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This was one of those episodes that really feels like it's just there to set up subsequent plot payoffs in future episodes. In other words, it's sort of the TV equivalent of a cram session the night before finals -- a little scattershot, somewhat tedious, and yet, it requires you to pay attention or else you'll be sorry later. So let's treat this episode like a study session.
Essay topic #1: What are they teaching people at "the academy" these days? Trisha the dish spends the entire episode not-so-subtly spying on T-Bag so's she can report his every move to the equally obvious Don Self. Since T-Bag has some weird reptilian instinct for knowing when he's in trouble, he susses out the surveillance. He and Gretchen then have a phone conversation that serves to draw Don Self and Trisha to an empty house, where the two agents are promptly captured by Fang and his friends. If Don Self and Trisha are at all representative of the kind of thinking keeping our borders safe, I can only say … "I, for one, welcome our new Canadian overlords! Can I please have doughnuts and nationalized healthcare?"
Essay topic #2: Has the One World Conspiracy prevented the Bureau of Weights and Measures from coming up with the scale for measuring how gross it is when Gretchen dresses like a schoolgirl for General Von Baldy? Because I'm thinking the metric system needs to move beyond scales of magnitude like "gigayuck" or "tera-ick" or "peta-yeaggh" in a scene like that. What made the whole naughty-schoolgirl scene especially awful? It was all for naught, as the whole point to the seduction was for Gretchen to get card #6, and Von Baldy left it behind at Lisa's request.
Essay topic #3: Is Team Scylla really a team or just a collection of characters thrown together for plot expendiency? Working silently per Michael's direction, Mahone, Linc and Sucre manage to create a man-sized hole in the concrete, then set down a catwalk that will presumably allow Michael to prance on over to the Scylla monolith and get whatever he needs. There is a close call when Sucre almost falls off the catwalk, but he soon recovers, and Michael goes in to finish the job.
Essay topic #4: Is it medically ethical to treat your boyfriend when he's being a dramatic martyr? So, as we've established in episodes, Michael's got a rare tumor that might make his brain explode without warning at any time. The good doctor at the hospital is like, "Come on in! I promise to treat you without turning you in!" yet Michael's sense of duty compels his to accompany the rest of Team Scylla to the drill-and-break-in site. So, Dr. Sara gives him a shot that will presumably quell any seizures, then sends him off. Michael manages to make it into Scylla's chamber, has only a few dramatic reeling moments … and gets detected by General Von Baldy's security system in the very last scene. We'll find out what the repercussions of that are week.
Now, pencils down! We'll see how the series did on mid-sweeps exams week.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The episode begins at the big concrete wall standing between Team Scylla and their holy grail. Working in near-silence, their tools muffled, Sucre and Mahone drill a hole in the wall, then use a shopvac to clear out the bore. They use a magnet to confirm that indeed, there's steel mesh embedded in the concrete. Sucre then threads a camera in.
We cut to T-Bag and Gretchen bonding with a little girl talk about Michael Scofield. Gretchen's kvetching through a door about how Michael doesn't deserve any Scylla payout on account of making her life so difficult in Panama. If you ask me, that blame's a little misplaced, what with her electing to sit on the blow-the-place-up plan until the very last minute, instead of making that her Plan A. T-Bag tells Gretchen, "What we must do is make sure that cosmic justice rains down upon him! But once we obtain the general's card, there ain't hardly nothing standing between us and Mr. Fang's $125 million dollars --" Then he is struck dumb, because Gretchen has opened the doors to her room. Horror of horrors, she's going to dress up like a naughty schoolgirl to bend the General to her will. Don't do it, Gretchen! The last woman to gain disproportionate power with a naughty schoolgirl routine later ended up marrying Kevin Federline, and it broke her brain! Learn from that example. Gretchen baits the general trap by sending him a camera pic of her posed in her little outfit.
