first new show of the season!

I think the fall 2005 television season officially began last Monday with the premiere of Prison Break on Fox. It took me a week to watch the two-hour premiere, and it was worth it. Prison Break had been heavily hyped before the premiere; Kristin on E! has been going nuts over Wentworth Miller, the star (who is admittedly very hot.) While I don't know if it'll be the best new show of the season, it has earned its season pass. The basic premise of the show is that Michael, a structural engineer, robs a bank to purposely get sent to prison in order to break out his death-row-dwelling brother, who claims to be innocent and is probably the victim of a government conspiracy.

One thing I liked about the show was its quick pace. I felt like each scene raised more and more questions, and I like feeling like a show is one step ahead of me. Small things, like what was up with the screws that Michael was struggling to get, were resolved before the end of the two hours, and that made it easier to process the big, overarching scary conspiracy, and a little easier to have faith that it will eventually be revealed. I've also heard (I think it was in Kristin's column) that if the show sees a second season (and at this early stage it looks like it might--the ratings were decent), the characters will break out of the prison, and the show will follow their continuing struggles on the outside against the conspiracy.

One thing I absolutely hated, however, were the short sequences played before commercials, where the camera zooms in on something, like a vent or a screwhole, and zooms through the insides of the prison to show how these paths might lead to escape. It fits with the theme of the show, but I find it distracting and a little lame.

But it's a small quibble, and on the whole I would definitely recommend the show. The premise requires some suspension of disbelief (when asked what he would have done if he hadn't been sent to the same prison as his brother, Michael replies that he would have just served out his term), but once you accept that, the scenes inside the prison seem realistic enough to me. It's not for the squeamish (does Michael still have a toe? I guess anyone who watched tonight's episode knows the answer), but what prison show is? I hope he still has all his fingers and toes though.