- The quality of Prison Break seems to be inversely proportional to how close the series is to its end. The episodes keep getting better as the end nears, and tonight’s show was no exception. With all roads converging on Miami in pursuit of Scylla, you knew there was bound to be plenty of violence, drama and confrontation. The hour kicked off with Michel Scofield on the phone to his mother Christina, using the phone of Dartmouth professor and researcher Vincent Sandinsky. Sandinsky remained in the custody of Michael’s brother Linc and his team, but Michael had Sandinsky’s phone and made use of it. When he calls, Christina thinks she’ll outsmart her son and track it, which she is able to do. Michael’s location is pinpointed to a warehouse in El Portal, near the water up the coast from Miami. Christina and her men rush to the locations, which is exactly what Michael wants. He waits outside the building, out of sight, while they rush inside and search for he and Sarah. Once the coast is clear, he sneaks inside the SUV that Christina and her crew came in and plants some sort of packet of chemicals that he and Sarah cooked up. The packet is planted inside the center vent in the dashboard and the fan turned to high so that the chemical will be circulated quickly the instant the vehicle is started up. Christina’s team finds Sandinsky’s phone sitting on a table inside the warehouse, but the sound of a car starting up outside sends them sprinting back to their own vehicle. As Michael and Sarah drive off on their own car, their pursuers pile into the SUV and are soon overpowered by the toxic gas pouring into the inside of their vehicle. All of them gasp, gag and struggle to open the doors and crawl out of the vehicle, but Michael and Sarah have circled around behind them and are waiting. Michael delivers a nice punt to the head of the nearest security guard and then picks up Christina, placing her in the truck of the car. While Christina is being taken back to the condo where Michael and Sarah are staying, Linc and his team are continuing to interrogate Sandinsky. He appears to be on the verge of being set free when Michael calls Linc and informs him that Sandinsky and their mother were in fact working together. That revelation means that Sandinsky has been lying all along, leading to Linc blowing up and putting a gun inches from his head. At that exact moment, the doors burst open and into the spacious condo walks General Jonathan Krantz and a slew of Company operatives. Krantz informs Linc that he is there to take over the search for Scylla. After chastising Linc for not letting him know that it’s Linc’s mother who has Scylla, Krantz is ready to off Linc, Mahone and Don Self for their deceit. T-Bag is going to be the only one left alive because he’s been acting as a spy for Krantz, but Linc saves his life by reminding Krantz that he, Self and Mahone were the ones who found Sandinsky at the airport. Krantz weighs those words and then proceeds to have his men torture Sandinsky to compel him to reveal what he knows about Scylla and Christina Scofield. Sandinsky admits that despite what he told Linc, he does work for the Company and has done so for 21 years. He doesn’t know where Scylla is, but he does know the hotel she’s staying in and her room number, 1099. Linc, Mahone and Self head out, but not before Mahone disdainfully looks at T-Bag and warns him to stay away from this mission. At the hotel room, there is no sign of life. The three men rifle through the room and every possible place Scylla could be hid, but find little more than bullets and files. Linc does find an envelope with the letters MDB embossed on the back and calls Krantz to see if Sandinsky knows what the ltters mean. Sandinsky remembers something about Miami Dade Bank being involved in Christina’s plan, so that’s the next stop for Linc and Co. They ask to open the safety deposit box that was listed on a piece of paper inside the envelope Linc found, claiming that Linc needs to open it because his mother has passed away. Self even pulls his favorite trick - using his Homeland Security badge - and just when it seems they might be able to talk their way into the safe to open the box, a bank employee informs them that someone has just accessed the box within the last minute. That someone is Downey, Christina’s right-hand man. He departs the bank with a silver briefcase and is pursued by Linc, Mahone and Self. They give chase on foot first, then take to the road in their SUV. Downey weaves through Miami city streets and ditches his SUV in a parking garage. The pursuit continues on foot near the waterfront, but Downey manages to lose his pursuers long enough to sneak into the hotel where the energy conference is taking place. This is the same conference where Naveen Banerjee, son of the Indian prime minister, is to give a speech announcing his country’s partnership with Christina Scofield on the project involving Scylla. As they approach the hotel, Self and