More Feh Fall Pilot Previews

PRISON BREAK

Network: FOX

Airs: WED 9:00PM

Grade: B

Prison Break also has a season-long gimmick. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint...it's subtly embedded into the title. Stare closely for several minutes and explore the possible symbolisms.

Hackteur extraordinaire Brett Ratner delivers a solid, expensive looking 43 minutes. We open on the intensely watchable Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield, getting the finishing touches on a large scale tattoo which we don't get a good look at (yet). One peek at his sleek apartment with a downtown view makes you question why he's suddenly inking gangland sleeves and holding up a bank without any plans for a getaway.

By some miraculous coincidence sent down like a bolt from the Primetime Network Drama gods, Michael is incarcerated in the same maximum security as his brother Lincoln, who is played by Dominic Purcell, a sort of a rough 'n tumbler George Eads. Lincoln is on death row for the murder of "the Vice President's brother." They never specify the Vice President of what, but for sake of high intrigue, let's assume it's the United States, not a local AmWay bureau. Anyway, through the use of some creative origami (don't ask) Michael finally gets to his doomed sibling, whom he is convinced has been set up, and pledges he will break both of them out by season's end...though he leaves out the part about their lives being divided into television seasons, probably because FOX has made things so complicated with its three season year and such.

The prison scenes are sort of OZ minus the gay sex, so basically, not all that interesting. You do catch a view of a whole line of ugly inmate butts in the first scene, though I find it hard to believe that will make it onto the airwaves when FOX is blurring out cartoon butts on Family Guy. Peter Stormare, who was so very entertaining in every frame of Fargo til his last limb was wood-chipped away, is happily with us here as incarcerated mob boss John Abruzzi. Stacy Keach plays the Pope...Warden Pope that is, who in one of many strange touches spends most of the pilot worried that his matchstick Taj Mahal is falling apart.

Not everything works. Michael's cellmate Sucre has an appropriately sugary subplot about proposing to his girlfriend that slows pace and feels phony. But there is enough well structured suspense and characterization here to engage, and more importantly, leave you asking the golden programming question: "What happens next?"