Back at Team Scylla HQ, Dr. Sara comes in to tell Michael that he's got a hot date with a still-licensed medical doctor at 3 p.m. Michael poutily says no, and Linc plows right over him with, "You're going." "We need to finish what we started," Michael protests. Linc leans in to tell him that the rest of Team Scylla's got this one; it only serves to agitate Michael more. Then he dramatically seizes his head. Dr. Sara decides to press her advantage by repeating that Dr. Malden can see Michael today, and it's much better to be seen by a doctor who won't alert the cops than it would be to get into a medical jam and get treated by one who'd happily hop on line one to his friends at the precinct. Michael sighs that there's still a lot to do, but Dr. Sara and Linc make a united, implacable front against that plea. So Michael sighs and accedes.
Meanwhile, Sucre and Mahone have moved on to male bonding. That Sucre! He can get along with anyone. It's like a superpower, except that Sucre's Kryptonite comes in the form of his evil cousin Hector. Anyway, Sucre shares that the last time he was drilling something, it was with an eggbeater in Fox River. I remember! It's one of my favorite scenes of the whole series, where Sucre explains the "Hooker Principle" to a drooling Abruzzi. Sucre ads forlornly, "I just can't believe it's all coming to an end, and he's not here." Mahone absently assures Sucre everything will work out; he's busy using the tiny camera they blew into the wall to see what the Scylla Chamber looks like. Sucre asks how Mahone knows everything will work out. Mahone replies, "I don't. I'm just trying to keep us focused. Hey -- he's sick. I guarantee one thing that'll make him worse: going back to jail. And if we don't get in [to the Scylla Chamber], that's where we're all going." In case we've failed to appreciate this caper's degree of difficulty, we get a long, lingering shot of Scylla, encased in what is undoubtedly bulletproof glass, surrounded by laser beams and, you know, just generally difficult to sneak up on.
Back at Team Scylla, Linc is standing in a doorway, staring out at the docks. Dr. Sara comes out and says, "He's going to be okay. I'm scared too, but the hospital is the best place for him right now." Linc says wearily that Michael's not going to go until he's figured out a plan to get the job done. He does not voice his unspoken worry that coming up with this plan may well cause Michael's brain to explode and dribble out his nose. Dr. Sara's like, "Well, there's not a whole lot else we can do right now ..." so she and Linc move on to discussing how Gretchen's supposed to be getting the sixth card from General Von Baldy. Dr. Sara asks if we can actually trust Gretchen, and Linc astutely answers, "With the card? Absolutely. Anything else? Nope." He saunters off, leaving Dr. Sara to her thoughts.
We then zip over to the One World Conspiracy HQ. Lisa Tabak's going over the security detail Scylla merits -- "Eight guards will accompany Scylla from the basement bunker to a garage where an armored truck will be waiting ... I will have a full Secret Service escort to March Air Force Base. There, [Scylla] will be brought aboard a C-130 ... Colonel Rafithi is lending us three of his F-18s [for air security]. It may be hard for you to believe, but I do have this under control." General Von Baldy declines to get into it with Lisa, because his mobile phone's just rung with a photo from Gretchen. The minute he sees the picture, he's all, "Yeah, whatevs, I'm sure you totally have this" to Lisa, and is practically sprinting out the door. Lisa chuffs in annoyance and asks if the general's planning on going somewhere. He looks positively giddy as he says, "I have an appointment." For someone who has devoted his life to cloak-and-dagger-style subterfuge, General Von Baldy is remarkably transparent when it comes to his booty calls. Lisa snaps, "Today?" and the general is all wounded innocence as he says, "You told me there was nothing to worry about." Lisa protests, "Just tell me it's not Gretchen." General Von Baldy only gives her a level look. She scoffs, "This is ridiculous," and that puts Von Baldy on the defensive. He goes skipping out the door.
Back at Team Scylla HQ, Dr. Sara's giving Michael the 411 on his pending surgery -- he'll be awake the whole time, with only some local to take the sting out of having a big fat brace screwed to his skull. "They're going to have to secure four pins to your skull, and they're going to need a small drill to do it." Then we find out that, once braced, Michael gets a big 3-D picture of his brain taken, and that is used to determine where to use the gamma knife to slice the hamartoma out. You know, unless the powers that be are planning on showing us the surgery in the back half of this episode (and they are not), I can only assume that we're getting all this expository information because there will likely be an upcoming episode devoted entirely to the operation and the many ways in which it could be botched. Until then, all this scene does is to provide some amusement to those of us who now have a mental picture of Michael lurching around with bolts coming out of his head like Frankenstein, and explaining slowly to Sucre that the reason he can still talk well is because he's got four bolts in the brain, not two.
