He was set up as part of a huge conspiracy and found guilty for the murder of the vice president's brother. Michael, Lincoln's brother, a brilliant structural engineer, decides to help his brother escape from prison and save him from the death sentence. He prepares an incredibly sophisticated escape plan. In order to gain access to the Fox River State Penitentiary, where his brother is on death row, Michael commits an armed robbery. As soon as he steps foot into the prison, a breathtaking adventure starts. In the first season, I was even unable to blink. I cannot say that I get the same pleasure from seasons two, three or four. After their escape from prison, I think, the series lost a little bit of its spice.There are many different dimensions in the TV series that deserve to be mentioned. Characters, for example, are very interesting and are very well portrayed. The director even manages to have you empathize with Theodore Bagwell (T-Bag), who is a pedophile and a merciless killer. He is a hated figure in the first season, but as the adventure unfolds, you witness his wit, sense of humor, his mastery of language and his “survival character.” He always survives! After hating him, the director give us a glimpse of his childhood in which he was constantly molested by his own father. You understand that he makes people suffer because he himself suffered a lot. He makes people victims because he himself was a victim. He could have been the president of the United States -- he is that clever -- but he ended up as he did because of his father, because of the tragedy of his own childhood.
There were episodes in which this character attracted my attention, but after a while, I lost interest in him. After all, there were many other interesting things going on in the TV series. However, at a time I least expected it, he uttered a sentence that astonished me and left me repeating it over and over again. He said, "We are captives of our own identities, living in prisons of our own creation."
Ever since, I have been telling myself that we are captives of our own identities, living in prisons of our own creation. Even though we have one life, we do the same things again and again. We react in exactly the same conditioned way; we always fall in love with similar people; we always make the same mistakes! We are prisoners of our own characters.
After hearing this sentence, I found myself watching the TV series from quite a different perspective. This sentence turned the whole series into a huge metaphor for me. Escaping from our own prison, coming out of our own characters, living lives that are not compatible with our engaging personalities -- is it possible? Can we escape from our own prisons? Can we become someone else? Can we surrender our dark side to the light? Is there a painless way to do that? Psychoanalysis? Therapy? Any way leading out? But I guess everything starts with the awareness of the prison we created and put ourselves in. Only then is a “prison break” possible. Until then, keep watching “Prison Break,” I recommend it a lot!
