.a. Westmoreland, is surreptitiously checking him out. Westmoreland goes back to reading. Or to turning pages so the cat can read. Whichever -- it's all cool. Michael sits down near him and begins to make small talk. "Do I know you?" Westmoreland asks. "I talked to your wife, before she passed," Michael says. "You knew Marla?" Westmoreland said. "You mean Anne?" Michael replies. Westmoreland doesn't look up: "How'd you know her?" "I met her in Boston," Michael says. "East Farmington," Westmoreland says. "West Wilmington," Michael replies. Westmoreland looks over and smiles, "No more tests, I promise. Seems you know everything about me. Who are you?" Michael introduces himself, then nods at the cat and says, "How'd you get it in here?" Westmoreland pauses. Oh, hell hath no fury like the slighted cat owner. He explains, "First off, she's not an it. She's Marilyn, and she was grandfathered in, back from the days when prisoners were allowed a creature comfort or two." Marilyn's a cutie -- a docile little brown tabby cuddled up to Westmoreland's chest.
Anyway, Westmoreland denies he was D.B. Cooper, just in time for Abruzzi to come over and sneer, "What is this all about?" Michael makes his pitch: "What if you could get outside these walls. Don't you have the people in place to make sure you disappeared forever?" Abruzzi wants to know why Michael cares; Michael's not talking. Abruzzi wants to know where Fibonacci is. Michael tells him, "That's not the way it works." As Abruzzi walks off, his thugs stay behind. Michael warns him, "They come at me, John, I'm coming after you." Abruzzi doesn't think so. Neither do I, unless "I'm coming after you" is code for "I am about to get the snot pounded out of me while everyone cheers."
Cut to Pope giving Michael a dressing-down. He finishes with, "Behavior like that will not be tolerated in my prison. Ninety days in the SHU -- that ought to be enough time to convince you of that fact." Well, being in solitary will make it that much harder to bust Lincoln out prior to his execution thirty days from now, so Michael bargains his way out: "It's just...I'm not of much value to you in the SHU...the Taj. It'd be a shame for the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World to collapse because the stress was improperly propagated." "Improperly propagated," Pope says flatly. "Improperly propagated," posits Michael. "The joints are overloaded. They won't provide anywhere near the sheer strength needed to complete the structure you need...you want this by, when? June? Then we better get started, wouldn't you say?"
Meanwhile, back on the outside...someone's shooting the bishop. That not an euphemism for anything.
Commercials. I believe my way at Burger King can be summed up as "way, way far away from that chain."
Still on the outside...Veronica is looking very important behind her big desk when her assistant comes in to tell her that the bishop was murdered in his bed. As soon as the assistant leaves, Veronica looks over at her wall calendar, where the date of her ex-boyfriend's execution is circled in red. She sits back and muses, "Michael was right." Then she digs out Lincoln's deposition. Ah, the girl detective's on the case!
Back in the joint, we see a guard strolling down death row and telling Linc that he's got a visitor. Ah, L.J. and his mom are here. Wearing a "this is all your fault" look that seems to come entirely too naturally, Lisa The Ex hisses, "He was arrested...for possession of marijuana. I figured he could use some fatherly advice before you're..." And she trails off, because there are very few ways to tactfully say "executed." Then she leaves. Linc and L.J. sit, and Linc's all, "Dope, huh? Using or dealing?" L.J. snots, "What's the difference?" "Well, in one scenario, I respect you for your entrepreneurial spirit. In the other, I resent you for bogarting," Linc replies. Not. He actually attempts to set his son straight, and L.J. slings some attitude back at him. Shut up, punk. "Don't backtalk me, boy! I will kill you like I killed the vice-president's brother!" Linc shouts in response. In the background, Michael overhears and screams, "DAMMIT, I got all these tattoos for NOTHING???" Kidding! But wouldn't that be kind of a dark, yet hilarious turn for this series? Where this scene actually goes is in the whole Linc-may-be-a-screwup-but-he's-not-a-bad-man direction, while crossing the intersection of If-L.J.-doesn't-lose-the-'tude-I'm-going-to-root-for-cougars-to-come-eat-him-during-November-sweeps Lane.
Also, it doesn't help that during this whole scene, Linc is wearing an expression that's less like resignation to his rejection and more like, "Gosh, I wish my prison diet had more fiber."
We then transition to Sucre, who is looking like he wishes his prison diet had more sedatives. The man is nervous, and Maricruz is late for her scheduled visit. Just as he heads out the door, she comes in. The first thing she tells him is "Yes." Awww, she's accepting his marriage proposal. Rutting ensues, interspersed with comedic asides about how important it is for them to get married in a Catholic church. Because it's funny when people are total moral hypocrites!
