ReViEw

By Linda Stasi

But before you read any further, I have to tell you right off that you'd better suspend all disbelief if you are going to swallow "Prison Break's" storyline.

The show is about a structural engineer, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), whose brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) — and, no, I don't know why the brothers have different last names — a seemingly innocent man (who looks guilty as original sin), has been set up for the murder of the brother of the vice president of the United States.

OK, now here's where it goes squirrelly: To free his brother, Michael decides that he has to get into the same prison, so they can break out together — hence the name of the show.
Far-fetched scenario numero two: Michael just happens to work for the company that redesigned and updated the prison that his brother is in.

Far-fetched scenario numero three: Michael, a straight-arrow engineer, goes into a bank and starts shooting it up during an armed robbery. He does everything possible to get nailed by the cops, and he does.

Far-fetched scenario numero four: He pleads no contest and manages to get sent to the same prison as his brother even though bro's in a max-security prison and the judge says she would have been inclined to let Michael off with just parole if he hadn't fired the gun.

Now, if you can accept all that, you will really enjoy what happens next. Michael gets sent to jail, where he figures out just who is who and who he'll need to make his plan work.

There are all the usual suspects, including the Mafia kingpin; the black drug lord; the neo-Nazi, white supremacist; the love-sick, psycho Hispanic; and, of course, the impossibly good-looking lawyer (Robin Tunney) and the fabulously gorgeous female prison doctor.
The unexpected one here is the warden, played by Stacy Keach.

Keach plays it smart. Literally. This makes for a very interesting take on the standard, warden-as-sadistic-dictator routine that's older than dirt.

Back to Michael and the ultimate plan.

How in the hell will Michael remember the whole layout of the prison if he's going to tunnel out? I mean it's one thing to have designed the joint and another to remember what you did a few years and several thousand yards of copper tubing back.

When you find out how he has taken the plans with him into the can, that's when the show starts to really take off — and all of a sudden you're hooked.

The acting here is first rate — not a bad apple in the whole rotten bunch.

But a word of caution: Some of it is so brutal that it gets hard to watch.

"Prison Break's" cleverness comes from the fact that every bad-guy leader of every bad-ass faction in the prison is in total control of his own fiefdom — and, oh yes, they all they hate each other's guts — and how Michael tricks and persuades them into giving up any control.