NETWORK: Fox
AIR DATE: September 1, 2008
STARRING: Dominic Purcell, Wentworth Miller, William Fichtner, Robert Knepper, Amaury Nolasco, Sarah Wayne Callies, and Michael Rapaport
CREATED BY: Paul Scheuring

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Blu-Ray release of the drastically sub-par third season of Prison Break, "With a full-season instead of just 13 episodes, would Prison Break have turned it around? Maybe, for sure, and I'm even tempted to say "probably" but we'll never know. We'll have to find out in season four." At that point, I hadn't seen the first two episodes of the fourth season - "Scylla" and "Breaking and Entering" - so I put the screener in my DVD player with higher-than-average anticipation. I really wanted Prison Break to return to form. I wanted it to find the energy that sunk in the Panamian mud in season three. Could they turn it around? Even with the already-infamous and ridiculous plot twist that's been advertised to open the fourth season? Second lives in television are so rare that the phrase "jump the shark" has no inverse, but it's starting to look like that might not be the case with 2007-08. Fans have already blogged about the quality of the third season premiere of Heroes and now we have this wonderful news to share about the fourth season start for Prison Break - these two episodes stand far above anything produced in last chapter of this odds-defying show. Like Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield themselves, Prison Break may have pulled off the most amazing feat in television - a stay of execution.

The first two seasons of Prison Break were like a shark - always moving. If a shark stops swimming, it dies, which is exactly what happened to the show in season three. This is a series that requires a MASSIVE amount of suspension of disbelief and that only works if the pace is turned up to eleven, as it was in the first two escapist seasons, and that came crashing to the Earth last year. It looks like the creative team behind Prison Break might have realized the pacing was off in season three because they amp it up big time in the first two episodes of the fourth chapter. If you remember, Michael was on his way to get revenge for the beheading of Sarah while Bellick, Sucre, and T-Bag were still stuck in Panama and LJ, Sophia, and Lincoln were finally free. Of course, none of that lasts long. It's not giving much away - all the commercials do it and it happens in the opening scenes - to reveal that Sarah's pretty head is actually still attached to her body. That's right, the Prison Break writers pull a classic one-eighty from the days of Dallas and return a character from the dead, reuniting Michael with his one true love. Some will surely cry foul, but the mopey, whiny Michael of season three needed to go and Wentworth Miller has a much more interesting screen presence with the love of his live living and breathing than with her head in a box.

After some typically ridiculous machinations and the disposal of a few secondary characters from the first season (although one should forever wonder who is really dead on Prison Break after the once-headless Sarah's return), an odd unit is formed. Remember Whistler from season three? The center of all the attention in Sona? Well, Whistler was trying to track down a legendary device called Scylla, a sort of "Palm Pilot of the Gods" that could bring down The Company. Lincoln and Michael's dad were trying to find it too and so is the U.S. Government. When Michael and Lincoln end up looking at jail sentences again, a homeland security agent named Don Self (the great Michael Rapaport) offers them a deal. Get Scylla and get your safety. But the boys will have to break into a few places to get the job done. Who better to team up for a break-in than the legendary people who broke out? Bellick, Mahone, Sucre, Sarah, Michael, and Lincoln are together again and this time they're not covered in Panamanian dung. Meanwhile, T-Bag is still south of the border with a crucial piece of the puzzle in his possession and The Company is doing everything they can, including sending out a chilly assassin, to wipe the slate clean.

The depressing, dirty tone of season three of Prison Break has been replaced by the guilty pleasure, rollercoaster pace that the show had in its prime. There's still something a bit off - Miller and Purcell sometimes look like they're real tired of playing these characters and the tone is inconsistent - but it's still a massive improvement. It's likely that the show will never be as crisply paced as it was in the first two seasons, but the entire gang behind Prison Break is at least on the right track with "Syclla" and "Breaking and Entering". They're jumping back over the shark and it looks like they might actually make it back to the other side.