- Prison Break wasted no time in turning up the heat on the new team of convicts assembled in last week’s season premiere to take down the Company. Michael Scofield and his motley crew had barely gotten situated in their Oceanside warehouse when a visit from agent Donald Self pushed Michael to a breaking point. A screaming match between the two ended with Michael getting an ultimatum: retrieve another of the six cards comprising Scylla by the end of the day or go back to prison. With an impossible deadline looming, the group’s only leads came from information from files that Roland (the team’s tech dork/hacker) had downloaded from the PDA of Company suit Stuart Tuxhorn after the device had been planted in Tuxhorn’s home last week to copy what was believed to be Scylla but ended up being just one-sixth of Scylla. Emails from the PDA gave the group a starting point, but they needed access to other emails that weren’t in their possession, which meant getting access to a secure server in Anaheim. Michael, Sara, Lincoln, Roland and Mahone headed for the server, while Sucre and Bellick staked out Tuxhorn’s officer. Using Sara as a decoy, Michael and Roland snuck into the server room, with Roland hacking in and finding the necessary emails. However, at the same time, the security guard at the front desk saw through Sara’s ruse, realized his security badge was missing (having been passed off to Michael) and when Linc saw her being apprehended from his seat in the SUV in the parking lot, he called Michael for help. Help came in the form of pulling the fire alarm, necessitating the evacuation of the building. That also triggered a seal-off of the server room and a mechanism which sucked the oxygen out of the room in order to protect the servers from the fire. Somehow, Linc was able to pull an axe off the side of one of the fire trucks that roared onto the scene, walk past everyone into the building, find the server room and break a window the get Michael and Rowland out. They had the emails they needed, but the lack of oxygen was far from their only problem. Unfortunately, at the same time Self’s superiors in Homeland Security and the senator working closely with his operation pulled the plug on the whole thing, meaning the chase for the Company was over and Scofield and his team were all headed back to prison. Sucre and Bellick were nabbed first, not long after Bellick tried to talk Sucre into making a run for the Mexican border. Sucre managed to send off a warning to Michael via text message, so the rest of the convict crew headed for their SUV and tried to flee the warehouse, with Self in hot pursuit thanks to the tracking devices on their ankles. While on the run, Michael directed everyone into a concrete bridge underpass to block the tracking devices and in so doing, he was able to figure out a way to decode the emails, which on the surface appeared to be two ads: one for crank enhancer pills and one for an astronomy club. By decoding them, he discovered that there was some sort of meeting at a power station in Newport Beach that Tuxhorn was to attend. After stealing a cab and driving to the power plant, Michael, Linc, Sara and Mahone leapt out of the car and were trying to find the meeting place when Self and his agents caught u[ with them. Linc, Mahone and Sara were all apprehended and tossed in a van along with Bellick and Sucre, but Michael remained free and found the meeting spot. Using his cell phone’s camera feature, he took video of the meeting, which actually brought together all six Scylla cardholders, along with the mystery bald dude who used to not talk but now is remarkably chatty, a far cry from his scenes in Season 2 where he held up messages on pieces of paper in the back of limousines to communicate. With the video in hand, Michael gets back in the stolen cab, drives up to where his friends are being held and shows the video to Agent Self. It’s enough to earn a reprieve and keep the operation going - for now. Someone who won't be continuing on is Bruce Bennett, the friend of Sara Tancredi’s late father who has helped Sara, Linc and Michael over the past couple of season in various ways. Still in the hands of Company hitman Wyatt (Cress Williams), Bruce is tortured with a cocktail of potent drugs and ultimately ends up in a groggy, half-conscious state wherein he reveals where Michael, Sara and Lincoln really are - L.A. With that information, Wyatt ties off a loose end by shooting Bruce in the back of the head. On the other end of the spectrum, T-Bag Bagwell is living the good life, taking up residence in the plush, furnished luxury apartment that had been intended for James Whistler before his death in last week’s premiere. Having retrieved the packet of information intended for Whistler at the bus stop in San Diego, T-Bag found the apartment and also a letter about a bonus payment from Gate Industries, which as it turns out is the Company’s headquarters location. Better still for T-Bag is that after ordering pizza, a pay-per-view porno and taking a hot shower, he finds out after calling the Gate offices that in addition to $75,000 coming to him, he has a job and an office waiting for him at Gate. That will put him squarely in the path of Michael, which is just what T-Bag wants, even though Michael has no idea that T-Bag is even in L.A. So there it is, a review of a thrilling, action-packed epside that was a big step up from last week’s good-not-amazing premiere and a nice turn back toward the way the show has been in its first three seasons. Until next time……..
