Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Prison Break 5x08 Recap: “Progeny” (We are Family) [Guest Poster: Rebecca]


“Progeny”
Original Airdate: May 23, 2017

Unfamiliar with definition of the name of this week’s episode, I Googled “Progeny.” It means one’s descendants or offspring. After last week, I assumed this would be the episode Michael and his son reunited, so the title made sense... but I had no idea that we’d see two pairs of fathers and sons reunite. The T-Bag and Whip thing completely blew my mind! I like the think I’m a big enough fan of Prison Break that I can see these things coming (I predicted that Jacob was Poseidon in episode four), but I did not see this bombshell coming at all.

In typical Prison Break fashion, this penultimate episode left us with a ton of cliffhangers. Will Lincoln be okay? Who was shot in the final scene? How will Whip react to learning who his father is? Who will T-Bag kill? Who is Blue Hawaii? I have my assumptions as to how this season will end, but let’s break this episode down first.

“I OWN YOU, SCOFIELD.”


We pick up immediately where “Wine Dark Sea” left off. Whip, Sucre, and the brothers managed to escape the blast by hopping on a lifeboat. They wave down a small boat driving by, which takes them to Marseille, France.

Flashback to six years ago: Michael and Jacob walk through campus, and Jacob observes that Michael has been spending a lot of time at the zoo. Michael says he likes going there to think, to figure out how to break their targets out of prison. Jacob notices Michael has new tattoos, but Michael assures him that they don’t mean anything.

Jacob leads Michael into a secret room in the university, asking him if he’s set for the next project. Michael says he wants a partner, someone to have his back and increase their odds of getting more prisoners out. He hands Jacob a file on a man named “David Martin,” who we immediately can identify as Whip. Reluctant at first, Jacob finally agrees to the partnership.

“THE SECRET TO REAL POWER IS TO NEVER BETRAY YOUR INTENTIONS... AND TO NEVER LET ANYONE SEE YOUR FACE.”


Back in the present day, the gang arrives in Marseilles. Michael texts Sara, asking if Jacob is suspicious; however, he realizes he’s not actually texting Sara but is in fact talking to Jacob when “Sara” refers to Mike as “Junior.”

Lincoln tells Michael that after his surf shop and relationship with Sofia fell apart, he went back to his old ways. He ended up in the ‘hood doing odd jobs moving boxes to make cash. Eventually, Lincoln realized the boxes contained drugs that had killed people. He dumped $100,000 worth of the pills (remember the first episode where he was being chased?) and has had a man named Luca after him since. Lincoln calls Luca and says he can get Luca the $100,000 if he smuggles Lincoln, Michael, and Sucre into the U.S. Luca is skeptical that Lincoln has that kind of money, but figures he can always kill Lincoln if he doesn’t get paid.

Meanwhile, Jacob meets with Van Gough and A&W and explains his relationship to Michael. Jacob brings in a computer hacker named Theroux who managed to intercept the screenshots Michael sent “Blue Hawaii” from the Yemen gas station a few episodes back. Theroux tells Jacob and his crew that some of Michael’s tattoos are links to online message boards — message boards that link to photos and videos of the murder for which Jacob framed Michael. Theroux is working to identify any data that’s been encrypted into the files.

As Michael prepares to return to New York, he writes letters to various people and sticks them in sealed manila envelopes. T-Bag receives a letter that says he must take a life. C-Note receives a letter, detailing a plan that we’ll see play out in a few minutes. Michael also gives a letter to Whip, along with a plane ticket to Chicago. Whip doesn’t understand why he’s not going with Sucre and the brothers to New York, but Michael assures him it will become clear in time.

“LOOK’S LIKE THE GAME’S STILL GOING.”


Jacob is using GPS tracking on Michael’s phone and knows when his flight is coming in. He sends his henchmen to JFK when the flight lands. A&W and Van Gough track down the phone, but find it sitting on the floor with Michael nowhere to be seen. Sucre watches their confusion and steps off the plane with a smile.

Instead of going to JFK like Jacob thought, Michael lands at a small airport in upstate New York with Lincoln. They arrive at Luca’s warehouse, where Lincoln informs Luca that they don’t have the money. He points to a DEA agent waiting outside and says he set up Luca and his crew, but if they let the brothers go then Lincoln will call off the raid. Luca reluctantly acquiesces and runs off with his men. C-Note and Sheba pull up in black vans, disguised as DEA agents.

C-Note wants to continue to help his friends, but Michael knows Jacob has eyes on C-Note now and doesn’t want to put him in any danger. Sheba offers to help in C-Note’s place since Jacob doesn’t know what she looks like.

“THERE’S NO LEAVING 21 VOID.”


Jacob meets with the henchmen at his house and tells them to lay low for now. As A&W and Van Gough leave, the latter expresses his discomfort at the fact that Sara is being held prisoner in her own home. He realizes Jacob has gone too far and wants to leave 21 Void after they capture Michael. He tries to convince A&W to leave with him, but she doesn’t think there’s any way out of the operation.

