Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's Like Sophie's Choice, Only with More Beefcake
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.08.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Now this is more like it! This episode had stabbings, and concussive blasts, and one really angry General Von Baldy.
So: Michael and Lincoln are trapped in the Panda (snerk!) Hotel, and Michael is using his big, juicy brain to transform a cart full of janitorial supplies into the necessary weaponry to get him and Linc free of the gas-wielding cops and up to the roof where they can escape via laundry shaft. Except his improvisational efforts get stopped by the cops and only the timely intervention of the balding goon from last week's episode save the boys from being hauled into the Miami PD headquarters, where they would have presumably been interrogated by Crocket and Tubbs. ("Talk or we put you in an unstructured, salmon-pink blazer!" "Noooooo!")
Then the brothers are hauled back to the suite that General Von Baldy's taken over, and the General conducts a performance review of everyone's efforts to retrieve Scylla. His verdict? Everyone needs improvement. General Von Baldy then provides fresh motivation by ordering Don Self's (paralyzed) wife to be murdered. Self gets to hear it all over the speakerphone. He responds by flinging himself off the balcony into the water below, in what appears to be a suicide. The balding stooge takes it as such, and helps Don along by aiming a few shots into the water behind him. Don, however, manages to crawl out of the water on his broken legs (ewwwww!)
Meanwhile, Christina is busy fanning the flames of an India/China border war, courtesy of Bannerjee's assassination and the (planted) news story that the Chinese paid Linc a lot of money for the killing. She makes arrangements to sell Scylla by the seashore to the prime minister of India and rakes in a cool $750 million for her troubles. Then she decides to sell Scylla to the Chinese at well, which Slick discourages with "Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered."
The boys -- working under the General -- quickly figure out that Christina's sticking around Miami until she has confirmation that her ill-gotten gains have cleared their international wire transfer, so they race over to a Federal Reserve-backed bank. Then they put on ski masks and hold up the bank, taking Scylla away from Christina and Slick. That works for approximately five minutes. Then Christina's back-up goons descend on them and many, many guns go off.
And while that is going on, T-Bag manages to demonstrate his multitasking aptitude by making good with the General and exercising his Scofieldian vendetta at the same time. He suggests the General take Dr. Sara hostage, and volunteers to go get her, using the address that was in Mahone's vehicle. (Mahone had un-duct-taped her prior and advised her to run; naturally, Dr. Sara preferred to stay in the path of danger.) T-Bag manages to efficiently abduct Dr. Sara inside her own apartment. She … should take lessons for the next time she has to kidnap her mother-in-law.
Michael and Mahone manage to escape thanks to Linc's agreeing to stay behind and shoot things up. Then Linc runs out of bullets, and he fails to rendezvous with everyone. Further fraying Michael's nerves: a call from General Von Baldy, wherein he sings the tune, "Bring Me Scylla Or I Will Kill Your Lady" followed immediately by a call from Christina with her top-ten hit "I Just Shot Your Brother, So Give Me Scylla Before I Kill Him For Really Real." O, THE TENSION! I cannot wait to see how it all gets resolved next week.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We begin the episode immediately after where the other one left off: with complete and total panic among the world's finest scientific minds. Michael and Linc stand back to watch the hubbub, and thirty seconds later, one of the world's finest scientific minds happens to look up toward where the shots came from and notices the two brothers. His cries of "There they are!" alert a phalanx of cops.
Lincoln suggests they blend into the crowd, but Michael knows that won't work. He suggests heading toward the stairwell, but is confounded by the locked door. Linc picks up the murder weapon -- way to go with getting your prints on it, big guy -- and quickly shoots out the lock. That has dual benefits: the door swings open and the crowd goes into another panic. The brothers beat feet in the confusion. Linc leaves the weapon behind, since it's not like he and Michael will need to get out of any more sticky situations now that they're in an easily-accessed stairwell, right?
The boys go running through the service corridors and into the kitchen. A dozen cops are on their tails. Meanwhile, outside, Mahone is walking through the crowd of EMTs and dazed convention-goers. When he gets to Don Self, he says grimly, "This whole thing is falling apart." Don Self sarcastically answers, "Is it? It is really?" Mahone smacks him down by pointing out that once this hits the news, General Von Baldy's likely to conclude that Team Convenience there can't grab Scylla, so he'll just go after their families in retribution. Mahone concludes, "Yeah, that's really funny, isn't it?" Don Self rolls his eyes.
