It’s that time of year again: for some people, Labor Day means the onset of school; for others, it signals an onslaught of preseason football; for the rest of us, though, the end of summer marks the beginning of a new TV season. Fox got a head start on the other networks this year by debuting its first new show, Prison Break, on Monday, a full week before the Labor Day starting gun was to go off. The big surprise about the show, though, isn’t that it premiered early; it’s that it doesn’t totally suck.
The Formula:
Prison Break = Oz + The Shawshank Redemption + (24 - the clock).
The producers of Prison Break seem to have a firm grasp on the fundamental rule of television: it’s not about whether your show is good or bad; it’s about keeping the audience coming back for more. To that end, they’ve spared no expense to provide as much pure plot as possible: in addition to the main story — pretty boy Michael gets himself thrown into prison with an elaborate plan to break himself and his brother out — there are buckets of other threads to follow: prison politics, once-and-future romances, government conspiracies and mob bosses weave themselves around Michael, constantly complicating his not-so-simple plans and leaving you wondering how they’ll all tie together.
The flipside to the dense, slowly developing plot are the characters, who fall into fairly predictable types: the earnest lawyer-cum-girlfriend on the outside, looking for the truth that’s out there; the teddy bear of a bunkmate who just wants to get back to his girlfriend; the corrupt warden and even more corrupt guards. Thankfully, Michael has a little more potential for development, not only because he’s the main character, but because he’s so insufferably smug about his grand schemes that you just know he’s due to be taken down a peg or two while in the joint.
Ironically, the best thing about Prison Break may be the fact that it only got a 13-episode order. For most shows, this would signify a lack of confidence on the network’s part, but in this case, it suggests that they have a plan for how things are going to unfold (you don’t build an entire episode around having Michael retrieve a specific size of screw unless you plan on having him do something very specific with it later — at least, I hope not) and that they don’t plan on dragging the action out over 22 episodes like so many other shows. At any rate, I’m not yet convinced that it’s Season Pass material, but it’s a promising start to the season.