Oh, wait! There's another reason we're seeing this scene: to remind us all that Don Self does not know how serious Michael's brain injury is. Or to point out that perhaps Don Self is a little too credulous, as he takes Mchael's rock-star excuse of "dehydration" without even an arched eyebrow. Don Self assures Michael that he's got "someone" keeping an eye on T-Bag and Gretchen and, "if they try something, they'll get taken out." Yeah, since that "someone" is Trisha, Michael's right to look worried and clutch his head. Don Self notices this and asks, "You sure you're all right?" Michael lies, "It's just that we're breaking into [One World Conspiracy] headquarters, and you'll understand why we're all a little on edge." Don Self nods. He then adds, "When your father approached me about doing this, I felt like I was chasing a ghost or something. But because of the work you guys have done, today's the day. We're going to take these bastards down." The music swells dramatically, but poor Don Self seems to be the only one who's excited by the prospect.
Sucre and Mahone come back and Michael breaks the news that they've only got four hours, on account of him having to go to the hospital and get his brain sliced up with a gamma knife. Both Mahone and Sucre seem rattled by this, but in the shot, the cool-as-a-cucumber Mahone is busy walking everyone through the footage. I still can't get over how calm and steady he is now. It only adds data to my theory that the most effective short-term treatment for psychosis and addiction may be homicide. (Boy, that is an ethics problem to chew on: "Under what circumstances is it permissible to let the mentally ill kill people?") Michael sums up the five problems that Team Scylla must crack in the four hours: the concrete wall, the glass wall, the microphonic sensors, the weight sensors and the thermal detectors. He then stresses everyone out further: "We make one wrong move, the camera goes on and General Von Baldy knows we're inside." Mahone muses, "All this security and only one man has access to video surveillance." Michael reasons, "The [One World Conspiracy] doesn't want any record of what's going on down there." Dr. Sara asks why they can't just take the elevator that leads down to the room, and Michael practically snaps that "we have to go where they're not expecting us." I would bet good money that the One World Conspiracy isn't expecting anyone to just march on into the elevator, but what do I know? I'm sure that it's much easier to craft a no-weight, no-sound, no-heat method of stealing Scylla than it is to get through ten layers of human security. Michael struggles to explain how they'll start the job -- "We have to generate an electromagnetic field ..." but then he trails off, on account of his tumor giving him a little trouble. Mahone stares for a moment, then fills the leadership vacuum, tasking Sucre with getting a few car batteries to help generate said electromagnetic field. Linc assures Michael they can do this. Michael's all, "Um. What time are we expecting Gretchen to get that sixth card?"
I don't know, because I'm all screwed up on the timeline, even within this episode. Michael's going in for surgery at 3 p.m., and he had just told his teammates they only had four hours to work, which implied that the team was having its powwow around 11 a.m. Yet we've just switched over to Gretchen's hotel room, and her booty-call message to General Von Baldy was for 1 p.m. So either Michael was talking really slow, or we've just leapt ahead a few hours, or General Von Baldy used his vast conspiracy powers to clear the L.A. freeways and show up at the hotel room early. And now, I have to rule out the last option because the minute General Von Baldy walks into the hotel room, Gretchen's cooing. "What took you so long?" (My guess: he needed time for the Viagra to kick in.) And then, oh God, I can't get into it. Just suffice it to say that when it comes to sultry personae, the "naughty schoolgirl" is one Gretchen can't pull off, and I wonder what Jodi Lyn O'Keefe did to piss off the producers and get stuck trying to act kittenish. Anyway, her "let me massage you, my poor, tense global puppetmaster" gambit fails pretty spectacularly, and General Von Baldy lashes out with, "I'm the one that taught you how to lie. I never thought that at the age of 63, I could still have my heart broken." Honestly, I'm surprised he still has a heart; he seemed forward-thinking enough to get his brain decanted into a Disney-crafted animatronic replica, just for that extra touch of assassin proofing. Anyway, with genuine hurt, General Von Baldy asks, "Why did you feel the need to steal my card? Don't you know that if you had waited just a little bit longer, you'd have had one of your own?" Gretchen's a sucker for man-tears, so she rushes forth to apologize, but the General pulls a gun on her. You'd think she'd have checked his jacket for that. Gretchen avoids being killed with the "I'm the mother of your child!" plea, and General Von Baldy lowers his gun with, "If I ever see you again, I'll shoot you on sight." He stalks out. Well, as far as break-ups go, that one seems pretty amicable, doesn't it?