Mahone spot something that alarms them. In Christina Scofield’s hotel room, there had been a rental car agreement for a silver van, the same silver van now parked outside the hotel. Inside the van are passports for each of them and Linc, along with a signed rental car agreement in Linc’s name. It’s a setup, but Linc has already snuck inside the hotel using one of the fake security badges recovered last episode by T-Bag and Self from a church in Little Havana. Linc is in a bad spot, but Michael isn’t having a much better run of it. He’s interrogating his own mother back at the condo, grilling her as to Scylla’s whereabouts. She tries every sort of psychological warfare she can imagine, but the two of them are at a standoff. Sarah suggests that she try to question Christina, but that ends up being a bad decision when Christina is able to figure out that Sarah is pregnant and hasn’t told Michael, thus giving her something to hold over Sarah’s head. When Michael tries one final round of questioning, Christina drops the ultimate bombshell: Linc is adopted and isn’t really Michael’s brother. She insists that Michael always knew on some level because he’s so much smarter than Linc. Also, she laments Michael “throwing his life away” to save Linc from one mess after another and wonders what Michael could have been otherwise. Michael is clearly rattled, but insists that Linc was more of a brother to him than Christina ever was a mother. He then demands to know where Scylla is and where Linc is, since Christina seems to be sure she knows Linc’s whereabouts as he chases Scylla. As a last resort, Michael drags Christina across the floor to the bathroom and begins filling the tub up with scalding water. He’s prepared to use the steaming tub full of water to torture his own mother until she finally tells him that the energy conference is where Linc is likely headed. A frazzled Michael feels bad about what he’s just done, but Sarah encourages him to go after Linc while she stays behind to watch Christina. That task proves more difficult than it appears, as Christina is a brilliant thinker just like Michael and uses some dental floss to rig up a crude device to rip the door stop right out of the wall when she gets Sarah to open and close the bathroom door by engaging her in a conversation. Christina then uses the rough edges on the back of the doorstop to cut through the tape around her hands and feet. She calls to Sarah one more time and when Sarah opens the bathroom door, Christina seizes the gun from her and takes her hostage. With the gun inches from the back of her head, Sarah is forced down on her knees and has her hands taped together around the leg of a table. Christina seems on the verge of shooting her, but elects not to and instead taunts Sarah that maybe some day, she can visit her grandchild. With that, Christina is off to put the finishing touches on her plan. She arrives at the harbor near the energy conference and calls Banerjee, who was just about to pull the plug on their deal because she had been out of touch all day. He agrees to go forward what the deal, but revises it a bit. Instead of the large payment Christina was to receive, Banerjee offers $1 million for research right away and the rest of the money in a series of payments over the weeks ahead. Christina agrees and Banerjee takes the stage at the conference to give his speech. As he does so, Sandinsky tells Krantz to turn on the TV in the room where Company operatives have been busy torturing him for hours now. Krantz sees Banerjee step to the podium and begin speaking, at which point Sandinsky tells him that it’s over and that he has lost the battle. Krantz doesn’t take that news too well and orders one of his men to put a bullet in Sandinsky’s head - that man being T-Bag. Already, Krantz has told T-Bag that his final test before becoming an official member of the Company would be killing Linc once he retrieved Scylla, but now T-Bag must kill Sandinsky. He pulls the trigger without hesitation, proving once again his loyalty to Krantz. Meanwhile, the energy conference is about to become a very dangerous place to be. As he begins his speech, Banerjee is targeted and shot by a sniper on a balcony inside the atrium of the hotel. Linc sees the sniper but is unable to get close enough to stop him. Michael has also arrived at the hotel and snuck inside, but he only makes it to the atrium after all hell has broken loose. Downey witnesses the whole scene and as mass panic ensues, he picks up Christina out in front of the hotel. She asks if everything is going according to plan and he assures her that both of her sons are in the hotel and that Linc’s fingerprints are all over the shells that were used in the gun that shot Banerjee because he handled them in raiding Christina’s hotel room. It was all a setup, part of the plan to frame him for the shooting. As Downey put it. Linc is “right back where he started,” a clear reference to the Company framing him for the murder of Terrence Steadman, the brother of former President Caroline Reynolds. That murder sent Linc to prison and death row and established the premise for the whole series, but what about this new plan to frame him for murder? Can Michael find a way to save Linc one more time? Where are Mahone and Self and did they find a way to destroy the passports and paper trail linking them to the silver van outside the hotel? Only one episode to go until the finale, so definitely tune in and see for yourself……
