Prison Break Recap: “Rendezvous”

Soooo?  Did I oversell last night’s Prison Break or did you guys love it as much as I did? From the emails I received last night, it seems that this ep was a big hit with a lot of you.

Since Michelle’s Prison Break recap last week was such a hit, she’s going to take over recapping duties for awhile.  Let’s face it…these recappers are better at it than I am anyway.

Title: Rendezvous
Original Airdate: 10/6/2006
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have it all. Car chase? Check. Conspiracy theory? Check. Insinuation of emotion between Michael and Sara? Check. Disgusting bathroom scene with T-Bag? Check. This episode delivers it all. And then some.

Open to “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves blasting inside the house where we last saw T-Bag, Bellick, and Roy. Is the show doing an about face and taking on a lighter tone, what with the bouncy, happy music? Nope. Apparently, it’s the deranged prison guard take on Chinese water torture, as the men are using repeated loud playing of the song to get T-Bag to tell them where the money is (I kinda like that song…but I would have given up the money once they started plucking at the stitches in my rotting partially-attached hand). The song’s torture is thus far ineffective, though, so the men are beating T-Bag with a metal meat mallet (would I be a bad person here if I admitted if I felt a little bad for T-Bag here? Cuz I do. God help me, I know he’s a murdering pedophile, but I felt bad for him). But T-Bag still has that storage locker key in his sock, so he still has a bargaining chip if he wants to avoid further damage to his bloodied body.

Word comes through the FBI office that Lincoln has been nabbed by the cops; cheering erupts. But where is Mahone to share in the happy news? Perhaps digging a new garden somewhere. Pansies are nice this time of year.

Kellerman talks again to Mr. Kim (the President’s creepy Asian go-to bad guy) and is told to leave no one alive to answer any questions. This includes Lincoln and LJ. Kellerman hops to it.

The cop car in which Linc and LJ are being transported is repeatedly rear-ended by a fast-moving van. Eventually, both vehicles veer off the road, and Lincoln and LJ escape. Alas, the fugitives are re-fugitiveized (yep, I made up that word) shortly when the people from the van catch up to them. Linc elbows the woman (remember, he’s the wild and not-so-chivalrous one) hard, but she tells him to lighten up and trust them, because they work for his dad. They all used to work for “The Company.” The plot thickens. Anyway, they take Linc and his son to a “safe” place, where they’re told to wait for Lincoln’s dad, whose plane lands in an hour.

Oh, yeah – Mahone tells Kellerman he’s at the site of the rendezvous between Michael and Sara. It’s very scenic. Very pretty. Mahone is obviously not enjoying it. He’s just not a smell-the-roses kind of guy.

Sara is at a motel, where she’s stepped out of the shower (no, Michael’s not in there with her). Someone from the motel (this doesn’t seem like the kind of place that has a concierge on staff, so I figure it’s the teenager who works the front desk for minimum wage) shoves a fax under her door. ONE HOUR. 16781 BUTTERFIELD ROAD. Yeah, Michael!

Sucre is in Nebraska. His car breaks down, and he uses a pay phone. To call a garage? No. To call Maricruz’s sister, who tells los lonely boy that she and Maricruz are taking Maricruz’s “honeymoon” to Mexico, sans the groom. Sucre leaves word for Maricruz to call him at that very pay phone in two hours. Our lovesick man is not giving up. Nor is he playing smart.

Sara is at the new meeting place, which looks desolate and deserted. (Implausibility Quotient: 8. Why is she not being followed – closely – by Kellerman or Mahone or any number of the bad guys currently looking for her?). Just when all hope seems lost, Michael pulls up. With a simple, “Hello, Sara,” from his lanky, beautiful self, we’re back right where we left off with them, wanting them to be together, wondering how she can ever trust him, wanting to lick his wounds and tell him it will all be all right…but I’m getting sidetracked. He tells her that none of this will be easy for her, and she wants to know the details of his plan to make all of this right. When he tells her of his plan to meet Linc and LJ down in Panama, her face is a look of sadness and desperation and nausea and amusement all rolled into one. She thought he had a REAL plan to make everything right, but his plan entails her running to Panama with two of the most wanted men in the country? He apologizes to her again. And again. Sometimes words aren’t enough. Michael tells Sara that he doesn’t want her to be alone in all of this. She steps closer to him and says, “I don’t want to be alone.” And just as they’re close and you’re sure something else will transpire…MAHONE RACES UP IN HIS CAR AND MICHAEL AND SARA HAVE TO JUMP INTO HIS CAR AND SPEED AWAY. Damn you, Mahone! Michael and Sara barely escape after a frantic car chase, and they crash into some sort of dairy barn/farm equipment, with Mahone still in hot pursuit.