Michael arranges to meet “Sara” at a steakhouse. Van Gough waits outside of the restaurant for Michael. A black SUV pulls up, and the driver tells Van Gough he’s here to pick up a lady and her child. Jacob tells Van Gough it was a decoy to identify Van Gough’s face. Lincoln trails Van Gough, and A&W follows Lincoln with instructions to “take him down.” A bus drives in front of a parking garage, blocking Lincoln from A&W’s view; when it passes, Lincoln is gone. She runs into the parking garage, but can’t communicate with Jacob via her headset because she doesn’t have reception. She circles back to Jacob’s car, and he drives away angrily; now the brothers know what his car looks like. Michael watches from the top of a building and describes the car to Sheba, who picked up Lincoln in the parking garage.

They meet up with Michael and find Jacob’s abandoned car. They open the trunk to find blood and a picture of a pirate ship. Michael knows it’s a map, that it’s in Mike’s DNA to created coded messages. Michael deduces Mike and Sara’s location, and Lincoln kisses Sheba and tells her to go back to her family.

“ONLY ONE PERSON CALLS ME WHIP, AND YOU AIN’T HIM.”


Whip arrives in Chicago and opens his envelope from Michael, which contains some coordinates in the middle of Lake Michigan. He goes to a boat rental and takes a boat out to a buoy that matches the coordinates given to him. He finds a duct-taped package containing…blood? Meanwhile, T-Bag sits in his car recording a confession on his cell phone, saying he’s been considering doing something the “old T-Bag” would do, but this time, the crime would be committed out of love.

Whip returns the boat and runs into T-Bag in the parking lot. T-Bag calls him “Whip,” catching Whip’s attention. T-Bag explains that he knows about Kaniel Outis/Michael Scofield and that he knows Whip is Dave Martin. T-Bag reveals Michael was looking for someone to help him comb prisons, so he did some research and found Dave Martin, a man who could rise to the top in any circumstance. T-Bag then drops one of the biggest bombshells this season: Whip is his son.

Meanwhile, the brothers arrive at Jacob’s lake house. Lincoln thinks he sees Jacob’s car and urges Michael to leave, but Michael can see the outline of a woman tied up in a room and knows something is wrong. He heads inside, where he meets Mike for the first time. The mysterious car turns out to belong to Luca, who learned the DEA raid was a setup and used the EZ Passes on the vans to track down Lincoln. He shoots at Lincoln multiple times and we can see blood, but we don’t know where or how many times Lincoln has been shot.

Inside, Mike reveals to his father that he didn’t draw a map. Michael realizes he’s been played, and A&W emerges from the room, whipping off a brunette wig and pointing a gun at Michael and his son. In the final shot of this episode, we hear a gunshot and see blood splatters.

THE VERDICT


This was definitely the most fast-paced episode of the season; I struggled to keep up with my notes and often found myself rewinding the episode because I was sure I missed something. So much craziness was going on that I had to remind myself to breathe a couple times! This episode was so fun to watch, though, and left me with my mouth hanging completely open at the end.

Whip being T-Bag’s son completely came out of left field, but I don’t hate the idea. I’ll admit it’s a bit farfetched, but that’s what I love about the show. Nothing is off limits. I hope we’ll find out how Michael tracked Whip down and why he was so necessary to the plan. I’m a bit skeptical as of right now, but we all know Michael doesn’t do anything without meticulous planning. There’s a reason for everything, as he’s shown us so many times before.

I cannot believe we only have one episode left, and I’m really going to miss the show. This has been a great reboot that picks up right where the previous season left off. I’ve loved seeing C-Note and T-Bag and Sucre (and even Kellerman!) again, and the plot has been thoroughly enjoyable. So, here are my predictions about what we’ll see in the season finale:

  • A&W is the one whose blood we saw sprayed on that window. I think someone (Sheba? Sucre? Sara?) came in and popped her before she could get Michael.
  • Someone we like has to die. I think Jacob will meet his demise, but no one cares about him. We haven’t had a sad death since Sid, and that’s too long for Prison Break. I have faith we’ll get happy endings for Lincoln and Michael and their significant others. The writers would face an angry mob if they killed off Sucre or Mike, so which leaves us with Whip and T-Bag. I’m afraid one of them might not make it. It may be poetic justice for T-Bag to meet his end, but I have a soft spot for the guy — as much as a soft spot as you can for someone like him. Which isn’t very soft, but still there a tiny bit. He’s at least trying to be a better person. Perhaps the life T-Bag has to take is the life of someone we love.
  • Michael, Sara, and Mike (BETTER!!!) end up as a happy family
Honorable Events Worth Mentioning:

  • “I don’t think your French is as good as you think it is.”
  • Sheba: “I take care of [Lincoln], you mean?” So good to see her again.
  • Michael sees his origami swans in the sewer and knows now why Sara never tried to contact him: Jacob always disposed of his letters and swans.
  • Jacob gets the idea to hide a map in the drawing of the pirate ship after talking to Mike. Mike and his friend Jimmy hide each other’s Legos and create maps to find them. 
  • Luca is the son of John Abruzzi, feared mobster and member of the Fox River 8 in the first season. This was a nice and believable callback to the brothers’ past.

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