- The city of New Orleans is still struggling mightily to recover from Hurricane Katrina, but at least New Orleanians won't have the added burden of losing their NFL team. The New Orleans Saints have agreed to a lease extension that will keep the NFL team playing home games in an improved Louisiana Superdome through the 2025 season. Saints owner Tom Benson and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced the deal Thursday morning at the Superdome, along with facets of the new agreement that will seek to boost business in the downtown area. The deal would create a new Sports Development District that includes the Benson family purchasing and redeveloping the New Orleans Centre and Dominion Tower, two properties that have sat largely dormant and in disrepair since Hurricane Katrina. “This is a great day for Saints fans and the whole state of Louisiana,” Jindal said in a statement. "Throughout this process, I said we would make sure that this deal makes sense for Louisiana taxpayers -- and by executing this agreement we will save the state hundreds of millions of dollars, while making what will be an incredibly successful investment for our state.” Benson and Jindal had been looking to have a long-term extension in place by this spring to improve New Orleans' bid to host the 2013 Super Bowl, which would be the city's 10th Super Bowl and the seventh in the Superdome in its 34 years of existence. State legislators viewed a video presentation of the proposed deal in Baton Rouge on Wednesday. The legislators must not approve the lease, which would seem like a formality at this point. The best aspect of the new deal, at least for the public, is that it would save the state $281 million between 2010 and 2025 compared to what the state would have paid if the current deal had been extended. Of course, the state will still be giving money to Benson in other ways, including a pledge spend $85 million in improvements to the Superdome and to lease office space for local state agencies at a downtown property Benson has an agreement to buy. Benson does get a lot out of this deal and he’s already been the beneficiary of repairs and improvements to the stadium that so far total about $220 million. Additional improvements to the Superdome will include replacing field level seating so it hugs the rectangular contours of the football field, adding new lounges under lower sideline seats and widening the concourse by more than double so concession stands may be added and bathrooms expanded. The extension seems to be good news for just about everyone involved, given how much the Superdome means to a still-struggling region in terms of hosting all sorts of events, sporting and otherwise…….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It’s been a few days, but what better occasion to bring back everyone’s favorite watch of social dissidence ‘round the world than people all across the globe throwing down with the police as part of traditional May Day celebrations to recognize the achievements of organized labor? As I always say, if your traditional celebrations to recognize the achievements of organized labor turn violent, consider them a failure. With the current economic climate around the world, it’s almost a guarantee that any large gathering of working class citizens will result in some sort of unrest. That was very much true in Turkey, where the government declared May 1 -- also known as International Workers' Day -- a public holiday. Workers made great use of their holiday in Istanbul, spitting in the face of a ban forbidding them from marching in the city’s main square and assembling anyhow. They then clashed with police, who broke out water cannons and pepper spray to disperse demonstrators. Nice abuse of power, Turkish police. Then again, that is what you do best. Meanwhile, German police were pelted with rocks and bottles in Berlin after a post-concert rally turned violent. Police responded with pepper spray and made several arrests, but I think it’s clear that the rioters came out on top/ In the Philippines, workers assembled to demand more job protection and a stimulus package targeting housing, education and health care, while France's eight major labor unions were marching together for the first time to mark May Day. Honestly…..all of this makes me a little teary-eyed. Seeing people of all nations, races, cultures and ethnicities stepping up on the same day to do battle with The Man, it’s a beautiful thing……..