And now, we come to the subplot of the episode that can be summed up in one paragraph. Here goes: having confirmed in the last episode that Trisha's a fed, T-Bag notices that she's wearing a jacket and correctly deduces that she's packing heat, probably because she might use it on him. So he works quickly with Gretchen kill two birds with one stone. The trap: they have a phone call wherein they talk about how the two of them have to meet the Scylla buyer one more time in a little post-war ranch house. Trisha rather obviously listens in and writes down the address. Then she and Don Self head over to the house, and once they're inside, they're captured by Fang and his people. The episode ends with the two agents in less-than-friendly company. No doubt there's a writer crying somewhere that time constraints kept them from showing a torture sequence.
T-Bag's derailing of two federal agents is only one task in what proves to be a busy day. Mr. White, it transpires, is so impressed with the Southern-fried hokum that T-Bag fed the new franchisees, he's decided to reward T-Bag with a berth on GATE's annual cruise. "Seven days and six nights of non-stop pitching," Mr. White enthuses. T-Bag rightly looks aghast. It is not, however, because he'll spend a week in sales-pitch hell, but rather because the cruise leaves today. He regretfully turns down the cruise. Is T-Bag actually sorry to leave his life of semi-legitimacy?
Back at Team Scylla HQ, Dr. Sara's explaining how the heat sensors work: "As soon as they pick up any heat source registering 90 degrees [Fahrenheit] or above, the system goes into standby. The yellow light comes on. After five seconds in standby, if the heat source isn't gone, we have an alarm." Sucre clarifies, "We've got six seconds to make it across the hallway and through the glass walk?" Yes. Now aren't you sorry Usain Bolt isn't working on this with you? Mahone has a better idea: use liquid nitrogen to regulate the temperature. Then he sits down for a chat with Michael. Mahone says, "About four years after I joined the Bureau, my first special agent in charge, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. But for him, the hardest part wasn't the treatment, the hardest part was leaving the office, because we had -- we had this big RICO case that was about to go to trial, and we're talking thousands of man-hours and five years of research -- and the guy was going to be in chemo, and he was scared. He was scared that we were going to lose the case, and that a lot of bad men were going to walk." Michael interjects, "Let me guess: he had a rag-tag band of criminals ready to pick up the slack." Michael, I'm going to assume that's the tumor talking and you did not just call Sucre, Dr. Sara and Linc "a rag-tag band of former criminals." Mahone sort of grins at how Michael cut through his little anecdote, then rises with, "We're not going to let you down, Michael." As he walks off, Michael asks what happened to Mahone's boss. Mahone says casually, "Oh, he was there to see us win," then keeps on rolling.
We cut to Fang and his flunkies setting up a new Scylla complication: "Either we pay for Scylla, or we kill for it." Killing might be easier. What are a few bodies to hide compared to the massive, shrink-wrapped pallets of cash that are being forklifted into vans? Also, does it seem like paying $125 million in cash is sort of the high-crime equivalent of paying for your delivery pizza in pennies? Isn't this why Swiss bank accounts exist?
Back at Team Scylla HQ, Mahone's just used an umbrella and a noise monitor to determine that they won't be able to make any noise above 10 dB. The guys continue their noodling as Sucre gets a little existential: "Do we even have a chance?" Nobody's got a good answer for that.
