rionaleonhart | Still Need To Watch The Fourth Series, Actually.

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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

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.

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What I have found, however, is a pretty great Mahone/Scofield fanvid.

That one dude really looks like he desperately wants to lunge forward and kiss someone in the face. I'm glad the other dude was in the video, because it's kind of "Please don't try to kiss me in the face, creepy dude!" and then he has someone else to obsess and sensually caress walls over. (And now my brain is threatening to ship Mahone/wall, based on nothing more than that video. WTF, brain?)

The entire fanvid is worth watching, but if you're 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.)

That sounds like you've covered everyone to me.

I can't say I love T-Bag, exactly, but I'm fascinated by him

I know what you mean. I'm fascinated by him, and I haven't even seen the show. (You probably don't want me getting into it. All that would result would be bad rapefic.)

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.

Aw! Is he the one with the kitten?

http://sdwolfpup.livejournal.com/447692.html

I beta'd that one. LOVE IT. :D :D :D

Oh, wow, that's so cool! Well, it's a fantastic video, and well done on the betaing job. (And thanks for pointing me towards the download!)

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Mahone always looks as if he's about to kiss whoever he's talking to. He has a tendency to put his face very, very close to yours and be very, very intense. (Mahone/wall is obviously true love for ever.)

I have no doubt that you would write incredibly twisted fanfiction if you ever got into Prison Break. T-Bag is a terrifying creation, and I simultaneously sort of want to see what you might write about him and find the prospect deeply frightening.

Sucre is not Man With Cat - that's Charles Westmoreland - but both of them (and the cat!) are lovely.

Oh, I wasn't fishing for a compliment, just wanting you to know we are all connected. :D The credit goes to sdwolfpup and also to the incredible slashiness of those guys. You are right when you say that her editing did not need to be disingenuous to reveal the crazy (one sided) slashiness of M/M.

And that scene with the knife at the end, I get the sense that part of him wants to just grab Scofield and kiss him and keep kissing and fondling and see how far it can go without Scofield stopping him, but part of him doesn't want to be the guy who corners another man in prison, sticks a knife in the wall threateningly, and has his way with the guy, because he knows what that means. And part of him probably wants to accomplish something plot-related.

(I would end up writing fic about him and the wall and it would be a terrible idea!)

T-Bag...he's almost too easy to use in that fic. I have a horrible trashy fondness for rapefic (strictly the fic, as some people apparently need to have explained - I also like many stories about vampires and firmly oppose murdering people to drain their blood). And there's an interesting, weirdly charismatic evil character who canonically actually and unambiguously does that sort of thing. It would all come out either sadly trashy or hideously dark.

I'm not in a good position to actually get the show right now (I've kind of used up nearly all of my DVD-buying budget, soon I'll have to stop mail-ordering things in preparation for moving, and I'm not in the US so I can't watch it on Hulu), but all of that dark obsessive twistedness, an adorable armed robber and a kitten? Tempting.

Hey, just wanted to point you at this awesome post by the same person that made that vid. She has some good recs up there, and a link where you can download just the spectacular wall scene if you want. :) Oh yes, Mahone trailing his fingers gently over... yeah, I'm all about Mahone/wall, lol.

http://sdwolfpup.livejournal.com/448830.html

I just discovered Prison Break a couple of weeks ago and devoured the show. Sadly, it seems like this is a relatively small fandom... But then again, I discovered Supernatural about 6 months ago and have probably been utterly spoiled forever and ever over the sheer amount awesomeness that is that fandom... There's probably a few stragglers I haven't managed to find yet, but I cleaned out all of the rec sites I was able to find so far already and I'm fiending for some more Michael/Alex fic. :) I feel kind of bad for not leaving many comments, but just about everything I've been able to find is from several years ago, so it seems kind of weird to be replying this long after a story was posted.

Hm, maybe I should begin to implement an extremely complex plan full of failsafes and backups that would involve sneakily inserting Prison Break references into all of my comments and reviews on Supernatural fandom posts, thus irresistibly drawing the SPN hordes of creative geniuses over to this fandom... What? It could work.

Mahone/Wall is very much real. Though there is actually two pairings, Mahone/Wall at Michael's flat and Mahone/Wall in Sona.

All through season two and three, you can basically pair Mahone with anybody, because, as you say, he does that standing-really-really-close-when-talking-to-someone-and-constantly-looking-at-their-lips (-or-so-it-appears) thing. By season four, Sucre/Bellick and Mahone/Lincoln seem to be the main pairings, disturbingly enough. In addition to Gretchen/T-Bag, of course. Who would have predicted that T-Bag would be the least fucked up person in a pairing? Certainly not me!

Damn, I'd forgotten how much I loved this show. I have it all on DVD :)

(And I have, like, eight icons, that I never use!)

Thank you so much for the link! The wall scene is incredible. I can't stop watching it.

