Prison Break (REVIEW)

UNIVERSAL REMOTE

Prison Break is the best new show on television. It is the best action/thriller/conspiracy show since the brilliant 24. If you missed the two-hour premiere last night, you MUST catch the encore this Thursday at 8 on Fox. In the age of Tivo, there are no excuses.

Of course the whole thing is preposterous. Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) commits armed robbery and pleads no contest so that he will be sent to the same prison where his brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) is a month away from being put to death for killing the brother of the Vice President. But Michael is not your ordinary criminal, he is a structural engineer that worked for the company that was sub-contracted to build the prison and has the blueprints to the maximum security facility hidden within a full upper-body tattoo. And he has thirty days to bust his brother out before he is put to death for a murder he didn't commit.

Sounds crazy, right? Once you get past this set-up, the show really cooks. There are about half a dozen other subplots the creators of the show have skillfully balanced including corrupt guards, the imprisoned mobster (Fargo's Peter Stormare) that runs everything, Secret Service agents that seem willing to do anything to keep the execution on schedule, the older prisoner that may be the legendary real-life criminal D.B. Cooper, the prison doctor (Sarah Wayne Callies) that is also the Governor's daughter, white-supremecists that are planning a race-war in the prison, and Lincoln's ex (Robin Tunney), who also happens to be Michael's lawyer, who is following the clues that may lead in directions the Powers That Be don't like because it may lead her to the ever-present Bigger Conspiracy.

It sounds like a lot, and I guess it is. But it is superbly done. Well acted, well shot, well directed (by fauxteur Brett Ratner of all people) and superbly written (by Paul Sheuring), Prison Break has the potential to be a great show. And for me, the best part is knowing that Michael and Lincoln have to escape. They'll be on the run, hiding from Government Spooks who are up to no good. And they are going to take other prisoners with them who may or may not help them. The possibilities are almost endless.

In an era of television where it seems like every other show is a procedural, it is exciting to find a show that may, in the end, take advantage of television's greatest asset: the endless story. Instead of starting over from scratch every episode (like on the awful Law & Order and CSI: franchises/knockoffs), shows like Prison Break (and 24 and Alias and Lost) instead build week after week to something very different from where they started in week one. Prison Break looks like it is going to be a fun ride.

(And if you don't know anything about D.B. Cooper, definitely follow the link. He committed one of the great unsolved crimes of the 20th century.)