Back inside the hotel, Michael and Linc are hiding behind the serving trays in the kitchen. Michael speed-dials Mahone to ask him, "We're still in the hotel. Is there any way to get out of here without being seen?" Mahone tells him there is not, as there are cops and feds all over the place. Then Michael has to break two pieces of bad news: not only did he not get Scylla, "some guy got assassinated. And guess who got set up for it?" We cut to Linc rolling his eyes in exasperation, all, I didn't ASK to get set up, MICHAEL. Mahone irritably reminds Michael that they need Scylla, and Michael snaps that he's a lot less concerned about Scylla than he is about escaping the hotel with Linc. Mahone asks, "Oh, yeah? Where you going to go, Michael? With the [One World Conspiracy] breathing down our back [sic] again?" Sensing that Mahone is but one sentence away from a shrieking meltdown, Don Self grabs the phone and tags in. The look on Michael's face when he hears Don is priceless, and he demands to talk to Mahone again. "He's a little preoccupied right now," Don Self understates, continuing, "Look, you want to be mad, be mad at me after we get Scylla back. Now listen to me: the southwest loading dock is a large industrial door. It's not conducive to a quick exit. They only have one cop on it. You can get to the door, I can incapacitate the cop." Michael pettishly points out that he's on the opposite side of the hotel, and it will be difficult getting to the exit, as there are bazillion cops in the way. However, he and Don Self quickly figure out that the laundry's over on that side of the hotel, so if Michael and Linc can make it to the laundry, they can make it to the exit. They plan to do this by taking the hotel ventilation system to the laundry room; that'll put them right by the door.
Michael then requests that he be put on speaker so he can tell Self and Mahone to go to 4 Dunn Place where, in theory, Dr. Sara should be holding Christina Scofield hostage. "Make her tell us where Scylla is," he says, reasoning that doing so will get General Von Baldy and the forces of evil off everyone's backs for a while. Linc grabs the phone and growls, "Mahone, you do whatever you gotta do to get her to talk." Mahone's on it like a sunbonnet. Don Self has an expression like, "Damn, Burrows, that's hardcore." But in Linc's defense: the woman just set him up for murder. Wouldn't you want to deliver a smackdown?
Once the credits roll, we are whisked over to the condo where Lincoln and company were staying. FOX News is already on the scene, where some blowdried talking head is talking about how unconfirmed reports have pegged Lincoln Burrows as the assassin, along with "Michael Scofield, his mastermind brother." We cut to General Von Baldy doing a slow burn, and then his temper really blazes as he throws the remote across the room and shouts, "Christina sandbagged all of us!" He then orders his balding goon to head down to the hotel and make sure neither Lincoln nor Michael are caught. This is not because he yearns to see the boys fly free; Von Baldy is concerned about what they might say to the authorities. T-Bag volunteers for the mission, assuring Von Baldy "I will dispatch it efficiently," but Von Baldy shouts, "This is not an Alabama coon hunt, Teddy!" T-Bag says, "Don't judge me by desperate actions taken when there was a gun to my head. I ran an entire prison gang syndicate. Hardened felons called me 'Mister.' I'm so much more than a snitch, and if you continue to treat me as such, it will be your loss, General, not mine." General Von Baldy is pulling out his hair in frustration -- or he would be, had he any -- and he sets T-Bag straight: "Son, I have the fate of a multitrillion-dollar enterprise in my hands. And you want me to let you earn your stripes now?" He stalks off and we see T-Bag looking speculative. I think someone's just decided that he wants to assume control of a multitrillion-dollar enterprise. God help them all if he succeeds.
Back at the hotel, another ten dozen police have pulled up so they can join the mob inside. Michael's managed to find a Panda Bay swipe card on a maid's cart, and he and Lincoln scamper off so they can begin working their way toward the roof. After a standard chase scene where, as per usual, Michael and Linc manage to elude their pursuers, the pissed-off police chief orders the hotel security flunkie to lock every room in the hotel. Since the locks are electronically programmed, he can easily do so.
Linc and Michael attempt to lay down some internal Prison Break with Linc asking why they can't just take the stairs to the roof and Michael explaining that doing so would set off the fire alarm, whereas crawling through the ducts above the top-floor rooms will let the boys get to the roof undetected. All they need to do is to get into a room, which ... oh, look what the hotel security guys have done! They've locked every door in the place. Michael tests a few to confirm this, then states the obvious: "We can't go up, we can't go down ... we're trapped."
Fortunately for both of them, there's another maid's cart just standing in the hallway. Even more fortunately for them, they are nowhere near a TV set, as the FOX blowdried head is now reporting that "an anonymous source has provided FOX news with documents showing a wire transfer from Chinese operatives to Burrows and Scofield. The fallout from this from a geopolitical standpoint is staggering." We cut to Christina looking surprisingly grim for all that she's a she-viper with all the warmth of Pluto's surface, and she doesn't soften when Slick comes in with a big bouquet of flowers and the news that the prime minister (or, as they call him, Nandu) is reaching out to do business. Christina wanly tells Slick, "Nice audible on the Chinese document." He cheerily replies, "Thank you. Now we just watch the dominoes begin to fall." "I just wish they weren't falling on Michael," she says tightly. You know, you sort of made your own problem there, Christina.