- I’ve been a part of many a campaign to save a favorite TV show that a network has idiotically decided to cancel. Whether it’s been Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Everwood (noticing a theme here, Dawn Ostroff and your team of ass hats at the CW?) or Ed, I’ve joined with thousands of other fans in an attempt to keep great shows alive. There are several of these shows every year and most of the time, the shows slated for the scrap heap are garbage and not worth saving. But every now and then a worth show is in danger, so its fans rise to the occasion. This season, the programs in danger of cancellation include ABC's Better Off Ted, Castle and Samantha Who?; CBS' Without a Trace and Eleventh Hour; and Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and "Dollhouse” and the one show I’m prepared to scrap for: NBC’s Chuck, which has spawned a "Save Chuck" campaign with fans trying to blog, tweet and even eat sustained life into the series. I watch Chuck just as faithfully as the shows I write about weekly in this space, I’ve just never decided to write about it because I’d like to have one show I just watch for the fun of it. For those unfamiliar with the series, Chuck tells the tale of Chuck Bartowski, a computer geek-turned-unlikely government secret agent. While it might seem that a bunch of dorky TV fans waging an online war have no shot at saving a doomed series, realize that there is a precedent for this. “Star Trek" was saved by letter-writing campaigns in the 1960s - although to be fair, Star Trek fans have no social lives, have never even held hands with a girl and have a lot of free time on their hands. In a more recent example, fans of the drama Jericho won the series a temporary reprieve after they sent tons of nuts to CBS executives, a reference to an epithet uttered by a character. Even the UPN's "Roswell" (one of the networks merged to for the CW for Dawn Ostroff and her team of ass hats) was renewed after thousands of bottles of Tabasco sauce -- the show's aliens' condiment of choice -- were delivered to the network's decision-makers. With the growing popularity of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking media, Chuck fans have more tools at their disposal than their predecessors. They’ve also been pretty inventive in their approaches to saving their favorite show, including having viewers buy foot-long sandwiches from Subway restaurants before watching Monday's season finale and leave comment cards letting the sponsor know they want the show brought back. Subway sandwiches popped up as a product placement in the series this season, and the show's star, Zachary Levi, lent his support by leading hundreds of fans into a Birmingham, England, Subway, where he served up a few platters. So if fall rolls around and we’re fortunate enough to still have Chuck on the air, now you’ll know who to thank……
- Here’s a good life rule: when engaging in an idiotic and possibly dangerous stunt, at least have a good reason for said lunacy. And no, winning a $15 dare from your buddies is not a good reason. Yes, I’m talking to you, James Raynor of south Florida. Raynor did what many 18-year-old dudes do, namely act like an idiot when in the company of other guys his age. Raynor was out on a gambling cruise ship near Port Canaveral when a few of his boys got to him with an interesting (i.e. stupid) dare. If he leapt from the ship and swam to shore, they would reward him with a handsome payday of $15. Now I think you all know that $15 can buy a lot of ramen noodles for a guy that age, so of course Raynor took the best. He jumped off the Sun Cruz Casino ship at about 4 p.m. and swam to Jetty Park. Raynor was not injured and if you believe the cops who apprehended him, he also had not been drinking. “The ship was already at the port. It was moving to the berthing area,” Brevard County Sheriff's Office Lt. Vic DeSantis said. The Brevard County Sheriff's Office said a referral will be sent to the state attorney's office for a possible misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. For Raynor’s sake, hopefully no charges will be brought because I don’t think those $15 he won from the bet will pay court costs……..
No comments:
Post a Comment