Hi, My Name Is Not Lance, And I Am Not An Addict

I didn't think that I could care less about the main characters of a television show as the seasons progressed, but here I am. You know when you meet someone for the first time and they seem really interesting? They wow you with their charm and intelligence, and take you places you never knew existed before? You look forward to seeing them everyday, and plan the weekend around them until weeks later you found out that it was all an act? You find out later that this eloquent and beautiful person has really been an Ed Hardy-wearing alcoholic the whole time. You feel cheated, and break up with this lackluster person, right? Well that's kind of how I felt after I watched the last episode of Season 2.

Michael and Lincoln have successfully escaped from prison and are now on the run; everyone else has gone their separate ways. Now that the two of them are outside the confining walls of Fox River, their logic has seemed to shatter along with their shackles.

Lincoln wants to save his son in a courthouse filled with cops, Michael wants to go to city county buildings to get a map, and similar idiotic ideas dot the ongoing run from the authorities. They get so close to getting caught at least three times each episode, and it just gets ridiculous. No one on this green earth is that lucky. But that's television, and that's suspense.

The Warden is relieved of his duties in the manhunt as our Fox River Boys go their separate ways. Michael and Lincoln aim for Panama, Sucre goes to Vegas to stop Maricruz's wedding to his cousin, Vanilla Ice goes to a college town to blend in, and Abruzzi and C-Note go back to their families. T-Bag puts his hand in a cooler and forces a veterinarian to sew it back on. He kills the good doctor in a very Dexter-like fashion, tying the man to an examination table and injecting him with a hypodermic needle. He even wears a thermal while doing it. Intentional nod to the amazing Showtime series? I sure hope so. Either way, T-Bag does well to increase his body count as he travels across the country.

The Warden, Sara, and Bellick are all under investigation after the escape of the Fox River Eight. Sara apparently survived her overdose at the end of last season even though she was pretty blue in color when we last saw her. She is in the hospital awaiting parole and all of that craziness. The Warden resigns after Bellick is fired, and he stays low for most of the season. Bellick goes home to his mother's house and begins to stick a shotgun in his mouth. He almost goes throught with it until he hears about the $100,000 reward for the Fox River 8. He teams up with old C.O. Geary, and they follow our boys around the country as they try to disappear.

Federal Agent Alexander Mahone is played by my most favorite and frighteningly handsome William Fichtner. Mahone is leading the investigation against Michael and friends, and his weaknesses and neuroses are soon revealed to the viewer. He pops pills he hides in a pen, kicks tables over when he's angry, and has a few skeletons of his own in his closet. His obsession with Michael and his comparable intelligence make for a very close game of cat and mouse.

He meets with Paul Kellerman (our dark government agent from Season 1 that killed his partner), and the two of them both take orders from a "well-dressed Asian man" named Kim. Kellerman disguises himself as an addict in Sara's Narcotics Anonymous group and gives himself the alias of Lance. He claims to love crack, baking, and having sex with men. He pretends to be gay to earn Sara's trust, and the two of them develop a cute fake friendship over storebought blueberry pie.

Exhibit A:

Weird seeing him like that, isn't it?

Anywho, he does recon on Sara while Sara's father learns a little too much about Kellerman's boss. He sees him at his daughter's house eating pie, and then later sees him at the courthouse talking to Kim. He actually does the right thing and calls his daughter to warn her that Lance is not who he says he is. He goes on to say that Sara was right about everything and..... Whoops. She hangs up because Lance shows up at the grocery and freaks her out. Sara leaves immediately and tries to talk to her dad in person only to find out that he has hung himself. Or has he? Sarah finds a key on his person and keeps it for herself, figuring it has some sort of importance. She tries to go home and think things over, but her apartment is full of drugs and a government agent. She escapes somehow and is on the run from there on out. Damn. Now we are all on the run.

Abruzzi goes back to the Mafia, and, consumed with revenge, hunts down Fibonacci. He kisses his family and holds onto a golden crucifix that supposedly saved his soul in the first season. A friend tells him that Fibonacci is in the Globe Motel, and Abruzzi goes into the empty room with his gun at the ready. The sad thing is, if he had only held onto that cross and stayed with his family, his fate would be a lot brighter. The man that told him where Fibonacci was was actually an informant for the police, and Mahone shows up with a dozen cop cars outside the motel. Mahone tells Abruzzi to put down his weapon and kneel on the ground.

"I kneel only to God, and I don't see Him here."

He raises his gun to Mahone, and he is riddled with bullets, his fingers grasping onto the crucifix until the life flows out of them. Beautiful cinematography, and such a tragic death. I think that Abruzzi really wanted to do the right thing, but just had to get that one thing out of the way before he started on his clean slate. It just goes to show that you have to let things go. Some things aren't worth it, and you should never use the Lord Jesus Christ as a crutch, or as an excuse. Oh yeah, and don't piss off Alex Mahone.

