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There’s nothing like a good breakout flick ala Shawshank Redemption. Watching the innocent “con” struggle to escape, and learn just how he does it, is like a good caper, or mystery, only he’s someone we can easily root for. Sometimes, like in Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, we even get to see justice, or vengeance if you will. Fox’s Prison Break takes on a different spin, as the main character isn’t jailed because he’s innocent, but rather because he is guilty of a crime commited such that he can voluntarily be placed in prison, so that he can execute a plan to break his brother out. He’s a good guy, after all.

Despite the show’s faults, like the stale lines Scofield spits, without any real emotion behind them, the show itself is pretty well done, even if we do have to sit through oft predictable scenes, usually consisting of one requisite close-call per episode. I can even overlook the “Illuminati” storyline running in the background, which could have easily been replaced with something less sinister and more realistic. Let’s not gripe about Hollywood’s fascination with conspiracies, however.

What irks me is that Fox has been building up for the actual escape on Prison Break, which we keep hearing about, but which the show cleverly delays by bringing up new obstacles for the main character and his posse to overcome. That’s all well and good, but at the end of last week’s episode, the “scenes for next week” bit very clearly discussed the break-out, and showed a scene in which the “cons” were running through brush, presumably outside of the prison complex. Yet, surprisingly, this week’s episode contained no such escape. Instead, more obstacles prevented the breakout from happening yet again, though nonetheless leaving a feeling that the escape is imminent.

At the end of this week’s episode, we again saw the scene of the “cons” running through brush. The re-use of this scene, or even the use of it in the first place to describe an episode that doesn’t even contain it, is simply ridiculous. It’s a symptom of hype blown out of proportion, or simply of Fox’s lack of faith in the show standing on its own. I can’t be upset at the show, since the commercials aren’t likely the domain of the producers, but I most certainly can be upset at Fox, who’s shown a persistent pattern of making stupid decisions, like cancelling Reunion, despite the fact that it was one of the best shows on TV.

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