Shark Tale

It's prolly too early to tell for sure, but Prison Break may just have jumped back on the proverbial mammal and ridden it to respectability. A quick recap – the first season was terrific, the second was surprisingly fun, and the third was a complete mess. Instead of smart spins on classics like Shawkshank or the Fugitive, a handful of the escapees got sent to some bizarro world version of a Panamanian prison called Sona and they rutted around in the mud trying to cobble together a plot amidst the writer's strike. About as entertaining as it sounds.

But it looks like Michael Scofield and the boys are back on track, as the show has been retrofitted into a "Prison's Seven" of sorts, as the characters you care about are sent on a videogame fetch quest to find the pieces of The Company's little black book in order to take them down. Speaking of characters you care about, Sara Tancredi is back from the dead (and a contract dispute) and Whistler, a con from Season 3 whose motivation, backstory or, you know, point, was never explained took a bullet pretty quickly after the credits rolled. And the entire Sona section of the saga was dismissed by mentioning that "it burned to the ground" during a phone call. Works for me.

Now, let me be clear about some stuff – the show strains credibility constantly... and that's being kind. The Feds turning to "Scofield's Seven" as their last best hope is (phrased kindly) unlikley. Watching T-Bag trek his way across the border, turning to cannibalism in the process, was a bit bizarre. The shadowy Company's goals are, well, absent, aside from "being evil." All that said, they've culled the cast to the main players and seem to be showing the ingenuity that made the show a hit in the first place. I'm in.