Meanwhile, everyone is after the money D.B. Cooper buried in Utah back in the 70's. Our boys (minus Abruzzi) all team up again in Utah and find that the farm Cooper buried the cash under is now a neighborhood. They convince an old cougar that they are an electric company, and begin to dig underneath her garage for the five million dollars that's supposed to be there.

Vanilla Ice is forced to get the supplies needed for their operation, but gets caught after a gas attendant recognizes him and calls the cops. Damned cops. Mahone chases him and brings him into the station for interrogation. He asks Vanilla Ice if he was Catholic. Catholic, Mahone? Did you not look at his file and see that his real name is David Apolskis? Clearly this kid is not Catholic.

He sits down and ties in the joys of confession into the Catholic argument. He tells him a confession of his own about an inmate he had chased a long time ago. He tells him how good it feels to confess things, but doesn't get a word out of David. He gets angry again and kicks the table (maybe, I can't remember), but convinces David to wear a wire and take him to the house they are digging at.

They show David walking up to a house and our boys finding the five million underneath the garage. It's suspenseful as he walks up the drive, and knocks on the door. He smiles as the girl he drove to Utah with answers the door, and tells her his real name as Mahone and friends run up to handcuff him. He tells he he's going to write to her in prison, and that he likes her, and he redeems himself in the eyes of the viewer. What a stand-up guy.

Too bad Mahone doesn't play by the rules.

Whoops. Mahone pulls over to the side of the road and tells David that his Catholic confession earlier was a lie. He grabs him by the neck and shows him where he put the bullet in his old escapee. He tells him he is sorry and that it isn't personal before shooting him several times.

What a hot fucking mess.

R.I.P. David Apolskis, you were a good person, and all you ever did was steal a baseball card. :(

Meanwhile, Lincoln hears that his son LJ is being set free and all charges are being dropped. Lincoln leaves his brother and friends to dig up the money, strategically picks up his son without being aprehended by agents, and has a touchingly pointless road trip with his offspring. The two of them get aprehended by who they think is the feds, but turns out to be his father and the antithesis of "The Company". His father's crew takes him and LJ to a safe house, they almost get killed by one of Kim's rats. They escape after meeting up with Michael, but his dad gets shot in the process and dies in Michael's arms. I felt bad only because he was going to lead them to Stedman and get the evidence that would set Lincoln free. And to be quite honest, his dad was kind of an asshole.

Before Michael meets up with his brother and father, however, he is still with the boys in Utah digging up the money. They get all of it gathered up when Sucre snaps and decides to rob all of them and run away with the money. Damn.

Of course it is all a scheme of Michael's, and the two friends meet up in the woods after the rest of the boys went their separate ways. The downside? T-Bag switched the backbacks and gave Sucre the one filled with National Geographic magazines. Whoops. Now t-bag is on the loose with 5 million dollars, and Michael and Sucre decide to split once again to go after their different goals. Sucre goes to Ixtapa, Mexico, and Michael goes to find Lincoln and his dad as mentioned before.

T-Bag looks up his ex, runs into Bellick and Geary only to get tortured out of the money he stole, and ends up biting his hand off again. He finds his ex through a booty call with a postwoman, and forces her and her children to stay with him and play house. He channels Misery by boarding up the doors and windows and tying her to the bed while she sleeps. He tells her that he loves her all the while, and makes the three of them pack up and go on a vacation to the old house where he grew up. Finally, we get a substantial T-Bag flashback.

We see a young Theodore with his drunken father touching him inappropriately. He studied the thesaurus in order to impress his father, and it becomes clear how a "redneck" like T-Bag is so eloquent and charming. Theodore tells Susan (his ex) that he in infertile, and is the product of his father's sin. He tells her that with no children of his own, he can start over with her and her family, if only she could love him in return. She says no.

T-bag locks them all up in the basement and cries on a tree stump. Minutes later, you see him on the side of the road in his car crying some more with a cell phone in his hand. Susan and her children are found by the police in the basement. The police said that someone called about a hostage situation, and Susan said that no one knew they were there. Looks like Teddy has a heart, after all.

After Michael leaves Sucre and his family, he runs into Sara, offering her as much protection from the law that he can provide. There are some kissing scenes and whatnot, but she eventually leaves because she compares her life with Michael to a high. And she just got out of rehab or whatever. If I weren't on the run from the entire United States government, I might leave too, but Michael is all she has right now, so that is kind of stupid.

You know what they say, stupid is as stupid does. Sara runs into Paul Kellerman, or Lance, who has a gun pointed to her head. This is where he says my favorite line that sums up the immense amount of deciet in this show.

"Hi, my name is not Lance, and I am not an addict."

He proceeds to torture her to find out what her father told her before he died, but she doesn't break. You can see a bit of his frigility start to weaken in this scene, even though he prepares tarp and a bone saw in the other room as he leaves her to drown. Sara makes her way out of her bonds and escapes from the hotel room Paul was torturing her in. She is on the run again. Dumbass.

