Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's All Over But the Monologuing
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.15.2009
Mahone decides it's time to remind Michael that it's not just Linc and Dr. Sara who are in danger here. Michael replies, "Alex, I don't know what you want me to say." Mahone says, "You haven't gone a day in your life without a plan. Please don't start now." Evidently, his pending parenthood weighed his decision, because Michael tells Mahone he's got 43 minutes to get Scylla to the General: "I am done making plans." Mahone does not take this well, and gets even more insulted when Michael snots, "Maybe it's time I take a page from your playbook, Alex. Hang out on the sidelines, survey the field, and when the time is right, back the winning horse." Mahone is genuinely insulted that this is how Michael sees him. He points out, "At least you got a decision. They took my son. I didn't get to choose. I'm just trying to do what it takes to not lose everything." And so is Michael, who concludes, "If there's something you need to do to protect Pam, you should go do it." And thus the two Mind Mates part in a mutual huff.
It has finally sunken in with Christina that since Michael now knows about Dr. Sara's delicate condition, he's prioritized her above Linc and will probably act accordingly. And so she goes completely insane all over Linc, to a point where even Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford looks up from beating cowering children with wire hangers to says, "Hey, hey, hey -- a little perspective here. For the love of God, lady, don't keep shoving your high heel into Lincoln's sucking chest wound. Those are suede. You'll never get the bloodstains out."
Meanwhile, Don Self is busy telling the two federal agents who have figured everything out that any offers they make had better be in writing and personally signed by the U.S. attorney general as "I don't trust anyone who says they work for the government." Both agents visibly roll their eyes.
Then we zip over to Chicago, where C-Note is trying to coax Sucre into doing him a solid: "All you have to do is call the brothers. Get them on the phone, let me talk to them, and they can make up their own minds, all right?" Sucre facepalms, possibly because he knows that Michael and Lincoln lead such go-go-go lives, they're probably screening their calls. He tells C-Note, "I'm trying to stay out of this. I finally got my family back, and I'm not going to risk losing them again." C-Note gets inside Sucre's head with: "I know it feels good today, but what about a couple of months from now, huh? When the only job you can get is under the job or under some labor gig where you're sweating that the guy next to you is going to drop a dime because he recognized you?" Sucre reasonably wonders how finding Linc or Michael will change all that, and C-Note introduces a new element with, "This guy sought me out, okay? He knows everything about the whole thing? I didn't trust him at first either, but there's something about being in the pen, when you start to decipher who is a player and who is a punk, and this guy is a player, just like Scofield. So the only thing we have to do is tell him where the brothers are, help him get this device thing back so he can put it into the right hands --" Sucre realizes they're talking about Scylla, but he remains skeptical. C-Note assures him, "This brother has juice. He can erase our entire record. I'm not talking about cash and all that flashy stuff. I'm just talking about straight-up freedom. Living like a man -- you feel me?" Sucre does.
Christina is frantically trying to keep the genocidal prime minister of India on the line via some customer service assurances, but he's not having it. Once Nandu hangs up, she has herself a good slump in her office and regrets ever, ever having anything to do with Aldo Burrows. No, wait -- she throws another screaming tantrum and stomps into the storage room where she's holding Lincoln to wail, "You just cost me three-quarters of a billion dollars!" I like to imagine that the fed-up taxpayers of America will take it upon themselves to go marching into banks to scream the same sentiment, albeit with varying dollar amounts, depending on how much the bank took and how intent it is on providing a dollar-for-dollar match via jacked-up ATM fees. Christina's about to shoot Lincoln when she fields a call from ... Mahone? Who tells her "Michael's giving Scylla back to the General in exchange for Sara's life." Mahone is calling not to gloat, but to make an offer: "If your people can get my wife away from whomever's watching her, I'll get you Scylla." Christina's all, "Goooo ooooooon ..." Mahone says, "I've got no particular love for Burrows, but unlike his brother, the guy's always been straight with me. And he helped me track down the guy who murdered my son, and I owe him." Christina makes an offer: Mahone gets her Scylla, and if Lincoln's still breathing, he's all Mahone's. Mahone is okay with that. Then we see that he's got the little Scylla case. O SNAP!
And now we're back to the T-Bag and Dr. Sara show, wherein T-Bag probes for details of Dr. Sara's sex life with Michael. Oh my gosh, just bark out the measurements already and move on with your life. But Dr. Sara does spit that Michael's more of a man than T-Bag is, to which he responds, "How would you know what a man is like? Of the two of us, I bet I've been with more of them." And ... point to T-Bag. He then squanders his home court advantage by alleging that Dr. Sara's frigid. Well, excuse her if being handcuffed to a patio door and listening to some Barry-White-by-way-of-Sling-Blade patter doesn't get her motor running. T-Bag asks what it takes to get Dr. Sara in the mood. "Hospital-grade heroin," I immediately reply. However, T-Bag's hypothesis is "groping." It is genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
Michael calls General Von Baldy then to tell him he's got Scylla, and General Von Baldy cheerily tells him that the terms of the deal have changed: "The exchange will be made at a location of my choosing. Forgive me, but I don't really trust you, except on unfamiliar territory." Michael's like, "Okay, fine, just bring Dr. Sara, okay?" They make a date to meet at some parking lot in 20 minutes.
Then we see him ... go hang with Mahone, where he tells him, "About earlier ... I do think you're in it for yourself. Fortunately for me, that's meant you've also had my back. More than once. And for than that, I'm grateful." Mahone tells him, "Take the case, get out of here ... I've got Pam handled." Michael bids him goodbye with "Good luck."
Back at the loft, T-Bag is shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that the General has no intention of keeping his word to Michael. Von Baldy's planning "a slow death" for Michael and hands Dr. Sara over to T-Bag with "perhaps we've finally found a job for which you're perfectly suited." You would think that T-Bag would be bright enough to realize how thoroughly the General's insulted him and how poorly this bodes for his own future. Instead, his "MUST GET SCOFIELD AT ALL COSTS" vendetta kicks in, and he looks over at Dr. Sara with an expression not unlike that of a velociraptor who's just been teleported into Blackie's House of Beef.
Christina and Mahone have a quick and mutually contemptuous phone conversation that is of no real use to the plot, and then Slick comes in to tell Christina that one of their embedded assets in the FBI has just hipped them to the Don Self situation, and "the attorney general just issued a proclamation for his immunity. You think he's a threat?" Christina muses, "Perhaps. The question is to whom?"
We cut to said possible-threat calling Michael and attempting to draw him out in a conversation. Michael is no dummy, and so hangs up before he can be traced. The agents blame Don Self for this. I love the FBI agents. They may not be correct on all points, but they've got a general sense of what Don Self is.
And then -- zip! -- we're in Chicago and C-Note is busy preparing Sucre for the meeting with ... Paul. As in Paul Kellerman? Last seen in a van which several men were attempting to perforate with their guns? That Paul? Mayb