Pop Vultures

I have a bad case of must-finish-itis. It’s an annoying condition, one which forces me to keep watching shows long past their prime because, after investing years in a series, I simply have to see how it turns out. I must finish it, damn it! I tell you this because it’s the best explanation for why I’m still watching Prison Break.

I’ve long since given up expecting the show to actually be good. Now, the best I can hope for is a bit of enjoyable escapism, and the premiere delivered that, so long as one can overlook all the things that just don’t make any freaking sense. Let’s consider a few of these things.

1. A bunch of cons form a special, off-the-books commando unit in the hopes that one day, their names will be cleared and they’ll be free. When did this show become The A-Team?
2. In order to justify T-Bag’s continued presence on the show, they’re making him into…a nice guy? He didn’t kill the woman he was sleeping with, something he used to do simply because it was Tuesday, and he played cheerleader to his fellow desert rat while they were wandering lost in the hot sun. I’m pretty sure the old T-Bag — the one that shanked the guard, murdered the vet and, you know, ended up in prison for killing children — would not be so bothered about accidentally killing someone who was trying to eat him.
3. Michael finds out Sara is alive. Michael meets Sara. Michael continues to stare off into the middle distance during their big reunion. Apparently, smiling, crying, or otherwise moving his face would go against his stoic character.
4. Sara escapes captivity and, instead of rescuing her one true love from prison, decides to take a Greyhound bus back to Chicago. They had an entire year to come up with a cover story for the head in the box, and that is the best they could do?
5. Bellick. Can anyone explain what the big crybaby is actually doing there?

Etc. And yet, I enjoyed the premiere. It wasn’t any good, of course, but I enjoyed it. Let’s face it — a show about a man who got a full upper body tattoo (and, seriously, was there something wrong with his legs that he couldn’t put any ink there?) in order to save his brother from the electric chair after he’d been framed for a murder that never happened by an evil organization that seeks to control everything in the world is going to push the bounds of believability. The show really isn’t any more ridiculous now than it was then.

The superiority of the first season was its tight focus — nearly everything happened within Fox River, and whenever Veronica appeared on screen to do her lawyerly stuff, the audience simply got up for a snack. Season 4 looks to replicate that tight focus, as the new A-team must find a total of six data cards. Such a straight-forward mission has the potential to keep the show on track, rather than wandering aimlessly about like it did last season. Prison Break could still use a return to the darker tone and direct face-offs between good and evil that marked the first season (back when T-Bag was still, you know, EVIL), but barring that, it can still be fun, so long as the viewer never tries to make sense between what happened in previous episodes and what is happening now. That would be an exercise in frustration, and if I wanted one of those, I’d try to remember high school algebra. Instead, I plan to continue watching the show with my brain firmly turned off — much like the writers are clearly doing.

I can’t help it. The must-finish-itis makes me do it.

Who else out there watched Monday’s episode? What did you think of the new direction?