Outside, Michael is getting the news that Gretchen failed to get the sixth card. He does not take it well. Who can blame him? He was already under a lot of stress before he developed the mother of all bad headaches. The upshot? There is no scenario for getting card #6 that doesn't end with someone getting a gun to the head. "That is not acceptable!" Michael emphasizes.
Fang rolls on into GATE and right into T-Bag's office. Gretchen's waiting; she has, thank goodness, changed out of her schoolgirl kit and into a sharp black suit. I always feel a few conflicting emotions whenever I catch myself admiring one of Gretchen's outfits: on the one hand, I would love to go shopping with her. On the other, it would probably end badly. I mean, even worse than the usual why-doesn't-anyone-make-jeans-that-fit outcome. Fang coolly says, "I was expecting that the time the three of us were in the same room together, that you'd have something for me." Well, Gretchen does: it's called an excuse. "To ensure the item's safe recovery, we need your help," she purrs. We do not see whether Fang's like, "I'm sorry, do you expect me to assemble my own purloined bounty? Are you the IKEA of criminals? Fine. I'm only paying $100 million for Scylla now."
We don't see Fang deliver such an edict, because we're watching a tender tableau between Michael and Dr. Sara. Well, a tender tableau set to the euphonious murmur of shipping-lane traffic. It does wreck the mood a little. Anyway, Dr. Sara heads on over to give Michael a hug from behind, and he wraps his arms around hers in a very sweet, long-established-couple sort of way. Dr. Sara kisses Michael's shoulder before brightly telling him it's time to go. Michael sighs and hands over a piece of paper he got from Gretchen by way of Agent Self. He then tells Dr. Sara, "If they all die because we tried to take down the [One World Conspiracy] and I survive because I called in sick, how am I going to live with myself?" Dr. Sara looks at Michael with concern. I'm thinking someone just realized her boyfriend's not going to the hospital.
When the two of them head back inside, Dr. Sara puts the by-way-of-Gretchen intel on a side table, then steps back to watch the Michael-n-Lincoln show. Alas, the show's been cancelled, because Lincoln decides not to press the issue when Michael says he's coming with everyone. But I bet it's going to be a fun car ride, all the guys squeezed into an SUV and wishing that the unspoken resentments and irritation weren't taking up all the room.
Zoom! We're there already. Linc parks the SUV at GATE and begins unloading the car. In the shotgun seat, Sucre crosses himself and begins praying. In the back seat, Dr. Sara pulls out a syringe, loads it, and sighs, "If I still had a medical license, I'd lose it over this." She explains that she's shooting Michael up with something usually given to epileptics. "IT will suppress the rapid firing of neurons for the three hours, making it unlikely that you'll have a seizure in that time." However, he can't take on any added mental or physical stress. I'm not sure that's even possible for any of the members of Team Scylla at this point. Dr. Sara's got that envelope again, and she tells Michael, "As soon as this is over, I'm taking you to the hospital." She hops out of the car; Michael watches her go with an opaque look. Uh-oh. That looks often means he's planning something that nobody else can guess -- or stop before it's too late. Then Michael leans forward and checks on how his hetero life-mate Sucre's doing. Without looking up from his prayers, Sucre nods. Michael reassures him, "This is going to go exactly as planned, I promise," and Sucre continues his campaign for Season Four MVP by very softly and matter-of-factly saying, "I'm not praying for me." Awwww!
And then, we have a little scene where Lisa comes in and the considerably-less-giddy General Von Baldy tells her, "You were right. If it weren't for you, [card #6] would be in the wind." Instead of doing the "Ha ha, I was right!" dance, Lisa looks irritated and dismayed. Then she inquires as to Gretchen's current plane of existence. General Von Baldy hedges, "Let's just say she won't bother either of us any more." However, he's now really hot to move Scylla. Lisa can do that. She's also expected to summon all the other cardholders for a meeting.
And now, Team Scylla barrels into T-Bag's office, completely oblivious to his pleas about how card #6 is now part of their to-do list, right? I mention this scene only because it's so funny how these guys just never learn from each other. You ignore T-Bag at your own peril.
