Prison Break Season Three

Reviewed by:
Gene Newman

The Skinny: After a hugely disappointing second season, Prison Break kicks ass its third go-round. Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) must survive a Panamanian hellhole, where the prisoners run the show and the guards wait outside with guns for anyone trying to escape. This forces him to improvise more and utilize past rivals now incarcerated with him. Plus, his now-exonerated bro, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), is also in rare form, assisting his crafty sibling in the escape.

The Good: We had all but given up on this show, but they managed to remake its premise and up the violence and smartitude, which has us looking forward to Season Four. The 13-episode season is paced much better than typical network shows, plus they added the sexy and evil Jodi Lyn O'Keefe and unknown Cuban beauty Danay Garcia.

The Bad: It still suffers from a bunch of frustrating dead ends, in which tireless work spread over countless episodes is undone with one stupid mistake.

Sweat much? Although the show takes place in the blistering heat, Scofield spends all season in a long-sleeve shirt. We assume this was to avoid the time and effort it took to decorate his arms and torso with the fake tattoos that served as the blueprint for his first prison break. That tattoo thing sounded cool a few years ago, but we bet the creators are regretting it now.

International Hit: Prison Break does well on Fox, but the extras reveal that it's also a massive international hit, with more than 140 million Chinese people downloading it each week. Their second favorite pastime? Setting up wacky Olympic events! (Badminton? Trampoline? Really?)

Best Extra: Sadly, it's all typical behind-the-scenes promo stuff. In "Season 3: Orientación," the characters talk about how much the show means to them; "Break Out Episode" is a boring outline of [spoiler alert, we guess] the episode in which they break out; and "Director's Take" and "Between Takes" are a bunch of short snippets that are purely promotional.

Share