Break Out of Prison Already!

I have to say, I had high hopes for this show, and I’m sad to find myself with mixed feelings about it.  It’s a very interesting and wonderfully improbably premise, but I’m beginning to feel impatient with the prison part of it, and I’m ready for the break.  Wentworth Miller is terrific as the guy who gets himself sent to prison in order to break out his older brother from death row.  But his character is so deliberate and so laconic that I find myself wanting to yell, “Do something, already!”  The mislead of the week is starting to get old, too – each week it seems as if Scofield (Miller) is going to do one thing, based on his freaky tattoos, but it turns out to be something else.  Example: in one episode, it seemed that Scofield was going to poison his crazy cellmate’s toothpaste so he could carry on his plans – but instead, he poured the acid mix down a drain in the infirmary (for reasons yet unexplained).  In another, we’re lead to believe that there are three guards named English, Fitz and Percy, and one of them is going to be killed.  Instead it turns out that these are the names of three streets near the prison, and Scofield wants to find out down which of these streets the cops come from when a prisoner goes missing.  It’s all just a little too clever.

As a prison story, it’s no Oz, and as a massive government conspiracy story, it’s no X-Files.  The actors are all good, and it’s certainly an imaginative show, which is great to see.  I’m sticking with it for now, but like many of the other new fall shows, the jury is out.

Side note: After watching some of last night’s episode this morning, I flipped to Buffy, and saw Wentworth Miller again!  He was in the second season episode “Go Fish,” in which a bizarre steroid mix turns the swim team into creatures from the black lagoon.  Wentworth memorably bursts his own skin, an image that ends up in the show’s credits in subsequent seasons.  From a fish on Buffy to a guy the other prisoners call “Fish”…