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- What Is Prison Break About?
- What Happens in Prison Break Season 5?
- How Prison Break’s Season 5 Overstays Its Welcome
As a longtime fan of Prison Break, I must say that the decision to extend the series with Season 5 was nothing short of a disservice to both the original creators and the dedicated fans who had invested countless hours into following the lives of Michael Scofield and his fellow prisoners.
Spoiler Alert: Major spoilers for Prison Break to follow After Prison Break‘s fourth season concluded with the shocking death of series lead Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), fans never expected the show to return nine years later. When the hit crime drama did return in 2017 for Season 5, fans were left scratching their heads when a much shorter season ignored Michael’s death, one of many ridiculously far-fetched stories and subplots that undermined the dramatic impact of the four seasons before it. As such, most agree that Prison Break overstayed its welcome and lasted one season too long.
It’s disappointing to note that the supposed fatal illness of Michael, as portrayed in the original series, was largely disregarded in the 2009 movie spin-off Prison Break: The Final Break. Instead, his death was explained away in a way that contradicted the emotional intensity and dramatic consistency of the four seasons that preceded it. While some fans have defended the fifth and final season of Prision Break, most seem to agree that the show should have ended with Season 4 and not been revived after a decade.
What Is Prison Break About?
Prison Break” is an engaging American television series produced by Paul Scheuring for Fox. Debuted in 2004, this crime drama revolves around Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller), a clever structural engineer who devises a plan to exonerate his brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell). Convicted falsely for murder, Lincoln is imprisoned. To set him free, Michael pretends to be a criminal, gets himself arrested for robbery, and orchestrates his escape from within the Fox River State Penitentiary.
In the second season of the hit crime thriller series, Michael and Lincoln continue their escape from prison after initially breaking out in the first season. Critics praised the show for its engaging plot, well-developed characters, sharp direction, and strong performances. However, by repeating the same escape scenarios as seen in Season 1, the storyline became cyclical and began to feel repetitive and tired, losing some of its initial appeal.
The original broadcast of Prison Break concluded with Season 4 in the year 2008, fast-forwarding to depict Michael’s surprising demise. Yet, the spin-off series titled The Final Break, which premiered in 2009, altered this ending by suggesting that Michael sacrificed himself to save his brother and a long-time doctor at Fox River Penitentiary, Sara Tancredi (portrayed by Sarah Wayne Callies), by deliberately electrocuting himself for a period to trigger a short circuit.
Just as Michael’s death in reverse felt contrived, Sara’s decapitation in Season 3 seemed to be rewritten inexplicably when she returned in Seasons 4 and The Final Break. No compelling reason was given for her sudden resurrection. Instead, the storyline provided an explanation that someone else had been beheaded, which only added to the show’s lack of authenticity. The retcons and resurrections beyond death suggest that Prison Break Season 5 might have been superfluous.
What Happens in Prison Break Season 5?
After the 24-episode Season 4 of Prison Break ended, a much abridged nine-episode Season 5 came about almost a decade later in 2017. The delay of nearly a decade to bring back the series was an unfortunate decision by the showrunners, leading up to story changes that reworked four seasons of highly praised narrative. As a devoted fan, I felt the wait and the alterations fell short of maintaining the original’s captivating essence.
In “The Final Break”, it was revealed that Michael feigned his own demise to aid Sara’s escape, thus making his supposed death from terminal brain cancer and heroic electrocution irrelevant.
Reworking Michael’s fate to fit an unnecessary Season 5 dilutes the dramatic impact of the initial four seasons in Prison Break. If the series had ended with Season 4 as initially intended, the storyline in “The Final Break” would have felt more integrated within the broader Prison Break narrative and provided a more convincing sense of conclusion.
In the film, Michael explains his reason for taking his own life – a recurrence of brain cancer – which he felt allowed Lincoln and Sara to evade prison. Yet, Season 5 neglects this narrative thread entirely, infuriating fans by introducing an implausible rewrite (retcon) that contradicted logic and potentially undermined the captivating 81 episodes (approximately 60 hours) of compelling storytelling that came before it.
How Prison Break’s Season 5 Overstays Its Welcome
It was evident that the TV series “Prison Break” was already heading towards its end before Season 5 was made. After Season 4, Kevin Reilly, a former executive producer at Fox, told E! Online that the show had become too predictable with its recurring prison escape plots and had run its course, effectively reaching a dead-end.
After the performance, there comes a time when creatively, you feel that every story worth telling has been explored, leaving you with a desire to conclude the series on a powerful note.
Although the show was said to have ended, it received a second opportunity when a Season 5 revival was declared six years later. However, when this revival premiered in 2017, it became clear that the show had lost its charm. Over and over, plots revolving around Michael helping Linc escape from prison didn’t elevate the dramatic tension of the series.
Instead of developing more extreme and implausible theories to bring the main characters together for another jailbreak, the creators concocted these ideas during the abbreviated season. In other words, coming back nine years later with only nine episodes (compared to 24 in Season 4) left viewers feeling like they received less value.
Instead of creating new characters and a novel twist, the writers resorted to extreme tactics to bring back Michael, Lincoln, Sara, T-Bag (Robert Knepper), Sucre (Amaury Nolasco), C-Note (Rockmond Dunbar) and others for another predictable prison break and investigative adventure. For example, the forced storyline about Michael accepting a government job to rectify his past errors seemed unnecessary. But nothing was more frustrating than damaging the show’s reputation by reversing Michael’s death, only to offer nine more uninspiring, repetitive episodes.
Despite running a season longer than ideal, Prison Break has experienced a resurgence in popularity on Netflix. Although no Season 6 has been confirmed, a revival of Prison Break is in development by Hulu, with Mayans M.C.’s Elgin James at the helm. However, Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows may not reappear in the Hulu Prison Break reboot. Instead, fresh characters will inhabit the same world as the original series. Prison Break can now be streamed on both Hulu and Netflix.
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2024-09-21 22:01