When Sara Tancredi lost her pretty little head last season on “Prison Break” outraged fans adamantly voiced their displeasure.
Surprisingly, it had an effect and Sarah Wayne Callies will be back as Sara when the show enters its fourth season on Monday.
And it’s not through flashbacks. And it’s not a dream sequence. She is really back, alive and well.
Obviously reattaching someone’s head is not yet a possibility of modern science so Sara’s return has to be explained.
Thankfully, producers aren’t going to yank us around wondering where Sara is and when she and Michael, played by Wentworth Miller, will be reunited.
“I think we address it as plausibly as possible. It helps that the show is kind of fantastic and I feel like we’ve gotten away with worse,” Miller said during a conference call on Monday. “We do provide an explanation and we don’t tease the audience. It’s not a flash of Sara’s ponytail disappearing down an alley for the first eight episodes, everyone wondering when she’ll actually make a face-to-face with Michael. She’s back, first episode. Michael and Sara are reunited, and then the gang hits the ground running because there’s work to do.”
And that work involves teaming with a government agent, played by Michael Rapaport, to bring down the Company.
“We do have an assemblage of old friends and foes, standing together, to take on the Company and I think, if anything, that’s what remains the same about ‘Prison Break,’ season in and season out,” Miller said. “We do change the playing field but at its core the show is about six or seven alpha dogs shoved in a cage fighting together, at each others’ throats, but still having to work together to achieve some common goal.”
One main character not out to achieve that common goal is T-Bag, played by Robert Knepper. Somehow he just keeps coming back, season after season, and this year will be no different. Surely he will get in the way of Michael’s plans.
“Michael and Lincoln between them have intentionally or unintentionally killed so many people and yet they’re still running around with T-Bag,” Miller said. “It’s really a testament to Robert Knepper that his character has survived through four whole seasons. But the man (T-Bag) is a maniac, a psychopath and a child killer and a rapist, and yet he and the boys are still digging ditches together. Eventually you have to wonder when is enough enough because it really makes my character look bad. These are the questions that I think eventually we have to answer or suffer a falloff in terms of believability and quality.”
T-Bag’s not the only person who has stood in Michael’s way over the past four seasons. There have been many enemies to face – Agent Paul Kellerman, President Caroline Reynolds, Agent Alex Mahone, Lechero, Gretchen – and now it’s time to take on the people behind the conspiracy that sent Lincoln to prison and started it all.
“We’ve battled many serious adversaries. Michael, season two, had that great face-to-face with the president of the United States and you really thought that this was going to be the end of the journey,” Miller said. “It turns out that someone else has been pulling the strings and, in many ways, they have to go back to square one. What the team realizes is that they can no longer flee. They have to stand up and fight. It’s time to take on the puppet master and really put this whole conspiracy thing to bed.”
They’ve broken out of prison, been on the run, stolen $5 million, broken out of prison again and now they are helping the government. Too much?
“I think we not only jumped the shark long ago, I think we’re inventing new sharks,” Miller said. “We’re taking it to a whole new level.”
The show has to have an end point, much the same way the end of “Lost” has already been scheduled.
Will this be the final season?
“It’s not ‘CSI.’ It’s not ‘Law and Order.’ It can’t run forever,” Miller said. “I do feel as though we may be on one of our final laps around the track, and it is something that weighs on my mind from time to time. Telling a story correctly necessitates knowing when to end it.”
What will the end hold for Michael and Sara when the show does conclude? Miller wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not such a happy ending.
“In order for his brother to go free, so many people have died in the process and I think that weighs terribly on Michael’s conscience,” he said. “Once this experience is over, once they successfully destroy the conspiracy, there is no returning to his white-collar existence as a structural engineer. I think the only thing that Michael is kind of fit for at this point is as a hired gun, which actually dovetails quite nicely with the direction season four takes.”
Source: http://regulus2.azstarnet.com
