Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Teddy And His Telephone
By Sobell | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.30.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Both brothers have a busy episode. Linc gets Polaroids of Dr. Sara and LJ as proof that they're still alive. To reassure and motivate Michael, he passes along the Polaroid. The good news: Dr. Sara is pointing at the paper in such a way as to give a clue to where she is. The bad news: before they can be sure, Michael needs to talk to Dr. Sara. Since the only phone in Sona is a mobile phone, this necessitates some serious sneaking around. Michael makes T-Bag do most of the sneaking, arguing that the pious folks of Panama will be especially brutal toward a serial pederast. T-Bag reluctantly sneaks. Recognizing that his relationship with Lechero may have drawbacks, he later begs off the arrangement, claiming that he fears for his life when Sammy and company try to overthrow Lechero. The prison boss merely laughs and makes T-Bag his designated snitch. I can't help but suspect that perhaps this is what T-Bag meant all along.
Mahone has himself a bad day, what with the drug withdrawal and the news that his trial's not for another year. He spends most of his time sweating and swatting away at the bats he hallucinates swirling around his head. (I'm exaggerating slightly about the bats.) Mahone also has a chat with Whistler, warning him that Scofield will do anything for the people he loves, up to and including totally screwing over anyone he needs to if it's expedient. Mahone conveniently leaves out how maybe Michael has motivation to screw people over when they kill his father.
Bellick has a semicomic plotline wherein he tangles with Sona's transvestite barber, Pistachio, and is moderately insulted to find out that he's not considered terribly attractive.
And on the outside, Lincoln manages to track down Dr. Sara and LJ using a series of verbal clues Michael got out of Dr. Sara. However, even he and his brawn are not enough to free the two hostages, and they are bundled away in a big white van. At the end of the hour, Susan B. Anthony calls him and tells him not to do that again, adding that she's provided a healthy incentive to remember her lesson in the corner of the garage. Linc goes down, sees a big white box that's leaking blood...and the episode ends.
Oooh, was this hour tense. I love it. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
The episode opens with someone being all stealthy as he or she climbs a set of stairs and slips an envelope with two Polaroids under the door. This distracts Linc from his task of poring over the guidebook for clues -- he was just trying to figure out why one page has written across the top margin "STAMPEDE" and the numeric sequence "614291925" down the side. Good luck with that one, Linc. (Mental dialogue: IF LINC WANT NUMBER MYSTERY, LINC CRASH ON ISLAND WITH POLAR BEAR.) Anyway, the envelope distracts Linc, and he rushes into the empty hallway to see if he can spy the deliveryman. No dice -- even if the guy were there, the light reflecting off Lincoln's glistening pecs would likely bounce back in his face and blind him. We see the photos of L.J. and Dr. Sara; each is holding a recent newspaper, and Dr. Sara appears to be pointing at something in the lower-right corner on her copy. Linc studies the photos for a while, and it's moving, except the moment gets interrupted by ominous music, and a hand on Linc's shoulder...
Linc jumps around to see a tear-stained Sucre standing damply behind him. Linc shakes his shirt back into place -- far, far more convenient than, I don't know, buttoning it -- and asks Sucre what the hell he thinks he's doing. What Sucre thinks he's doing is hitting Linc up for cash. Linc wearily sighs that he has about $50, and Sucre just as wearily replies, "No, no, no...I'm talking about the millions, Papi." Linc tells him, "You want a place to crash, I got your back. But the backpack's gone." Before Sucre can digest this, Linc adds, "Any money I dig up's for my brother. Remember him? Tall guy? Kind of thin? Busted your ass out of jail?" Heh. Linc is growing on me this season. Sucre moistly says, "I feel bad about Mike. I do, Linc. But not all of us got exonerated, you know." Linc calmly says, "I'm pretty clear on that." Sucre wetly adds, "I can't ever go home again." Linc, still calmly, "You got a problem, Sucre?" Sucre squishes, "You ain't the only one, Linc!" And then Linc busts Sucre's pity party by smacking him with the Polaroids of the hostages and snarling, "We're all guilty of something, man. All of us. Not them." Well, gosh, Sucre would love to help, but "it seems like it's only getting deeper and deeper." Sucre, shelve the break-up angst and cowboy up. He sloshes out of there when he realizes that, as far as the hierarchy of people Linc will help out is concerned, sobbing will not vault Sucre past the brother incarcerated on the eighth circle of hell or the son who's being held by the One World Conspiracy. Linc barely registers Sucre's departure because he's just noticed Dr. Sara's weird finger-pointing action going on.
And then we transition to Sona, where Sammy's doing his part to keep the weekly body count consistent. Lechero seems pleased that Sammy's met his weekly combat-to-the-death quotient. T-Bag, however, looks distinctly displeased. We see Mahone hunching like a gargoyle on the balcony above, and then we switch to Michael glaring from his corner of the courtyard. He's twiddling his fingers around one of the bolts in a support beam. I ask you: force of habit from a notably tactile thinker, or subtle indication of an escape plan forming? Splenda takes in the ruckus and asks, "Doesn't take too long for a man to become an animal, no? The smart ones go for his bunk first." Michael watches the inmates strip the body and asks, "What do the dumb ones do?" Well, here's Bellick to show us.