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The seasons are oddly assigned: I consider this currently the hiatus between the 2nd Fall season and the later portion.
They called the last episode the "Finale of the Fall Season." *shrug*

I miss the old days when seasons meant 22-26 episodes, started in the early Fall and lasted till Summer.

Anyway - *spoilers to 1st season below*
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I really was impressed with the first season - the first prison break storyline. With a couple of exceptions.

What I loved was the moral quandry Michael found himself in after a certain point -
When does the saving of one man's life stop becoming justifiable when other lives are taken as a result?
For instance Michael set into motion the riot that ultimately took the life of a guard, the suicide of a newbie whom he refused to help because it would ruin Michael's plans, Sara's overdose ...
That fascinated me to no end - the irony of the situation that once down that path - to get his brother out at ALL costs, meant some chilling ramifications.

I also was very impressed and very entertained by Wade Williams as Captain Brad Bellick.
He played the role, at first, with a bit of subtext - a bit of hidden honor: that scene where he appeals to the old trustee (who had hidden $$$) to give him info - it was a wonderful Emmy winning bit there IMO - he's begging this prisoner to prevent him from turning to that corrupt part of his soul that killed his cat for spite.
And they gave him a Madonna/Whore complex (his demeanor, his very voice changes when he talks to his mother and Sara, vs. other women like the stripper) that I thought was really well played.
Unfortunately his character has been simplified this season (and underultilized).

And Robert Knepper as Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell -- just a top notch performance every stinking scene he's in.
He NEEDS an Emmy for this. How he can manage to make me empathize with a child molester is amazing. I loathe him yet hope he'll help. His resourcefullness is admirable, and yet we recoil at his appetites and ruthlessness.

William Fichtner as Special Agent Alexander Mahone and Sarah Wayne Callies as Dr. Sara Tancredi are excellent performers as well -- it's a shame she apparently isn't in this 2nd season. I'm hoping she'll turn up as one of the many "surprise" twists (which I won't spoil).

What I find lacking is Dominic Purcell as Lincoln Burrows. I don't know - he's just playing it too cerebral.
Lincoln is supposed to be a big brother screw up, who was into drugs or alcohol enough to be snookered into commiting a murder... he was always hitting Michael up for money, to bail him out of jams, etc...
then all of a sudden he's this capable, oddly soft spoken muscle man who works in tandem for the most part with Michael ... I just think there's something really lacking there,
especially since it's supposed to be THE titular role for the show.

Which is another gripe of mine! Why on earth isn't Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield getting top billing?!
He IS the story! It's all about his decisions, his hopes and fears. Miller is in a gazillion more scenes than Purcell and is ten times the actor.
I guess Purcell has one heck of an agent.


*Spoiler*
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I didn't care for the increasingly absurd "Company Conspiracy" subplot in the first season that has taken on new ridiculousness in the 2nd. I didn't buy the female president scandal one bit but at least it wasn't taking up too much screen time at first, until the incest angle was introduced. *groan*

So the 2nd season is less character driven which bugs me, and the prison brutality is really cliche this time around.
(I mean - this duel to the death Fight Club nonsense? Please.)
It seems episodes are meant to soley set up endings with a zinger surprise rather than crafting the ep around interesting revelations of the characters.
Still - it's worthwhile watching to me considering all the other dreck on TV.

By the way - did you all know that Wentworth Miller is half black? It's so undectable!

His father is black. He says his race was never an issue for Prison Break and "passing" is something he's intimately familiar with.
It's natural that he was picked for the role of Michael due to his believability as a poised, highly learned business success.
Wentworth exudes that uppercrust carriage and demeanor of Ivy League, which makes sense, since he went to Princeton! And, well, when you're named "Wentworth" your path is practically written for you.
His father (a Rhodes scholar) went to Yale and went on to become a lawyer.

He's pictured in the 3rd season credits of Buffy right after Seth Green, but I don't recall him. Apparently he's a student-turned-sea monster called Gage Petronzi in the ep "Go Fish".

It's just amazing though - he has the ability to look soooo white bread:





This one says "Ivy Leaque" all the way:


For his role as the younger version of Anthony Hopkins' character he states:
"In The Human Stain, which is in theaters now and is based on the powerful novel by Philip Roth, Anthony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a Jewish professor of Classics at a liberal arts college. Silk is accused of racisma particularly outlandish charge in his case (more on that later), and his career crumbles. With his life in a painful state of disarray, Silk spends a lot of time dreaming back to his heady youth. Enter Wentworth Miller. Seen in flashbacks, he is the Coleman of the 1940's, a dashing young valedictorian and a champion boxer who makes a colossal choice: to live life passing as a white Jew, even though he is an African-American. "Racially, I felt I had already accomplished a lot of the homework just by being me," says Miller, whose father is black and mother is white. He received a strange request during the casting process: "It sounds weird, but they asked for proof that I was what I said I was, because an actor will say just about anything to get a role. So I literally had to go to Kinko's with the family photo album and copy the photos of the ancestors, from the great-grandparents on down. And I'm standing there at the Xerox machine looking at all these faces, and thinking about what my family has been through. And I thought, Godhas all this been for me to book this role? And the answer was no, but also yes, in a strange way. It felt like just the right time and the right role and the right place."