Quotable:

"In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is a sign of perfection." - Curnonsky

Monday, July 27, 2009

Prison Break: Cowboys and Indians

"What kind of loser gets set up for two high profile assassinations within five years?" - Lincoln

That's a question I've been asking myself for some time now, except that my query was a bit more broad - what kind of loser gets messed up in this many conspiracies period? Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield (Quick sidebar: different last names. Obviously they weren't brothers.) haven't exactly had it easy, but it's finally starting to look like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel ... at least for Michael anyway.

Of course, his happiness hinges on who he wants to give Scylla to - Cristina or Krantz. Give it to the general and Sara lives. Give it to his mother and Lincoln lives. However, if I know one thing about Michael, it's that he's smarter than Cristina and Krantz combined.

The rest of the episode didn't provide too much in the way of explosive revelations - it was more set up for the finale. Hell, more than half of it was just waiting for Lincoln and Michael to escape from the hotel. That mini-fridge bomb was pretty cool, though.

Anyway, I did get a lot more info on Cristina's game plan - start a world war and sell Scylla to everyone, starting with India and China. Krantz made the best point about her. She's so prideful, that at this point she doesn't even realize what she's doing. It's all about the money which ironically enough will probably be worth nothing once the international economy crumbles as a result of the war she started.

With that in mind, the Cristina character has lost some of the allure she had when she first appeared. Initially, the prospect of Lincoln and Michael's mother appearing was intriguing and created all sorts of questions. Instead, she's just devolved into this one dimensional clichéd villain with extremely loose justifications for all of her actions.

I'm still having a hard time buying into her complete dismissal of Lincoln as family. She may have only adopted him, but she still helped raise him. It's just not believable and even though this show is the definition of exaggeration, for the most part, the characters have been pretty well fleshed out and Cristina just isn't. Granted, that's a direct result of her only being introduced a few episodes ago, but that's the problem - there wasn't time to give her more back story, and the overall plot is suffering as a result. I don't see how this all ties together. As things stand right now, the connection between season one's events and what's happening now is near non-existent and that kinda sucks.

The only other thing worth mentioning is Self. I finally found out his motivations for trying to steal Scylla. Years ago, he got drunk, and he and his wife were in a car accident, crippling her. His government benefits only covered a crappy facility and in an attempt to atone for his sin, stealing Scylla and selling it would have allowed him to put his estranged wife in a much better facility. Touching isn't it? I'm glad I found out, but it is a bit crazy to think that's what started season four off - Don Self's guilt.

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