More than just breaking out of prison

I thought that my obsession with the series Lost would forever go unmatched, but just when I was already embracing J.J. Abrams as the god of serialized television suspense, Paul Scheuring (who penned the screenplay of A Man Apart, which starred another god of sorts, Vin Diesel) sweeps me off my feet.

I have just finally caught up with Prison Break, a series that first sparked my interest because I used to follow the short-lived John Doe, in which Dominic Purcell (Prison Break's Lincoln Burrows) starred. John Doe was a promising suspense thriller about a guy who wakes up on an island off the coast of Seattle with amnesia, a strange scar, and the sum total of all human knowledge. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled before it could give viewers a clear idea of what the hell was going on. A quick online search tells me now that, depending on which direction the producers would have decided to take, John Doe would have been the Messiah (and that explains all those scenes at the Vatican) or would have been just an ordinary guy who had been injured in a boating accident and transformed by his near-death experience. In either direction, the near-death experience would have been responsible for John's mysterious brain power, which had thrown him in the middle of a thick conspiracy involving a mysterious group called The Phoenix Organization.

In Prison Break, Dominic Purcell's character is again thrown unwittingly into yet another conspiracy involving yet another mysterious organization that calls itself The Company. In the show's first season, Lincoln Burrows is wrongfully convicted of the assassination of the U.S. Vice-President's brother. It is soon revealed that he has been setup in a multi-layered conspiracy. When Burrows' final appeal for a stay of execution is denied, his younger brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), who has himself uncovered the conspiracy although is not nearly close enough to the bottom of it all, decides to take justice into his own hands.

After careful planning (which involved having blueprints of the prison tattooed on his person), Scofield commits a crime that gets him thrown into Fox River State Penitentiary, the same prison in which his brother is incarcerated. From within the prison walls, Scofield then carries out his prison break plan. Sounds simple enough-Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite films, by the way-but enter prison politics, seriously dysfunctional inmates, and career criminals on top of the humungous political scope of the conspiracy that works overtime to seat Burrows on the electric chair. Scofield, however, turns out to be a brilliant strategist, or, to quote his former psychiatrist, a creative genius.

I read that the people at Fox Broadcasting Company first overlooked this series because it didn't appear to have potential for longevity. After all, how far can you stretch a prison break story? But after the success of Lost, it decided to give Prison Break a chance. Its success has given birth to a third season in the works, making it officially a trilogy. The secret of the show's success is that each episode is structured to peel of yet another layer of the story, much like in Lost.

After a few scrapes and in-fighting (and a few murders along the way), Scofield, Burrows, and the six other inmates they're forced to take along with them finally break free at the end of the first season. The second season is all about tracking them down, and is currently ongoing. From what I've seen so far, it's like breaking free from the frying pan, and jumping straight into the fire. The plot thickens.

Prison Break is being shown on Crime Suspense. Email your comments to [email protected]. Or you may post them at http://channelsurfing-freeman.blogspot.com.