Dr. Sara is now sitting down outside GATE. We see her open her Bag of Holding (that woman does love her Prius-sized hobo bags) and slip the envelope Michael had into said bag; it nestles up right to the gun she's also carrying. Dr. Sara then kicks back to wait. I hope she can reach back into that bag and find a magazine or something.
The guys have wound their way back to the wall, and soon, it'll be quiet time. So Michael speaks now: "This is it. Before we go in, does anyone have any questions about what they're supposed to do?" Nope. Michael then warns everyone that the hole Sucre drilled that morning can act as an excellent conductor of sound, so everyone needs to be vewwy, vewwy qwiet. "From this point on, we need absolute silence," he stresses. Nobody says a word in response. Michael then extends his hand and wishes Mahone good luck. They shake. Holy cats! The series could end tomorrow -- we've just witnessed the termination of one of the greater antagonistic arcs on Prison Break. Michael then hugs his hetero lifemate Sucre, and finally, he and Linc have a long and emotional hug. Michael seems to be fine until Linc pats him on the back paternally, and then, he's fighting back tears. But that soon passes, and the guys head into the quiet antechamber, prepared to pull off their biggest caper yet.
The guys then set up for the job. Mahone's got his computer so he can keep an eye on the Scylla chamber. Sucre's marking stuff on the wall. Linc is stringing what look like metal cables across the doorway, and Michael's setting up everything they'll need for their electromagnetic field. Lest we, the viewers, become too confused, the show helpfully switches into a flashback-exposition mode, wherein Michael explains: "We have to break into two walls, one concrete and one glass, and do it without making a sound. In order to get through that, we have to generate an electromagnetic field." Back in the present, we see that the guys have quietly drilled holes in the wall around a taped-off square. Now, Sucre places the rod that will generate the field within the square, and begins running it down the wall. We flash to the inside of the wall -- the magnet's bending the steel fibers this way and that, thereby introducing all sorts of forces to the concrete and causing it to crumble internally. This allows the guys to quietly chisel away at the concrete, and it just flakes away.
Linc and Mahone then take two umbrellas, thread them through holes that have been drilled near the top of the wall, and open the umbrellas via a little pullcord. They lower the opened umbrellas to the floor; we see that each is now the terminus of a line created by a laser.
Eventually, the guys have a hole into the Scylla Chamber. We pull out to get the chamber's-eye perspective of the four guys all crouched around the hole, saucer-eyed as they behold Scylla. They get over that fairly quickly, though. Mahone and Linc climb ladders on either side of the hole and revisit their umbrellas-on-strings. They're now threading steel cables through the holes. The cables have clips on the end; Sucre fastens these to a steel-pipe ladder Michael constructed. Mahone snaps a second part of the ladder into place, and Sucre pushes it out to attach it to another set of cable clips. The guys have now created a suspension bridge over part of the floor.
Sucre's job will be to climb across that bridge -- which traverses an eight-to-ten-foot-wide area surrounding the Scylla pillar like a moat -- and do so without triggering the alarm. The alarm is green when he begins prep -- laying down wooden planks and getting a canister of liquid nitrogen. Then the light flashes yellow, but Sucre hastily releases some gas, and it switches back to green. Sucre continues laying down the planks of wood. My guess is, Sucre is going to sit on one part of the bridge as they build the rest all the way across to the platform. Aaaand, it turns out I'm good at guessing.
I have to hand it to the writers: making the need for total silence one of the conceits of this caper is a stroke of genius, because it forces the viewer to pay attention to every little thing. Also, it ratchets the tension up through the roof. When Sucre drops the frozen nitrogen canister, I nearly shouted in alarm. Sucre dives after the canister and catches it mere seconds before it hits the floor. He's now clinging to the bridge by his feet, and honestly, that doesn't look like it's going to hold for very long.
