10 Ridiculous TV Premises Everybody Fell For
4. Prison Break Is A Viable Idea For A TV Show
Network television shows exist to sell advertising slots to brands. Sure, great reviews, high ratings and awards buzz are important, but only because they increase the price point that they can charge for that commercial time. Formulaic television like cop shows, homicide procedurals and hospital dramas can often run to ten years or longer: they hit the reset button most weeks, portraying identikit, placeholder characters that can be replaced without damaging the selling point of the show.
However, the whole premise of Prison Break is based around an arc plot with a quick, definitive ending: engineering savant Michael Scofield will break his brother Lincoln, wrongly convicted of murder, out of maximum security prison. The high concept is so elementary that it can be summed up in a two word phrase... which happens to be the title of the show.
There's no formula, no reset button - and it's completely character based, the show formed around those two protagonists. But in order for it to be a successful network show, it has to run and run, which plays directly against the premise of this show.
Think that’s over-analysing matters? Well, everyone who creator Paul Scheuring originally pitched Prison Break to agreed that the idea just didn’t work as an ongoing network TV show. Apparently several suggested that he rework it as a feature film - and at least initially, that included Fox, the network that eventually picked the show up.
The first season, naturally enough, was about the prison break. In order to sustain Prison Break over subsequent seasons, they had to extend the premise. Bracketed by an absurdly complicated political conspiracy plot, season two showed the protagonists on the run, while season three gave them a second, even more hellish prison to escape. The fourth season abandons the prison break plot entirely except for the feature length series finale, which proffered a third prison break scenario.
Incredibly, the show is set to be revived with a fourth prison break storyline, begging the question: why is it that this supposedly brilliant team of prison break specialists can’t stay out of jail?