Prison Break Season 5: Raw Breakdown 9

5.09. “Behind the Eyes”

The episode’s title probably refers to The Who’s song “Behind Blue Eyes”, sung from the point of view of a guy who people think is a villain but who really isn’t. But when I finished watching it, it was R.E.M.’s “EVERYBODY HURTS” playing in my head. There was no sense of a completely happy ending. But earlier the writers had suggested that the final episode would be as happy as possible in the “Prison Break” universe. “Behind Blue Eyes” is a sad song, to begin with, and there was no use expecting confettis and fireworks from the episode named after it. 

Some minor questions were left unanswered. Why did A&W (Emily Blake) and Van Gogh have cropped ears? Who took Michael’s photo that he sent to T-Bag? Why was Jacob’s “splinter cell” named 21 Void? That gruesome scene from the Season 5 trailer, with Michael, his face ashen, lying on a morgue table, seemingly dead and dressed in his suit with a “Kaniel Outis” tag inside – what was that?

I’m still unclear whose body, apart from Michael’s, Jacob planned to leave in the burning lake house. Obviously, Jacob foresaw that Van Gogh would go upstairs and try to persuade Emily to stop and dare to ask questions, so he must have given her instructions to shoot her partner. But Van Gogh was in the room with him while Jacob was warning Sara about the two lives to be taken by fire, so was he trying to say it was Sara who would be left to die? Chills.  

I’m also more or less sure Emily wanted to give Van Gogh a chance at survival, so her shot was not lethal. It’s ironic how the couple’s situation ended up being no better than that of their victims. Poseidon himself turned against them.

In a way, A&W and her not asking questions and Michael and his sticking to the plans were their real weak points. This strange lack of flexibility got the men they cared for killed. Though it feels weird that a guy as smart as Michael would hate improvisation. 

In another show, Whip and T-Bag could’ve been a killer comic duo of criminals. They’ve got the same mannerisms (the tongue flicker including), the same restlessness. 

This season of “Prison Break” was based on software engineering and cryptography more than manipulation with physical objects. The tattoos with their sign code played a more important role too. But the character Blue Hawaii turned out to be a structural engineer of sorts, just like Michael, only working with micro objects. I wonder if he was the artist who gave Michael his new tattoos with the microscopic messages inside. 

I suppose Blue Hawaii was a double agent too. Jacob ordered his escape from a Barranquilla prison, so he obviously needed him for a job. But after that job was over Blue Hawaii could also help Michael. That’s why a pseudonym was necessary – Poseidon knew him under his real name. That’s my theory. 

The song theme has been constant in Season 5. “Blue Hawaii” is a song sung by, among others, Elvis Presley. Queen’s “We Are the Champions” was a running gag in earlier episodes. “Behind the Eyes” finishes the song trilogy.

Michael lacks a “killing gene”. Why can’t he kill people? Is it a phobia or does he refrain from killing people to minimize his risks of being charged with multiple murders? Technically, he is responsible for a number of deaths (Cyclops this season, other villains before). But it’s easier for him to invent complex schemes involving other people to do the bloody work. It’s this kind of scheme that got him and Whip out of jail, but it’s also this kind of scheme that got Whip killed. 

Now I feel like I know how “Whip” got his name. Because he was so quick to act, so impulsive. That’s why Michael has been drilling these routines into him (“Board spans the gap”, etc.). 

Jacob was right about Michael’s ability to manipulate people. Whip’s worries about Michael becoming Kaniel Outis were partially founded. I guess Michael has been planning to use Whip and T-Bag and his love of his son from the start. Poseidon had Michael and Whip in his “iron grip” – but wasn’t it Michael who made that happen in the first place? Michael set him free, turned him into an accomplice in his prison breaks, thus putting him on a Wanted list, and then casually asked his dad to do him a favour to save his son (and Michael’s own family in the process) from the long arm of the law. Without his intervention, Whip might have been alive. But still in prison. Without Michael’s goodwill (or cool calculation) T-Bag might still be leading a miserable existence. Now he’s back to jail, after only a brief stint of life that made sense. Michael gave them all these good things but took them away as well. He’s been treading a very grey area ground here. Which option is better – to die a free man or to live a convict? One thing is for sure – Michael won’t forget this blood spilled in his name. Blood money. Blood as family ties. Blood on everyone’s hands.

