Prison Break — Season 1
One hell of a drug
I don’t usually rewatch TV shows. Especially in this golden generation of television we’re in where there’s infinitely more episodes than one human being can possibly (or should) consume, it seems kind of dumb to rewatch shows.
That being said, I rewatched the entire season one of prison break in less than a week.
I first watched prison break (all four seasons) almost 10 years ago now. Come to think of it, this is probably the first tv show that I really watched in its entirety.
So there I was sitting on a 40 year old crooked sofa with my feet hanging on the bed, browsing Netflix as one would (country is still in Fool Lockdown mode) when the algorithm had Prison Break in my “Top Picks” section. I thought why not just rewatch the pilot episode it’ll be fun, for old time’s sake. Just one episode. No harm no foul. Next thing I knew four episodes had flown by. This train ain’t stopping anytime soon.
The premise of the show is quite straightforward — Lincoln was sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit and Scofield formulates a plan to break his brother (and himself) out of prison. Sweet!
Prison Break Season 1 is easily the best single season of television I have ever seen. The pacing is excellent, I never felt bored throughout which is amazing considering the fact that the season is quite long — 22 episodes and each episode has a runtime of more than 40 minutes!
Scripwriters totally made the most out of that afromentioned long runtime; characters, major and minor alike, were properly fleshed. You feel personally and emotionally invested in each and every one of their stories and are then left curious to discover how they end up. Some of the prisoners are deservedly in there of course (lookin’ at ya T-Bag 🤣) but others, like Sucre and C-Note, were frankly a victim of circumstance.
T-Bag is my favourite, the actor would make an amazing Joker. He is THAT good. Also on the villain side, Brad Bellick is the guy you want to hate, but stick around long enough and you’ll find that that won’t necessarily be the case😉
The major hook in this season, like all great tv shows, is the unpredictability. You get the sense that no character is safe, plot armour doesn’t exist around here. It is sort of like watching Game of Thrones (the first 4 seasons anyway) or a live sport where the result is hanging in the balance, a feeling of anything could happen. Oh that important character that you love? Surely he’s too important right? Dead.
Great acting throughout, engaging plotline, a suspenseful thriller that will inevitably make you let the “Next Episode” button run through and it’ll be a while before you’re left wondering where has the time gone.
An easy A+
