Thoughts on Monday TV- 11.12.07

Prison Break-Bang and Burn
The impromptu “fall finale” aired last night on Fox, seeing as Fox made the decision to hold off on new episodes of Prison Break until January where it can take of the place of the postponed 24 season.
After proving last week that it can still perform on it’s “A” game with its epic 2 hour episode, this week fell a little short of my expectations, but bearing in mind that it was never intended to be any sort of finale, I wasn’t too let down.
The storyline with Whistler and the Company continues to get more interesting, and I’m really intrigued to see exactly what it is that Lincoln is planning. And speaking of Lincoln, it’s good to see him throwing down a little bit the past couple of weeks. He’s really been a lot more violent the past couple of weeks, but it’s made for some pretty sweet action scenes. However, his scene at the beginning of the episode where Michael confronts him about keeping Sarah’s death a secret was brutal. It was at this point that we saw a completely different dynamic between the two brothers who have remained so close. The show finally led up to a pretty tense final moments in which the company sends a helicopter in to rescue Whistler, and thanks to Michael’s interference it doesn’t go as planned. And even after Michael’s brilliant plan to switch from a gray shirt to a light gray shirt, they still suspected that the recent escape attempts were connected to him in some way, leading them to decision to take him away from Sona.
Scenes from upcoming episodes were more than enough to whet our appetite and new episodes can’t come enough. Although this season started kind of slow, this Sona storyline has turned out to be pretty intriguing and I think they are taking it to some pretty cool places as we get to know these new characters a little better.
One final good word: William Fichtner’s performance as Agent Mahone continues to be absolutely brilliant week after week. Although it was frustrating to see him crack under pressure and ruin his chance in court, Fichtner continues to fully become that character and take his performance to the next level.
One final bad word: T-Bag is probably the most deliciously evil characters in TV history and it’s been kind of depressing to see him be on the sidelines so much this season. Aside from a few strong one liners, it is becoming increasingly rare that he actually has something useful to do. Hopefully that changes.

Heroes-Four Months Ago
After what creator Tim Kring admits was a slow start to the season, Heroes has definitely been picking up the pace in the past week weeks. In last night’s episode, we travel back in time to find out what really happened after May’s season finale and sets up some pretty interesting things for the future.
Most importantly, we finally receive the answers we need in the Peter storyline, and that Adam twist with which last week ended was fully explained. I’m still skeptical about Adam having pure intentions, considering we’ve seen how he was in the past, but his and Peter’s escape and the eventual healing of Nathan answered a lot of questions.
Also prominent throughout the episode was the new character of Elle that we were introduced to earlier in the season, but tonight was the first long look at her frightening personality. Kristin Bell takes an enormous departure from her past role of Veronica Mars and becomes this sort of loopy sociopath that keeps an interesting balance between childlike and psychotic. Bell plays this role dead on, leaving no trace of her Veronica Mars self alive and becoming fully engrossed in her new endeavor. While her character is decidedly very aggravating, I think that her and Bob’s unclear motives and shady methods are making for some pretty good tv.
However, the characters of Maya and Alejandro still fail to live up to their potential. While Maya’s crazy power is pretty scary and interesting, there has yet to be a scene with these two that proves to be as captivating as it could be or anywhere near as good as we expect from Heroes. While tonight added more to the puzzle, and I’m definitely up for seeing where this leads, it was the slowest part of tonight’s episode.
Lastly, the Niki storyline was actually pretty good tonight, explaining what actually led to the untimely death of DL. This explains Niki’s over abundant cooperation with the Company to cure her and her newfound loyalty to her. Her out of control actions cost her husband his life.
While it would have been nice to see what was going on with Parkman (um…his marriage?) and Claire during this time, tonight was ultimately a satisfying episode that should have admittedly been on weeks ago. It’s great to see this show finally getting back to true form and discovering that our patience wasn’t for nothing.