Great thing about Season 5 of “Prison Break” is that you walk away from it feeling sorry for everyone, even the villains. Even Jacob, however repulsive he was in his pathological desire to steal another person’s family, was a misguided man driven by his loneliness as much as his ego. Jacob’s obsession with having a family is like T-Bag’s own. It feels like Jacob was willing to sacrifice Sara if it helped to own Mike, just like he owned Michael. 

“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”. That was cheeky. What a refined mind it took to have devised such an exquisite plan of vengeance. And that little OWL (that’s the species’ name) turning its head sharply to stare at us with its huge yellow eyes was a shocker moment. 

I knew that wise nocturnal bird of prey with fake eyes on the back of its head meant something! Nature, mythology and the show’s own backstory all came together in that symbol. Michael must have looked at the bird in the zoo, noted its natural mimicry technique (probably enhanced by CGI in post-production) and applied the same principle to his new tattoos to fool Jacob. “Behind the eyes” wasn’t a metaphor, it was a literal space behind the hamsa signs on his palms that indeed protected him from the evil and diverted the attention from the other side of his hands, where the real clue was hidden. 

  


Michael with his Planning Look on

Plus it gave the writers a great opportunity to fetishise Wentworth Miller’s graceful hands. 

Additionally, the owl is a symbol of Athena and her wisdom, the goddess that championed Odysseus.

I love that continuity with birds that this show has. Birds are a shorthand for freedom. Owls may well be Season 5’s analogue of the iconic “Prison Break” paper cranes/ducks/swans, though both them and and that little owl played an equally crucial role this season. Jacob knew about paper cranes, so Michael had to choose another bird. Now, where’s my origami scheme? 

Speaking of zoos – there were at least two animal-related proverbs in the last episodes – Lincoln’s “Chickens come home to roost” in “Progeny” and Jacob’s “When the cat is away, the mice will play” in “Behind the Eyes”. Only Michael is not a metaphorical mouse, he’s an owl – who catches mice.

And I’d bet Michael went to the zoo because it reminded him of his situation – he was de facto a prisoner in Jacob’s cell, just like an animal/bird in the cage. 

There’s an OWL made of flowers on that flower bed in front of which their collective family is resting in the final scene. And a crane tattoo on Sara’s shoulder blade. 

A few further cases of ANIMAL SYMBOLISM in this episode: There’s a bird and a (crazy?) seahorse figurines on the shelf in the room of the lake house where Mike is sitting drawing. 

The car that Michael drives in to Jacob’s office has a plate that says KOY (and coy he is). And a horse running wild on its logo. Echoing that comparison of Michael to a crazy horse in an earlier episode. 

The Jacob face tattoo Michael fed to the scanner was surely CGI-ed in post-production because it didn’t look as well-outlined on his hands. In fact, it reminded me of the Master Control Programs from 1982 “Tron”. But who cares. What hell of a collective mind “Prison Break” writers possess to have invented this complex riddle and walk us through it in a well-paced manner. 

Some concepts are repeated throughout the season. Like GAME metaphors. Whip and T-Bag collect a “wild card” (Blue Hawaii), “We’re back to game theory”, “I’m holding the cards”. Or that word CONTINGENCY. As Jacob says: “We can do this all day. Play contingency after contingency”.  Another important idea is PLAN vs SPONTANEITY – people are always unpredictable. And perhaps the most fundamental was the FAKE-REAL opposition throughout the season. There were a lot of signs and artificial objects that stood for real things and their real-life referents – paper planes or drawn planes and ships vs. real planes and ships, Outis vs. Scofield, paper tulip vs. real flowers, the diorama vs. the murder site, stories vs. real life. That was a beautiful way to show the contrast between the artificial and the real 

That warehouse had such a dramatic echo, enhancing the impact of Michael’s words. 

