'Prison Break's Great Character Assassinations

In television, everything has a shelf life. Prison Break appeared to be dangerously nearing its expiry date during the insipid third season. It was spared the axe in the hope that its quality could be restored to its early glory days, but despite a cast reshuffle and new mission, interest is still on the wane. Cult Spy looks at the increasing ineffectiveness of the characters on the show.

There's little doubt that the first two seasons of the jailbreak drama were consistently gripping and great, as we marvelled at Michael Scofield's cunning plans and the fractious relationships between the dastardly convicts. The constraints of the show's title and format compelled Prison Break's creative forces to place several characters behind bars in Sona Prison last year, but this paled in comparison to the thrilling Fox River days. A procession of dire episodes ensued, with only the fluctuating state of Scofield's sweat patch providing any entertainment.

A massive problem for the show is the comparative redundancy of Michael Scofield as a character these days. He relied on his body art to provide an intricately-plotted escape route from Fox River prison, and was buoyed by the injustice of his brother's imprisonment. Nowadays, that spark and ingenuity appears to have been lost and he says or does very little of interest. Like the mighty Samson losing his strength once his hair was shorn, it appears that the removal of his upper body tattoo has drained Scofield of his powers too.

Of course, the team dynamic of 'Scofield's Dirty Half Dozen' means that the workload is shared and individual characters are suffering due to some poor writing. Lincoln Burrows can barely do more than grunt or glare, Sucre is a mere shell dreaming of Marie Cruz and Bellick's interesting domestic background with his mother has been totally forgotten about in favour of, well, nothingness. As for new recruit Roland, he just sits there waiting for cards to download. He's probably so bored with the repetitive nature of the Scylla card-retrieval plots that he's on MSN Messenger or Skype all day. It's hard to blame him.

Even the more interesting and reliable supporting characters appear to have been placed in some kind of stasis for the opening episodes of the current season. Alexander Mahone, played brilliantly by William Fichtner, is eminently watchable but has spent far too long brooding in isolation over the murder of his son, just like he was wasted in the third season in cold turkey mode. He needs to return to his skilful, sleuthing old self and dispose of Wyatt - the laughably bumbling Company hitman who is a very poor replacement for the wonderful Agent Kellerman.

How long has T-Bag spent trying to decipher Whistler's bird book? It appears he'll feature in a couple of scenes every episode doing just that, as if reminding viewers that he's still knocking around. T-Bag is a fascinating character for mainstream television - a murderous, raping paedophile who often provides comic relief and a certain sinister appeal. He just needs to be more involved, as does the callous Gretchen. Why keep such a great figure locked up in a cell for so long when the series is crying out for such a sexy, ruthlessly ball-busting figure?

One character who perhaps should have been kept hidden away is Dr. Sara Tancredi. After her Se7en-style beheading last season - a desperate move to revive flagging viewer interest through shock tactics - many cited her absence as the reason for the show's sudden failings. Scofield needs a love interest, a motivation they claimed. In reality, he needed some interesting plots, dialogue and an anti-perspirant.

Sara's return has done neither the characters nor show any favours. Remember the jaw-dropping slaying of the original female lead Veronica Donovan at the beginning of the second season? That was very effective and not signposted at all. Sara's contrived revival - apparently Lincoln didn't look at the disembodied head properly - simply means that any future shock twists will have their impact lessened because we won't trust what we're being shown. How do we know that the bullet that went into Whistler's head didn't go round inside his cranium like a pinball machine and still not kill him? He might have merely 'played dead'.

Prison Break has always been a show that's stretched credulity, and often in fun and engrossing ways, but Tancredi's comeback took the proverbial biscuit. In the grand scheme of things, what purpose has she served since her return apart from allowing Wentworth Miller the chance to emote and pucker up? Well, it allowed the writers to kill off the inconsequential character of Bruce Bennett , the man who tried to keep Sara's existence a secret from Wyatt. Even then, how drawn out was his torture and death for such an inconsequential and peripheral character?

Crucially, the pacing of these story arcs highlights just how poorly Prison Break is using the structure of the episodic season format. A major lack of incident and increasingly repetitive card-cloning plots governed several episodes following the fourth season premiere. The writers appear to be building up to certain event episodes, like the mid-season and season finales, and padding out the episodes in between. This was the case last year, when the explosive end to the third season, featuring the Sona breakout, wasn't sufficient enough to forgive the earlier meandering.

The characters, to a large extent, are reliant on their predicaments to generate interest and have suffered as a result. The most recent instalment of Prison Break, featuring a racetrack heist and Mahone's arrest and escape, did function as a reminder of how good the show can be when the characters have a clear and defined purpose within an episode. It also brought together T-Bag and Gretchen, so let's hope the pair prove a dynamite combination and are given more screen time. Mahone also appears to be closing in on Wyatt, so fingers crossed that the revenge narrative will have a pay-off very soon. Otherwise, given tumbling ratings, the show might not be on air long enough to see a resolution.

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