rionaleonhart: final fantasy versus xiii: a young woman at night, her back to you, the moon high above. (nor women neither)
Riona ([personal profile] rionaleonhart) wrote2011-04-27 11:29 am

Still Need To Watch The Fourth Series, Actually.

My brothers have been having a Prison Break marathon recently, and I've been wandering in to watch an episode or two here and there. I'd forgotten how incredibly compelling it is. And how distressing.

I had also forgotten how absolutely crazy the sexual tension is between Scofield and Mahone in the third series. It is nuts. Mahone always looks about half a second away from making out with whoever he's talking to anyway, but particularly so when it's Scofield.

I've been trying to find a clip with which to illustrate this crazy sexual tension for you, but alas I am having difficulty doing so. What I have found, however, is a pretty great Mahone/Scofield fanvid (by [livejournal.com profile] sdwolfpup). If you haven't watched Prison Break, you may think 'oh, well, clearly it's manipulative editing making it look as if Mahone has some sort of weird desperate obsession with Scofield'; let me assure you that no manipulative editing is necessary. THEY WERE KISMESES BEFORE HOMESTUCK MADE IT COOL.

The entire fanvid is worth watching - it does a fantastic job of portraying the progression of their dynamic - but if you're short on time and primarily interested in the aforementioned crazy-sexual-tension-filled series three, when Mahone is shaking and sweating and barely holding onto his last threads of sanity and occasionally slams a shank into the wall next to Scofield's head and breathes threats into his neck, you can skip to the three-minute mark. The first half, meanwhile, will appeal to those of you who like to watch besuited secret agents obsessively trying to track down their prey. Something for everyone! (Disclaimer: this may not cover the tastes of literally everyone.)

I should explain that homoeroticism is not the sole or even the primary reason to watch Prison Break. As I've mentioned, the storyline is incredibly compelling. What happens next? You have to know! And it centres on a do-anything-to-save-you brotherly relationship (come on, Supernatural fans, take the bait), and it has fantastic characters (I love Scofield and Sara and Sucre and Westmoreland and Tweener and C-Note and Mahone and the Pope; I can't say I love T-Bag, exactly, but I'm fascinated by him), and when they're in danger you care, because... well, are you tired of seeing main characters in seemingly life-threatening situations and knowing there's no real suspense because there's no chance that they'll actually be written off? It happens frequently in Merlin. Well, Prison Break kills off its main cast like nothing I've ever watched. When things go wrong, you're not thinking 'how do they get out of this one?'; you're thinking 'oh God oh God I really hope they get out of this one.'

(I would just like to reiterate how much I love Sucre. You know why he's in prison? He didn't have the money to take his girlfriend to a nice restaurant, so he held up a liquor store with a gun. The owner offered him the contents of the till. Sucre looked a bit embarrassed, took a single hundred-dollar bill and said, 'Actually, this is all I need. ...sorry.' He is the most adorable armed robber ever.)

And it will make you sympathise with everyone. You will be appalled by a character's actions, and a season later you will desperately want them to succeed. You will alternate between cheering T-Bag on and hating yourself for it because T-Bag is the worst person in the entire universe.

But also there's the homoeroticism. I'm not above tempting you to watch things by pointing to the homoeroticism. Have you watched that fanvid yet? Perhaps you should.

[identity profile] xavantina.livejournal.com 2011-04-29 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I think you should pretend that the fourth season never existed. That's what I usually pretend...

Seriously, I think they wanted to shock us by killing off a really "old" character, but then they remembered that nobody really liked Bellick, and that would reduce the emotional fallout to, oh I don't know, zero. It's like the writers desperately wanted *us* the care, and made the characters care for that reason. It was so out of character, so unbelievably out of character. If it helps, that's the worst bit of the season, I think.

Well, apart from the whole "Sara wasn't dead! She was just... sleeping!" storyline. I liked it way better when Michael was on a crazy vendetta to kill Gretchen in the first episode, I could have watched that all season.

And the general plot sucks too...

You should watch it for slashy Michael/Mahone moments. That's what I did. That, and Gretchen.

(Mahone was really great though, as always. He angsts like it's nobody's business. I don't know any other actor who can look close to cracking/breaking into tears for so long.)