Episode Report Card Sobell: A | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Yet ANOTHER hooker -- dead!
By Sobell | Season 2 | Episode 21 | Aired on 03.25.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Know why Michael keeps his hair short? Because there's no room for follicles in his head, what with that big brain of his taking up all that room. He's that smart. So Michael figures out in, like, five minutes that the guy whom we all thought was an expatriate pimp was, in fact, a stooge of the One World Conspiracy and he brought friends. Then when Michael runs into Sucre, he realizes the whole thing's a set-up: Bellick with the gun is his first tip-off. Sucre saying, "Posting online? Fool, do the Mexican hinterlands strike you as particularly well-wired?" is the clincher.
A short and testy conference later, Michael, Bellick, and Sucre have formed the most acrimonious partnership since the Supremes. They quickly flush T-Bag out of his hotel and racewalk-stalk him. It turns out Mahone's stalking them, but before he can nab Michael, LINCOLN SMASH NOW! Except Mahone's got a few moves of his own. There's a lot of sweating and panting andâ¦well, sorry. I am a little stuck on the sweating and panting and rolling around on the ground. Hang on. I need to review this scene. Again.
The terrible trio manage to collar the stooges of the One World Conspiracy and duct tape them in a local alley. Then they go upstairs to find T-Bagâ¦and the trap set courtesy of a dead hooker. And someone's called the cops, so there's that pressure, and T-Bag locks them in the room, so we now know he's working for the One World Conspiracy. The terrible trio gets out. T-Bag shoots Bellick in the leg and leaves him at the scene -- thereby picking up the very rare framing-for-murder exacta.
Michael and Sucre collar T-Bag and the games really begin. They prepare to drive T-Bag to the U.S. embassy, except it all goes pear-shaped when T-Bag somehow manages to stab Sucre with a screwdriver he just happened to find, and their car goes off the road during the ensuing schmazz. T-Bag then scampers off because his amputation gave him the superpowers necessary to withstand collisions, and sprint through rainforests while carrying $5 million, and find conveniently-equipped-and-abandoned cabins. Then Michael and T-Bag have what can only be described as a "sissy-boy knife fight." Michael wins by stabbing T-Bag's good hand to the floor. Michael, no! You've only made him stronger! Now T-Bag will be able to teleport and kill people with laser beams coming from his eyes. And it's all your fault.
And in other news: Kellerman tried to kill himself! No! Except his gun jammed at the last minute! So he calls his sister and she comes by and tells him she loves him unconditionally and will help him out no matter what. So my little barracuda has himself an existential breakdown. And then! He decides to come forward and testify to the existence of the One World Conspiracy for Dr. Sara, thereby saving her from having to plead to serving 12 years in the prison ofâ¦well, not love.
The episode ends with us learning that Mahone's actually managed to capture Linc. Mahone and Michael have a phone conversation wherein Mahone asks for the $5 million and the Christina Rose in exchange for Lincoln. Will Michael make the swap? We'll find out next week. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Hey, it's the bucolic Panamanian coastline. Linc is sitting on the deck of the Christina Rose, composing postcards to his absent brother -- "Weather is beautiful. Wish I knew where the fuck you were."
Oh, not really. Linc is not a man of letters. That is also made abundantly clear when he picks up Michael's handheld -- the one displaying the false Sucre message -- and stares at it as if it's about to bite him.
We then cut to beautiful Panama City with the kind of shot that begs for a Phil Keoghan voiceover like, "Although eight of the ten largest skyscrapers in South America are being built in this capital city, much of the city's style reflects its history as a port for gold and silver shipments back to Spain." The music isn't quite on board, though: we're getting the jazzy, caliente version of the theme associated with cons who are up to no good. So that's our cue to cut to T-Bag, who is sitting alone in a hotel room and playing solitaire. He's looking awfully nervous. Perhaps the faces of the many people he's killed have begun floating up before him. Or perhaps he's not looking forward to heading off to the destination written on a piece of paper -- 213 Ave. Olivera, Second Floor, Red Door. Red Door? Like the spa? Why would you possibly be nervous about that -- afraid the manicurist is going to ask awkward questions?
So T-Bag eventually steps out on to the balcony to get some fresh air, and we pan from his spot to one in the courtyard below, where Michael is doing a rotten job of blending into the foliage. That is a hazard associated with dressing like the Unabomber in a country where breezy linen shirts are the norm.
Then we go into a lot of flashbacks detailing T-Bag and Michael's acrimonious history, from the first time T-Bag offered Michael his pocket to the short-lived Seth's plea for help and subsequent suicide, T-Bag's gleeful killing of poor C.O. Bob, his attempt to kill Abruzzi and his charming treatment of the judgmentally-impaired Jeanette.
Frankly, all that sequence does is remind me how much I've missed seeing Michael's tattoos this season. And how much I've missed the sense that the show had a tight plot arc with a well-defined denouement; this season's had a touch of the "wrap up the stories? But we haven't figured out next season yet!" to it.