(And thank you for your kind comment on my Prison Break/Supernatural crossover!)

I'm used to tiny fandoms, so being involved in the Supernatural fandom was very weird for me. Suddenly: a fandom in which chances are any idea you come up with will already have been written! And my main fandom of the moment somehow seems to be Glee, which is even more terrifyingly huge. Prison Break fandom sounds like it'd be a more comfortable size for me, but I haven't been reading any fanfiction for it because I'm afraid of getting spoiled. (Maybe I should write more for it? The Supernatural crossover is all I have at the moment, but I've got a vague idea for a terrible Prison Break/Pokémon crossover, which could be quite fun.)

I am entirely in favour of your evil plan to tempt the Supernatural fandom over! (You could appeal to the Wincest fans by telling them that it has hot dysfunctional do-anything-for-each-other brothers and canonical incest, neglecting to mention the fact that the incest isn't actually between the aforementioned brothers.)

Hello, by the way! It's nice to meet you.

Sucre/Bellick

WHAT THIS IS THE WORST THING I'VE EVER HEARD.

(Gretchen/T-Bag is weirdly intriguing, though. There's a couple you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley, or indeed anywhere.)

I completely serious with the Sucre/Bellick. There's this whole thing where Bellick saved Sucre's life off-screen when T-Bag burned Sona down, and then they traveled through Mexico together, and Bellick's mom picks them up at the border (I admit, that was a cute scene), and then they basically spend the entire fourth season being the bestest of friends, to the point where Bellick asks Sucre to be the one to call Bellick's mom, if he dies. And then there's a whole "I promise, Brad, but nothing is going to happen!" thing, and we all know what that means in telly land. It's like when a character who's been in the background all season suddenly gets lines and starts musing about the meaning of life and stuff: dead man walking. Particularly when you start bonding with Lincoln.

Seriously, it's a downright jarring shift in characterization, it's so awkward it could be seen from space. Boyfriend was completely freaked out by it too: "Um, that guy claimed that he'd kidnapped your girlfriend and threatened to let her and your unborn child starve to death. What's with the bromance!?"

Actually, Boyfriend was a really good companion during our watching of Season Four, because he remembers everything that has happened before even more clearly than I do (no idea how), and he was so shocked by the crappy writing that he commented on it all the time. "Did Lincoln just fall to his knees and do a Muted Howl of Sorrow? Over Bellick? The guy who tried to kill him several times during Season Two?", "Oh my God, Michael is almost crying, for God's sake. 'I will always remember you Brad! I'll think of you whenever I look at where my two smallest toes used to be'. 'Oh, and when I remember how you killed that nice old man I was such good friends with. And his cat.'", and most insanely, "Did T-Bag just have a fond flash-back of Bellick smiling? Seriously!? Bellick in his guards uniform?! What the fuck! Does T-Bag even remember who Bellick is? He's the guy that mocked you by telling all the other prisoners about your childhood! He tortured you, he left you to gnaw off your own hand to escape the police! Damn it, Bagwell, this is not cool!"

Gretchen and T-Bag were amazing together though. Half of the time he would be looking at her with utter adoration in his eyes, and the other half he would be scared shitless by just how evil she could be. As I said: T-Bag is the one with a conscience in that relationship, and that is fucked up. And awesome ;)

Did T-Bag just have a fond flash-back of Bellick smiling?

WHAT

Er, maybe I shouldn't watch the fourth series. That (and the responses of all the other characters) is absolutely bizarre. Did Bellick write the series, by any chance?

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.)

The person who created the video has actually uploaded the scene with the knife, if you're interested in watching it! It is in this entry over here: the 'Hellooooo, wall scene' link under 3x04. Possibly the most sexually-charged scene I have ever watched. Actual sex scenes aren't this sexual.

(Quick backstory: Scofield and Mahone are in a Panamanian prison together. Mahone is counting on Scofield to break him out; Scofield isn't particularly keen on this, in part because more people will complicate the escape but also because Mahone, y'know, tried to kill him repeatedly, ruined his getaway plans after he broke out of his previous prison, did kill someone who mattered to him etc. Scofield has asked Mahone to get him a black felt-tip pen, ostensibly for the escape; in fact he's just trying to make Mahone feel he has a role in the escape so he won't suspect that Scofield is planning to leave him behind.

And, if you're wondering why Mahone is acting as if he's on drugs, it's because he's on drugs.)

I would love to see what you think if you ever do watch Prison Break. I think it would appeal to your rather dark tastes.

Did he just threaten to stick something in Scofield's 'personal space'? That may have been the most weirdly porny threat to stab someone I have ever seen.

And I loved how he was all stoned, mellow, and not actually unhappy thing while going "I'll kill you if you don't do what I say." Mahone may be the most fascinating person in the world.

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Still Need To Watch The Fourth Series, Actually.

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