But! But! You don't get abs like Sucre's without doing a lot of core strength work, and that is what ultimately brings him back up onto the bridge. Well, that and Lincoln's quiet, LINCOLN GRAB move he performs. Back on the other side of the wall, Mahone lunges for the cables, lest they begin fraying under the combined weight of so much beefcake. Sucre and the container are safely collected, Lincoln shimmies back out of the Scylla Chamber, and Sucre collapses on the half-completed bridge. He kisses his crucifix in gratitude.
Upstairs, however, Gretchen has just walked back inside T-Bag's office with a big duffel bag. All business, she tells T-Bag, "When Scofield and Burrows walk in that door, give them an opportunity to surrender. Best-case scenario, we can avoid a confrontation." T-Bag warns her, "Ain't no way they're going to hand it over without a fight." Gretchen, who is fiddling with the as-yet-unseen, very-likely-lethal contents of her duffel bag, says impassively, "If they take that position, we respond in kind." T-Bag is positively giddy over the prospect of getting a nine-figure payday and being able to kill Michael. We finally see what's in the duffel bag (guns) as T-Bag sidles up to Gretchen and asks, "Just leave Scofield to me." She absently strokes him under the chin in response.
And now, because a caper that requires total silence isn't nerve-wracking enough for me as a viewer, the conspiracy stooges ratchet it up a notch: General Von Baldy and Lisa, She-Wolf of the Conspiracy, are all ready to move Scylla. But wait! It gets even more tense! Because now the bridge is done, Michael's on it, and he's just had a serious attack of the tumors. Everyone else watching just sort of sweats and panics. Michael reels, he sees double, he shakes a little, then he finally manages to regain his footing and make it to the glass wall. The heat-seeking alarm flashes yellow. Michael notices in time to turn on the frozen nitrogen. Then he gets up and stares at Scylla and we get a really cool shot of him up against the glass wall, utterly entranced by the problem he's about to solve.
Michael then fastens two things that look like giant suction cups, only with handles, to the wall. Then, Michael uses an X-acto to score a big circle on the glass wall. He blasts the area with more of the frozen nitrogen. (Note: how those guys haven't needed gloves when handling that container is God's private mystery. I have a can of compressed gas I use to clean out my computer keyboard, and I can only use that stuff for two minutes before my fingers begin sticking to the freezing-cold can.)
We cut to Lisa giving a status update on the cardholders: "Oren, Tuxhorn and Edison are standing by. Scuderi was in Las Vegas." General Von Baldy ruefully says, "You think we could get the state of Nevada to outlaw gambling?" "I somehow doubt that," Lisa replies, amused. Scuderi will be in L.A. within the hour. General Von Baldy shoos Lisa off to her Eagles and Angels luncheon, and when she tries to beg off, he chides her with, "Now, more than ever, we need the support of law enforcement. I will call you whenever we're ready to move." Lisa heads off to lunch, but she's not happy about it until the general calls after her, "Very good work."
Meanwhile, Michael's just finished cutting a circle in his glass wall and is busy easing himself into the room where the Scylla monolith is. I am sort of amused by the battered backpack into which he evidently plans to cram this shiny and high-tech thingamabob. It just seems so incongruous. He advances and notices the camera trained right on top of Scylla.
Then the tense action music starts up. We flash first to a shot of Lisa heading off to lunch with her three security goons. Dr. Sara discreetly makes note of this from her bench. Then we cut to T-Bag pacing in his office. Gretchen is perched, catlike on a chair -- only her fidgety hands betray any anxiety or tension she feels. Michael is in front of Scylla, scoping it out from all angles and noticing the insanely great design. Jonathan Ives: secret employee of the One World Conspiracy? I wouldn't rule it out.
He leans forward to move Scylla from its perch, and in doing so, arms a security alarm that is apparently motion -- and pressure-sensitive. Within seconds, General Von Baldy's computer chimes and a window pops up reading, "Security alarm activated." Startled, General Von Baldy clicks a key and gets the live camera feed of Michael picking Scylla up. He summons a security team.
And we end the episode with Michael holding Scylla, blissfully unaware that this job is about to get much harder. Or is he? We'll find out whether Michael figured on sacrificing himself to get the sixth card somehow and complete the job.