Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's Hard Out There For A Linc …
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.06.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.At long last, this show recognizes Sucre for what we've known him to be all along: a delicious slab of Grade-A prime beefcake. He's forced to shake his moneymaker in Las Vegas for Cardholder #5, who is immune to Dr. Sara's abundant cleavage-based charms, and boy, does Cardholder 35 fall for Sucre. What follows is one of the most hilariously awkward and implausible attempted-seduction scenes ever -- mostly because there's a total sitcom twist at the end where it's revealed that Cardholder #5 was actually stud-shopping for his wife -- and our boy Sucre persists in not fleeing the scene until Charybdis has finished gobbling all the data off the guy's card. I cannot decide if having one of the male members of Team Scylla have to objectify themselves for a greater cause is A) sort of awesome because it points out how degrading it is for anyone to have to do that, be they male or female, or B) sort of offensive because oh, ha ha, it's funny 'cause it's a boy who has to fend off an evil letch.
Then Roland has to go screw it all up by attempting to use Charybdis in a casino. Security promptly descends upon him and reminds him that he was banned from all Nevada gaming establishments for five years, then they take Charybdis. Linc threatens to leave Roland in the desert, but Dr. Sara is the cool voice of reason: there are many more people in L.A. who can put the hurt on Roland.
She's probably thinking of Mahone, who has his hands full this episode, what with rescuing Michael from the dastardly clutches of T-Bag and Gretchen. T-Bag uses Gretchen to extract revenge upon the GATE employees who wronged him, making Andy his first victim of the year, and then he uses Michael to decode the bird book. Michael's big, tumor-riddled brain (more on that in a moment) soon realizes that Whistler coded a schematic in the book, and that will lead them to the facility where Scylla can be decoded. That facility is accessible via the GATE office, and it's there that Mahone rescues Michael. And then Michael shuts T-Bag into a little side storage area, sort of like a white-collar update to "The Cask of Amontillado." They eventually turn him over to Self, who plans to keep T-Bag in protective custody until Scylla's all retrieved. Everyone's feeling pretty good about the state of the whole get-Scylla thing until Gretchen pops up and says that she wants T-Bag, or else Michael won't get the rest of the schematics.
Then again, Michael may not live long enough to worry about it. In some moderately retconned backstory, Linc tells Dr. Sara that his and Michael's mother died of a brain aneurysm linked to a rare medical condition, and Michael's nosebleeds indicate that he's got the same thing -- a ticking time bomb in his big ol' brain.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This episode begins a little after the last one left off, as T-Bag is now coming to and discovering that he's been tied to a chair in "Cole Pfeiffer's" dining room. The good news is that Gretchen hasn't spread a tarp over the floor, so it looks like he'll get to keep all his (remaining) body parts. For now. The bad news is that he has nothing to look at except one of those dreary Pergo floors and a pissed-off mystery woman. T-Bag drawls, "The last time a pretty little filly like yourself knocked me senseless, then tied me to a chair, I had to pay for it." Gretchen deadpans, "You still might." Then she gets down to business: why is a stringy little con running around with James Whistler's pseudonymous life and -- more importantly -- the bird book? T-Bag lies that the book was "a gift from a very dear friend of mine who left this realm all too soon." Gretchen replies, "The only thing James Whistler ever gave anybody was the clap." Oh, I hope someone passes along that information to Lincoln. He might find it useful when he begins to wonder where that burning sensation came from. ("LINCOLN WINCE!") Gretchen whips out a folding knife and tells T-Bag he needs to commence babbling, now. Amazingly, T-Bag does not quip about how knifeplay usually costs extra. He eventually babbles, "Scylla! How about that? Does that ring a bell?" Gretchen leans over his shoulder and begins playing with the knife as she asks, "What do you know about Scylla?" T-Bag pretends to know what all of Whistler's extra markup in the book means. Gretchen's all, "Goooo onnnn?" and T-Bag snaps, "What do you bring to the equation, darlin', beside a pair of baby blues and a knife?" Gretchen brings a willingness to use the knife: she draws a line across his forearm by the elbow, saying, "This is me." Then she cuts T-Bag across the wrist with "This is Scylla." Then she makes another horizontal slash between them: "This is you." As she draws a vertical line to connect her three previous incisions, Gretchen growls, "I am going to get Scylla, and it will either be with you, or through you." T-Bag's screams seem to indicate that he's on board with whatever Gretchen wants to do. Once Gretchen informs T-Bag that he's messing with the wrong bitch (her words, not mine), T-Bag decides he likes his guts where they are and spits out, "How may I be of service?"
We cut to Team Scylla HQ, and Michael is busy catching Don Self up on their efforts to suck the data from card number five. Unfortunately, cardholder #5, Howard Scuderi, has chartered a flight to Las Vegas. Don Self is like, "Are you sure you guys didn't plan this?" but Lincoln assures him that's not the case, via some huffing and eye-rolling. Roland pipes up, "Scuderi splitting town kind of cut us a break, huh?" and Linc asks Sucre to please shut Roland up. Sucre does by grabbing Roland's neck and wringing it, Homer Simpson-style. This may be the first documented instance of Roland abuse before the credits even roll. The next episode's going to have to start with a closeup of Bellick repeatedly kicking Roland in the ribs or something.