In between breaks from Sara and Lincoln, Michael does a little bit of investigating of his own. He poses as a member of the bureau and goes to Mahone's ex-wife's house. He claims to be doing a security clearance for the fake promotion he is getting, and Pam is more than compliant. She tells Michael that Mahone scares her, and gives him evidence that Mahone killed Oscar Shales, the escapee he mentioned before capping Apolskis. She tells him that he kept digging in his back yard and wouldn't let her come back there. Blah blah blah. Michael freaks Mahone out a bunch and Mahone tried to kill him a bunch more.

Lincoln and Michael eventually meet up again and Mahone meets them at the Mexican border. he tries to kill the brothers but is stopped by Border Patrol who catches them and brings them in. They are both set to go straight back to Fox River. Fuck.

Only thank the Lord God above, Mahone is so fucking crazy that he arranges for a road block in a tunnel on their way back to Fox River. He wants them to escape so that Kellerman can assassinate them on Kim's orders. Michael and Lincoln don't see that its a setup for some reason and they go for it. They run through a system of tunnels and Mahone and Kellerman catch up to them. Kellerman goes rogue and shoots Mahone in the arm. He takes them under his wing and gives them all of the secret service know-how tips to survive their traps. Huh, who would have guessed?

Mahone doesn't die, he just gets hurt. he goes crazy over the tricks Kellerman is pulling on him with the brothers, and goes off the radar. Sara meets up with the three of them again and tries to kill Kellerman in the process of escaping. Kind of a bad mood considering he's helping them, but he did try to kill her. Even if her was just "following orders".

Anyways, a bunch of stupid stuff happens and everybody goes to Panama. sara has to go back for her hearing, and everyone is fighting and double crossing each other. Mahone tries to fuck Michael over, but he's Michael Scofield, so Mahone ends up going to Panama Prison. He calls his ex-wife reluctantly with tears in his eyes and tells her "Forget I ever existed." He is then put in handcuffs and taken away. No rest for the wicked, you dirty man.

It's kind of sad to see such a powerful man so vulnerable like this, but it is a long time coming. Michael told him he knew about Shales, Apolskis, and Haywire (who he tricked into killing himself), and that he was on the wrong side. I was waiting for something like this to happen and have the tables of fate turn. A man that unstable can't be in control for very long.

So listen, the last few episodes of this season are all scatterbrained and ridiculous. Mahone is in prison, t-bag is working for the feds but gets locked up with Bellick who once again gets framed for one of Bagwell's murders, Sucre is bleeding to death, and our brothers are leaving on a boat. But the cool thing has nothing to do with the aforesaid plotlines. Not one bit. Who saves the day at the end of this season? Paul "Lance" Kellerman.

Paul goes to find his sister and tells her about all of his cheerful memories of them as children together. He tells her that he has done a lot of bad things, and wants her to remember him the way he was when they were younger. He then dresses himself up in his Army uniform and sets all of his medals out in a hotel room. He sits in his chair and tries to kill himself, but the gun jams. Twice. Not a coincidence there, Paul. He calls his sister again and reminisces on his days in the Army and all of the stuff he did for Caroline (who resigned from the presidency after Michael blackmailed her, by the way). His sister tells him that the gun jammed for a reason, and that maybe he needs to make everything right and do the good thing.

Paul shows up as a surprise witness with documents in hand to prove his whole story at Sara Tancredi's hearing. He clears her, Michael, and Lincoln's names, and is under arrest for everything he admitted to. He goes willingly and takes one for the whole world. He seems to be at peace, and when he is being transported to Fox River, a road block appears and the driver gets out. He knows this story all too well. He looks at the guard in the back seat with him and says that it is an honor in some cultures to smile as you are being executed. He smiles, and the back doors of the van open up.

"What took you so long?" were his last words. And a smile on his face.

R.I.P. Paul Kellerman, you sucked, but then you were okay, and then you were super amazing. Great Jeeoorrrbbb!

Once again I am more tore up about his death than Veronica Donovan's. Oh yeah, she died in the first few episodes after calling 911 in Stedman's house. Stedman also killed himself when confronted by the Scofield Burrows boys, but I didn't really care much.

Anyways, this season had a lot of potential in the beginning, but lost wind towards the end. Fast. Michael and Sara get caught killing Kim at the very end when they are exonerated, and the police just magically show up. Michael takes the blame and is in the same Panama prison that Mahone and Bellick are in. That's the end of the season, Michael in a damned prison, again. Stupid. Kellerman saved it, but I left the season not really wanting to know what happens. Not even about T-Bag, and he's Robert Knepper. I love Robert Knepper. Ugh.

I give this season a B-. There were a lot of good moments, but the ending killed it. Part of me wished I hadn't watched it in marathon form so I had more time to theorize and digest things. I left out so much information on this review, but there is so much going on, it is hard to track and remember everything. Maybe that's why all the characters on this show are such a hot mess. At least on Heroes they leave some characters out to give the viewer's brain a vacation from thei information overload going on in all the different plotlines. But who am I to judge?

Happy Hannukah everyone!