- A melancholy happy trails to Don LaFontaine, a man whose face you probably don’t know but whose voice you most assuredly do. LaFontaine passed away over the weekend, ending a distinguished career as a voiceover maestro for Holywood. For a long time, LaFontaine was the voice of movie trailers and commercials, his legendary pipes making even the most mundane product or mediocre film sound a little better. He was a vocal machine, recently cranking out three takes for The Simpsons Movie, knocking out for promo reads for Trading Spaces, Nanny 911 and 24 and more. In the 1980s and ‘90s, he would do as many as 200 reads a day and earned such an income that he hired his own limo driver and bounced from studio to studio to record projects. His death reportedly came from complications relating to a collapsed lung, which took LaFontaine at age 68. He and his voice will be missed……..
- Sunday was the return of the National Football League to the sports scene, with Week 1 a great week based on one, and only one, play. The play in question happened in the game between the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs in Foxboro, Mass. While I don’t wish injuries on anyone, my day was made when the golden boy, Tom Brady, limped off the field at Gillette Stadium after being hit by Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard. Brady limped off the field in the first quarter, his knee in agonizing pain and his legions of sycophantic fans in stunned silence. He’s now officially done for the season, headed for knee surgery and the injured reserve list. Fact is, the Patriots have become America’s enemy in the NFL, a team to hate because of their boorish, lying, cheating, gruff coach, their roster of automatons who spout nothing but pre-programmed lines fed to them by their coach, their CIA-like tendencies when dealing with injuries and their perpetual presence at the top of the standings in spite of all of this. I can't remember being happier after a sporting event than I was after last year’s Super Bowl in which the Pats were stunned by the New York Giants, 17-14. Now, New England’s season hangs in the balance as Brady’s health is determined. Of course, the top-secret Pats’ M.O. will dictate that no one knows where Brady is while he recovers, what his status is, if or when he will play again, etc. But I don’t so much revel in this because I dislike Brady; I revel in it because I know Patriots fans, those annoying a-holes with the Bah-ston accent and bowls of clam chow-dah in front of them, are in agony as Brady’s status hangs in the balance. How great is it to have the Pats’ season all but ruined one week in? As long as you’re not a New England fan, it’s the best news you could possibly have in this new NFL season…..
- Not a good feeling, getting whacked with a sausage and robbed. A culinary-oriented thief in Fresno, California inflicted that pain on one of his victims and hit another up with a nice spice rub during a Saturday morning robbery. Authorities there say they've arrested a man who broke into the home of two California farmworkers and stole money before rubbed one of the men with spices and whacking the other with a sausage. However, the sausage-whacker didn’t make it too far; 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez was found hiding in a field wearing only a T-shirt, boxers and socks. Finding him wasn’t difficult, what with deputies finding a wallet containing his ID inside the house. By the way, in my seminar for aspiring criminals who want to stop being morons, leaving your ID at home is Lesson #16. Spaces in the seminar are still available, so sign up now! But I digress…..according to statements given by the two farmworkers told deputies the suspect woke them Saturday morning by rubbing spices on one of them and smacking the other with an 8-inch sausage. Not a good move, frankly. Everyone knows a nice spice rub is not the way to go with a robbery victim. You want to give them an herb butter rub with some pancetta chestnut stuffing, of course. And no one uses any shorter than a 12-inch sausage to whack victims nowadays; 8-inch sausages are so 20th century. All in all, not a stellar robbery, what with getting caught right away and the money being recovered….
- This past weekend was the definition of a slow one at the box office. When a Nicolas Cage action-thriller is the top earner and its total is a measly $7.8 million, slow might be a bit generous. “Bangkok Dangerous” isn’t a good movie, it just had the benefit of coming out on one of the slowest movie weekends of the year. Acually, that’s not fair. It was the slowest movie weekend in five years, according to studio estimates released Sunday. The weekend box office gross for the entire freaking three-day span was projected at reach a mere $66 million, less than the $66.7 million reported for the same weekend in September 2003. Yes, things are so down at the theater right now that a lame remake of a 1999 Asian movie and starring the ho-hum Nic Cage opened on 2,650 screens, won in a slow, sad race to the earnings finish line. Coming in second was “Tropic Thunder”, the satirical comedy with Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. highlighting a star-studded cast. Its earnings of $7.5 million were good enough for second place following three weeks in the box office top spot. The further you go down the list, the less likely you are to find a good movie, so it’s no surprise that in third place was the Anna Ferris-centric comedy “The House Bunny” with $5.9 million. I don’t see how a movie could be more predictable, clichéd and unimaginative than this one, but on the Crap-ola Movie Weekend of 2008, it’s still the third-highest-earning film. In fourth was “The Dark Knight,” in fourth place with $5.7 million, raising its cumulative total to $512 million, second only to “Titanic.” Coming fifth was the spy drama “Traitor,” with $4.7 million. Not sure any of these movies should be proud, being at the top of one of the most lackluster weekends in recent box office history, but with the quality of a few of these bombs, they should be grateful to be at the top of any list at any time…..
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