Michael was being very Captain Cold in that warehouse scene, start to finish. Look at Michael’s devilish face when the CIA gets to Jacob. The blinking lights of the police cars cast blue flickers that reflect in his eye (picture 1) – just like in that notable moment from his very first episode of “The Flash” (picture 2).

Very bitter: If Michael’s plan had worked out well, Whip and T-Bag could’ve just disappeared and stayed safe. When the FBI soldiers appeared in the warehouse, T-Bag could’ve been his old self and run away before being caught – but Whip asked him to stay so he could see his face for the last time. So he did. Like a dad would. 

It was probably better that Jacob wasn’t killed by T-Bag at the shipyard – the CIA director made it clear that Michael’s carefully crafted evidence wouldn’t fool them. If he were to learn Michael orchestrated the murder of Poseidon he might have been less permissive. 

“I’VE SHOWN YOU HIS FACE!” I love it how Michael has immense reserves of self-control but lets his anger show in such quick outbursts of screamy outrage. Always dramatic. 

“Here’s one thing that you can do for me” – that is, put Jacob in T-Bag’s cell so that Bagwell could finish his job of taking his life for having stolen that of his son? That’s a very sinister Michael. And a T-Bag that’s got nothing to lose after all the lives he’s already taken. 

I don’t know how appropriate it was to end the season on that gruesome, Old Testament-style revenge scene. Surely, it was a nod to the original seasons. Like, it all ends where it began, Fox River. No all sunshine and roses. 

Wentworth Miller has been insisting that Michael is not as heroic as the fans would like to see him and repeatedly voiced his desire to explore the character’s potential as a bad guy. In “Behind the Eyes” he plays that dark, morally ambiguous side of Michael so truthfully it scares. I don’t envy Michael now – he’ll surely struggle trying to fit into normal life after close to a decade of living on the edge. What is he going to do for a living now? Will he be tempted to fall back onto his old ways and rely on his illegal skills, like Lincoln? I’m sure this would be amazing food for thought and writing/filming – if not for Season 6 of “Prison Break”, then definitely for fanfics. 

All in all, there’s been an amazing two months, every Wednesday (in my country) was a Prison Break Day for me. It was probably my one and only chance to follow this story of brotherhood and tragic heroism as it evolved in real time. I cannot analyse this episode any deeper than I did here because it’s far too close in time yet and because I am as emotionally drained as Michael. All I can do is repeat his own words regarding these characters and this show. “Love you”.

MISC 

Sara’s house in Ithaca is on Nestor Road. Nestor was a character from Homer’s epic poems. 

“I kept telling myself that was gonna be my last lie”. So, that early episode title referred to him. 

“You’re so obsessed with Michael…” Fanfics, please. 

 

“Blood money” is not a debt – beautiful logic, Lincoln.

“This wasn’t the plan. Don’t do it”. “Don’t do it” seemed to be a code between Michael and Whip. 

“This is my fight” – Lincoln refused to agree to this statement and was able to keep Sheba safe. Michael couldn’t save Whip’s life when Whip decided it was his fight too. 

“Strange – to be alive again”. So, metaphorically Michael thought of himself as a dead man all those years? 

In the end, Michael and Jacob are left to fight one against the other. 

Blue Hawaii’s job is to “Bring past back to life, make it real”. That’s why he impersonates Elvis in his free time? 

Do the CIA and the FBI compete against each other? 

I’d bet they cast an actor with greying hair to play deputy director of the CIA to make Michael’s job easier. 

Michael deliberately left his brother out of harm’s way, but not Whip and T-Bag.  

“Scofield said it [the blood] would deliver me”. In fact, it send the poor T-Bag back to his cell.