Speaking of inmates who could probably get some if they really wanted, there's Michael, talking to Dr. Tancredi. It turns out she's been reading his file. "I went to Northwestern, graduated two years after you did [from Loyola]," she says. Michael flirts, "Maybe we met before. Drunk, out at a bar somewhere." Dr. Tancredi thinks not. And then she gets to business: "Your blood glucose is at 50 milligrams per deciliter...that's hypoglycemic. Your body's reacting to the insulin like you're not diabetic. You sure it's Type I diabetes you got?" Michael smoothly lies that it is. Before Dr. Tancredi can grill him further, she gets a phone call, so she leaves him alone and moves off-screen. This gives Michael ample opportunity to wander around and stare at the thick rope of cables leading from the infirmary window to the top of a wall. We also see that Michael's hands are shaking; he tries to suppress that. Dr. Tancredi turns her attention back to him and says, "I'd like to run some tests time you're in; the last thing I want to do is administer insulin to a man who doesn't need it." Michael's recovered his cool, and he says, "Yeah. Sure." She then wanders off so he can continue to...do whatever it is he came to do in the clinic.
Back in the room of rutting. Sucre's commemorating Maricruz's declaration of everlasting fidelity by throwing a jealous hissy over her hitting up her friend Hector for a ride to the prison. Sucre betrays his extensive knowledge of Nora Ephron's oeuvre by declaring, "Men and women can't be friends!" He's got his suspicions about Hector. I reiterate: this cannot end well.
Out in the yard, Michael approaches C-Note, who happens to be the local pharmaceutical salesman. He asks for Pugnac, and C-Note shoots back, "I only speak English, white boy." Michael explains, "It's an insulin blocker. Standard over-the-counter variety. You can get it at any pharmacy." C-Note's all, "Then feel free to head on over to the infirmary. The doctor's one fine lady," but Michael sets him straight: "I can't get it in medical...because they're already giving me insulin shots." His wry smile here is a nice touch. C-Note laughs and says, "You're one mixed-up cracker, you know that?" Michael's all, "So, can you hook me up?" and C-Note says, "Only if you tell me why it is you want to keep going up to medical for an insulin shot you don't need." Michael drawls, "I like the ambiance." He then passes some money over and sets the deal into motion.
Some time later, as he's chilling on his bunk, Michael's reverie is interrupted by a CO who hands over a PI card. Within seconds, he's off painting walls. Abruzzi snuggles up to him and whispers sweet nothings like, "Kudos, Fish. You got spine." Linc watches the whole exchange with trepidation.
The two walk over to the counter where they're turning in their dropcloths, and Linc says too-casually, "I saw Veronica come in yesterday. Still engaged to that guy?" Michael nods. Linc says, "Could have been me." Michael grumbles, "If you hadn't been self-destructive." Linc says, "You think I meant to knock up Lisa? I was just being stupid. Hurt. Shouldn't have pushed her away, though." Michael replies, "You pushed everyone away." Yeah, this is all very sensitive and moving, but now I'm all confused about the timeline here: both Michael and Veronica look to be about my age (early thirties), so unless Linc knocked up Lisa while Veronica was at school, there's no way L.J. should be in his teens yet. Or maybe both Michael and Veronica are older. Youthful-looking, immature-seeming, older people.
Anyway. Linc is busy feeling sorry for himself and he storms off, Michael trailing in his wake, while Abruzzi and some henchman watch them go. Hench wants to know why Abruzzi hired him, and Abruzzi replies, "Keep your friends close...and your enemies closer." Gosh, it's easy to see how the state had a hard time pinning anything on this crafty, original thinker.
We return to the brothers as they prepare to strip off their jumpsuits and rejoin the prison population. Linc asks if Michael meant what he said earlier, and Michael snarks, "I'm not here on vacation, trust me." Lincoln says, in what is becoming a depressingly typical (for him) monotone, "Getting out these walls, that's just the beginning. You're going to need money." Michael looks over at Westmoreland, and says, "I'll have it." Lincoln presses, "And people on the outside. People that can help you disappear." Michael looks over at Abruzzi and says, "I've already got 'em -- they just don't know it yet." Linc says, "Look, whatever you got going on, fill me in, 'cause I'm in the dark here."
Michael leans forth and disgorges a bolus of exposition: "Chaparal Associates got the contract to retrofit this place in '99 -- a $4 million contract. Head partner couldn't crack it. So he subcontracted out, on a sort of under-the-table basis, to a former associate. That guy was a partner in my firm. We basically ghost-wrote the whole plan. Crossed the Ts, dotted the Is, grouted the tiles." Linc sits there for about a minute until what Michael's said sinks in: "You've seen the blueprint."
And now comes the money shot: Michael strips off his shirt and says, "I've got 'em on me." We see that he's basically tattooed from clavicle to hipbone, with his arms covered, in what appears to be Dungeons & Dragons imagery. Linc goggles and asks, "Am I supposed to be seeing something here?" We all look as the blueprints hidden underneath all the tattoos are slowly drawn out, and we zoom from the narrow door hidden on Michael's back to a real door -- because he's about to break out. A whizzy ride through the tunnels later, and we're at an aerial shot of the yard, then a pullback from the prison, as if to imply that as we move through the series, its scope will broaden. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, this is a promising beginning.