'Prison Break': Unaccustomed nobility = dead meat

Prison Break ups the body count this week with a couple of variations on watery graves. Let's just say that Los Angelinos should stick to bottled water for a while, ok?

Now THIS spoiler knows how to be menacing!

The Breakouts are on their way to Scylla, even though they don't have The General's card yet. The map from the bird book indicates they can travel under Gate to Scylla's hidey-hole, with just one unspecified obstacle in the way. That obstacle? One of the main water conduit pipes supplying the city of LA. They can't go over it -- too close to the surface and they'd be discovered -- and, dude to the granite bedrock under the building foundation, they can't go under it, either. That just leaves through it. But how?

Michael sends Linc and Bellick on a field trip to a random water-processing hub that Homeland Security should really be paying more attention to. See what happens when Don Self and his ilk are busy taking on secret cabals? They leave our infrastructure at risk! Linc and Bellick torch an inoffensive control panel, which shuts down the flow of water through that pipe -- and to thousands of homes -- for about an hour. That gives Michael and Sucre time to cut through the massive conduit, crawl inside it, cut through the opposite wall, and install another pipe through those holes to make a tunnel through the onrushing water. At least, that's the theory...

Michael is felled by one of his attacks -- he's not up to the physical demands of the task. Sucre takes over, and they managed to get the holes cut and the tunnel-pipe in position by the time Linc and Bellick get back. Small problem -- the tunnel-pipe is heavy and unwieldy, so two of them will have to go into conduit, position the pipe from the inside, them shimmy out the other side and pull it through. Oh, and the water will come back on at any minute.

Things go wrong when the beam used to brace the tunnel-pipe breaks, and they can't position it from either side. They'll have to abandon the plan -- and flood several basements, thus exposing their position. Suddenly, Bellick gets a touch of hero-itis -- I want to sacrifice myself for the greater good! You have a son to raise, Linc -- let me give me life for my comrades! Bellick stays inside the conduit, helps position the pipe, and then stands there as the water comes back on. He's crushed, drowned, battered and who knows what else. That's ok -- he was a completely different character in this episode anyway. It's like we lost someone we didn't even know.

Meanwhile, Sarah, Mahone and Self are hanging with the Death Fairy, who refuses to cooperate despite (1) being held captive, and (2) Linc using him as a punching bag. I'm sorry, but Linc's fists are much less intimidating that Mahone's unhinged stare. After being sunk in thought, Mahone stalks toward the Death Fairy, and only stops when Self reminds him they need him for something. When the time comes, you can have him, Self says. Damn straight, Mahone replies.

Sarah tries to reason with the Death Fairy -- Tell The General we're dead and we can to make sure you end up arrested in a nice place. The Death Fairy tries his brand of psychology on her - I know people! Arrangements can be made!  Sarah wisely chooses not to trust anyone who flagrantly breaks out the passive voice, and besides, she was part of a trap -- Self was recording their conversation, and he slices and dices it to make The Death Fairy seem to say that the Breakouts are dead. Then he plays that conversation for The General, who, fortunately, declines to ask any follow-up questions.

Now The Death Fairy isn't needed, so they let Mahone have him. Mahone shoves needles under the Death Fairy's nails, shocks him back to sentience when his body starts shutting down, and tortures the crap out of him. Mahone forces the Death Fairy to call his ex-wife and apologize, then marches him out to the waterfront with a cinderblock cuffed to his hands. The Death Fairy tries the "We're the same!" speech, but Mahone just shoves him in the water. Goodbye, Death Fairy! I hope you took some lessons in menace before you glubbed your last!

T-Bag is in a tizzy because his boss pledges to figure out why Andrew, the toadying co-worker Gretchen killed, "quit" without warning. A detective comes in, and things doing look good- - first, there's all the noise the Breakouts are making bashing away at giant water pipes, and then, there's the talk that T-Bag and Andrew didn't get along. Fortunately, T-Bag gets a brainstorm -- he has TrishAnne bring up his sales dicey sales records and attributes them to Andrew. That's all the incentive needed to send the detective on his way. Crisis averted.

Gretchen wants to be her own crisis -- she dresses up pretty, then crashes The General's office with a gun. The General dismisses all of his lackeys, then talks Gretchen down -- I knew you'd come home! You were always my girl! Then they make out. Oh, Gretchen! You can do so much better!

Gretchen postures a bit about how she could now go work for anyone in the Evil Overlord business, but The General tells her he wants her at his side as he causes financial turmoil and then remakes the U.S. in his image. Gretchen seems to buy it. Gretchen! But when The General says that the Breakouts are dead, she says nothing to contradict him. Is that because she doesn't know, or because she's working her own angle? I hold out hope for the latter.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• How many of you knew Bellick would buy it the minute he started seeming human? There was no transition between Bellick the craven windbag and Bellick the hero -- he just spontaneously morphed into someone who would give his life for his fellows. I don't buy it.
• Mahone is one seriously scary mofo. His dead-eyed stare into the Death Fairy's cage was orders of magnitude more frightening than any of the Death Fairy's long, drawn-out speeches of scenes of torture.
• Do you have any idea how hard it is to type when you're desperately trying to curl up your fingers and protect your hands? Gah! I'll be wearing steel gloves for the next several weeks. I'll send the bill for the keyboards I destroy to the Prison Break offices.
• The General sure knows how to sweet talk a girl: "When I first met you, you were a 20 year old girl who'd just been dumped by the Wheeling police academy for failing her psych evaluation," he tells Gretchen. "Where those good old West Virginia boys could only see an emotional disconnect with traces of sociopathic tendencies I saw a Machiavellian streak that would make failure an impossibility." You ha d her a "sociopathic tendencies."
• The General asks about Gretchen's daughter. Does that mean he's the father?
• Sucre made the most miraculous recovery from a gunshot wound every recorded. He went from bleeding like a stuck pig to swinging a sledgehammer with next to no recovery time. Sarah must be a really good doctor!
• Speaking of doctoring - Michael loses hand-eye coordination, starts seeing double, and is felled by a monster headache. That's not good. Even worse? He still goes into the pipe to swing a sledgehammer alongside Sucre. If I were Sucre, I wouldn't want a guy who couldn't see straight to be waving around a huge heavy object near me.
• T-Bag freaks out to Gretchen about he investigation into Andrew, then tries to bluster -- if I go down for murder, then "We're going together like traffic and weather. " Hee!
• At one point during the interview between T-Bag and the detective, Linc and Bellick come ambling out of his closet. Bellick thinks fast (another heretofore unheralded character trait) and tells T-bag they need more shelf bracket joints. No one seems to think this is weird.
• The General wants Scylla out of L.A. by the end of the day tomorrow. Gretchen heard him say that. Now -- will she tell the others, or will she throw her lot in with the man who had her tortured?
• That remixing he conversation trick? I remember it from the movie Sneakers, but I'm sure it's been done since the dawn of recorded media.

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