Directed by highly successful Hollywood producer and director, Brett Ratner, known for 'Rush Hour' and 'Red Dragon', this pilot episode entices from the outset. In the first three minutes alone, the unnamed protagonist has a full-body tattoo completed, before removing all evidence from his apartment, for reasons yet unknown, from the newspaper clippings stuck to the windows, to disposing his hard-disc drive from his balcony into the waters below. If the intrigue was not yet heightened enough, he then intentionally allows himself to be detained whilst committing armed robbery, and despite the seriousness of his situation, our protagonist ignores his attorney's advice, and leaves the charges uncontested. The twists keep coming as after being incarcerated in Fox River, his interest in the high profile death row inmate, Lincoln Burrows, convicted for the murder of the Vice-President's brother, is revealed as being down to the fact that he is the condemned man's younger sibling. Furthermore, the audience soon learns he is there to engineer his brother's escape.
With such an enthralling premise, one hopes that the success the writer, Paul Scheuring, has enjoyed since this pilot was aired, has been shared to some extent with a former female colleague who suggested the basic plot to him. Given the fact that aside from the screenplay for the Vin Diesel vehicle, 'A Man Apart' Scheuring was an unknown quantity, and given the complexity of the premise, Fox were initially reluctant to produce the show. However, the success of 'Lost' persuaded them to back the project, and they were further emboldened by Ratner's attachment to the project as executive producer. The latter had become attracted first and foremost by the originality of the script. With him Ratner brought twice Oscar-nominated cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, previously impressing the Academy Awards for his work on 'LA Confidential' and 'The Insider'. The opening episode of this new project was thereby provided with such a slick and stylish gloss. In terms of the casting process, the writer has revealed the difficulty he and Ratner had in casting the male lead. In fact, the show was just one week from production when Wentworth Miller auditioned.
Miller's previous career breakthrough performance had been as the young Anthony Hopkins in 'A Human Stain'. Here he is thoroughly convincing as the self-assured and highly intelligent structural engineer, Michael Scofield. The menacing atmosphere of Scofield's new home at Fox River State Penitentiary is neatly summed up by his cell-mate when, after witnessing the latent violence of his new surroundings, the latter welcomes him to 'Prisneyland'. As characters emerge, the viewer at times feels the impulse for a necessary rewind to the clippings seen earlier on Scofield's apartment window. Each character is revealed as having great relevance for Scofield, without us, the audience, having their precise significance for Scofield's plans amateurishly 'telegraphed'.
This is no more the case than with the mobster, John Abruzzi, unofficially in charge of the distribution of prison jobs. Needing a means to get access to his brother, Scofield proceeds to riskily entice Abruzzo with discovering the whereabouts of the squealer whose testimony had him convicted of a double murder. Having borne the brunt of a physical beating, and refusing to reveal this identity without quid pro quo, Scofield is rewarded with a work detail alongside his brother, Burrows. Then there is the prison doctor, and daughter of the local governor, Sara Tancredi, who Scofield shamelessly flaunts with, while feigning diabetes, to access the medical facility for an as-yet unknown motive. The extent of our protagonist's assuredness is also highlighed by his tactful handling of Stacy Keach's prison warden to avoid being placed in solitary confinement in return for his assistance in answering the structural issues within the warden's anniversary gift of the model of the Taj Mahal. The enticing mystery is not confined to the characters alone. Within the quick-fire opening sequence within Scofield's apartment, the brief shot of an origami swan so obviously implies that this seemingly immaterial object will take on much greater significance in the development of the plot across subsequent episodes.
The episode does have its flaws - principally the lame treatment given to the strand of the story concerning Burrows' son. Having witnessed the incarceration of both his father and uncle, the latter falls off the rails and is arrested for attempting to sell illegal substances. What should come across as an empathetic understanding of the damaging effect of this loss of parental guidance on Burrow's son, instead, feels much more like a convenient and mechanistic sub-plot. Yet, although there is an unbelievable leniency in terms of custodial sentencing, this sub-plot does provide the writer and the director an opportunity to show the murderer on death row in a familial light - his advice to his son carrying some weight: 'I don't want you to love me...I want you to love yourself.'
Aside from these minor distractions, the intricate plot keeps the pace brisk, with it becoming gradually evident to the audience that Lincoln's claims of being framed may be true. The slaying of the bishop, played by Chelcie Ross, poised to offer Burrows reprieve from the chair, so soon after being threatened by the secret services is strongly suggestive that there are powerful interests wishing the truth to be buried with the man Scofield has come to rescue.
The episode, having started with the low buzz of the tattoo artist's needle, brilliantly ends with one of the best 'reveals' within recent TV history. This concerns the revelation that the engineering works conducted at Fox Rover had been contracted out under the table to Scofield's company, and he has not simply committed these to memory, but has a permanent record of them by means of disguising them within the tattoos on his body.
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