A Stab at the Serious

Come on, raise your hands. You all thought Michael “MacGyver” Scofield was going to blow up Sona with all that alcohol and the rubber bags. You thought you’d see prisoners running around in flaming anguish! Instead, angelic Mr. Scofield fixed the plumbing!

Actually, if Fred Silverman were still alive there would definitely be a Scofield vs. MacGyver movie of the week during the summer off season.

Here’s why tonight’s episode was brilliant. Every time I thought of a joke, the writers fooled me and turned it around on me.

Lincoln to Michael: I’d trade places with you in a second.

Nice sentiment Linc, but that wouldn’t be very effective; you’re the brawn, not the brains in this partnership.

Then Lincoln pulls off his smartest move in the show's history. He anticipates that his blackmailer will know about the book he took from James Whistler’s girlfriend. He even does this as his tormentor makes the exact same joke to Lincoln’s face that I did above. Go to the head of the class, Lincoln Burrows.

Fernando Sucre. What didn’t I want to make fun of him for tonight? By far the most incompetent criminal on the show, it looked like he was doomed to once again let his all-consuming love for Maricruz overwhelm his tiny little lovable brain.

The following are the verbal Sucre smackdowns I scrawled down as I watched tonight’s show:

1. The Sucre/Maricruz mystery is over. Bellick didn’t kidnap her. He merely sent her fleeing for her life. Finding one woman in all of South America shouldn’t be that hard for Fernando; after all, he rode his cousin’s motorcycle across the United States in like a day and a half, and every law enforcement agency in the country was looking for him.

2. Maricruz is in Chicago, and Fernando, brilliant as ever, is going to get on to the first bus to the States. Dude, how about perhaps a phone call? Maricruz doesn’t have her photo up in every Post Office in the world.

3. Sucre passing up a bus trip to Chicago has the first second thought of his life!

But then in a brilliant piece of acting by Amaury Nolasco, Sucre tearfully realizes that he needs to get his life together before reclaiming Maricruz. See, maybe all of those people who told you that you had to be okay with yourself before being with somebody else were right!

William Fincher gets the Viggo Mortensen Bad Ass of the Night award for basically taking on the whole prison while going through withdrawal and winding up with a draw. Loved the “halo” crack he fired at Michael.

In other news, Lucero, apparently doesn’t have Sona as well controlled as he led Michael to believe. It’s not a good idea to be feasting upstairs on rat sandwiches, while everyone else is starving. Very reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm, and that was the high culture reference of the week.