At the house, T-Bag scuffles with the prison guards and the key falls out of his sock. The guards realize that this is literally the key to the money, so T-Bag swallows it (this guy can swallow anything, I’m tellin’ you. Even my son, who eats all sorts of weird stuff, has never swallowed a key, knock on wood, and yet I’ve seen this guy eat two). What transpires is something that, unfortunately, is too disturbing for me to make up: the men strap T-Bag onto a colander-lined toilet and wait for nature to take his course. Roy returns from the store with prune juice, smokes, dip, and “a bag of sliders,” They shove a wad of chew into his mouth, duct-tape him to the can (a million uses, that duct tape) and wait. This scene baffles me and leaves my jaw dangling. Is chewing tobacco a laxative? Are the “sliders” suppositories? Is this really happening on my television? I try not to think too hard about it, and before you know it, T-Bag does his business and the key emerges. Roy is assigned the task (“unpleasant” would be a huge understatement) of retrieving the key from the mess left in the colander. Key rinsed off, the mean realize it’s to a storage locker, so they cuff T-Bag to the radiator and call 911 before they leave to find it. T-Bag’s last bargaining chip is, literally, in the crapper.

Meanwhile, back at the car crash site, a tense game of cat-and-mouse involving hallways, mazes and pipes is being played between Mahone and the Michael/Sara Team inside the industrial barn. Sara runs from the building toward the car, and, no keys to be found, hotwires it (IQ: 10. What’s this all about? How does Sara Tancredi know how to hotwire a car? Is this knowledge left over from her days as a junkie?). Michael comes to a dead end inside the building, sees a propane crank, and turns on the gas. Smart thinking. If Mahone fires his gun, he will literally explode. When Mahone catches up, Michael manages to lock him in a cage in the dead end. When Mahone threatens to shoot, Michael invites him to smell the gas. Michael tells Mahone that he (Mahone) is no longer a good guy, that he is a bad guy chasing an innocent man, Lincoln. Mahone wants to hear none of it and promises Michael he will eventually find him anywhere – even in Panama – because he has to. How does he know about Panama? Who knows? But Michael knows that he knows, so will the plan change now? Still, Michael keeps his feathers unruffled in front of Mahone.

“I’m not the one in the cage,” he tells Mahone before he gets in the car with Sara, who reminds him to put on his seatbelt. I am not making that up. She loves him.

BIG TWIST: Bellick and Roy find T-Bag’s big bag o’bills at the bus station, but before he can even enjoy it, Bellick is beat by Roy with…a meat mallet (what goes around comes around…). Bellick falls to the ground (IQ: 8. Right out in the open, you can just beat a man to the ground and no one intervenes? Are they in Jersey?). “Next time, you pick through the crap,” Roy calls back to Bellick as he takes off with the cash. When are these guys gonna learn that you can’t trust another thief? Or child molester? Or murderer?

Sucre leaves a message for Maricruz to meet him at his grandmother’s, just outside of Mexico City, in two weeks. I’m betting not.

Back in their motel hideout, we see a familiar scene as Sara is tending to a wound that Michael sustained in his escape from Mahone. She calls him out on not being a diabetic. She also asks him if he likes the adrenaline rush of their situation – breaking out of prison, being on the run, evading the police. She equates it with chasing a high. He says he never thought of it that way. His hand brushes under her arm briefly, a la a famous scene between them in the infirmary, and he heads for the shower (alone). He tells her he’s glad she came. This, alas, is the closest we’ll see them come to being together for now, though. When Michael emerges from the shower, Sara is gone, and her note reads, “This time I know better. I’m sorry.”

Linc introduces LJ to his grandfather for the first time. As they discuss options, Aldo Burroughs tells his son he doesn’t have to run to Panama, that they have other options right here. ANOTHER BIG TWIST: one of the guys “working” for Lincoln’s dad is actually working for Mr. Kim, the creepy Asian guy who works for the President. He gives word to kill Lincoln. Now.

Sara is in her car, ready to drive away from the motel and from Michael. She’s having second thoughts, though, and starts to get out of the car to head back inside. But as soon as she opens her car door, she’s greeted by Kellerman, who’s pointing a gun at her. So much for the cheery gay best friend who bakes her blueberry pie.

Michelle is the frazzled mother of two very young kids.  In lieu of taking a shower every day, she writes TV recaps for GMMR to keep the remaining shred of her sanity intact.  This also helps her justify her insanely intense TV-watching habit, which was spawned in her early childhood because she was allowed to watch an unlimited number of”Sesame Street” episodes when she herself was a preschooler.