Prison Break: Evil Superman Teabag

Fox Network's Prison Break is an absolutely suberb show, and except for ABC's Lost, I think it is the best TV show out there right now. The premise is that Lincoln Burroughs was framed for killing the Vice President, and his brother, a genius structural engineer, goes into prison to break him out. The end of the first season was a blast where eight prisoners did manage to escape. Do to inter-party rivalry (and hatred) one of the escapees, T-Bag gets his hand chopped off by an axe. In season 2, we find he survives. And that is what this post is about.

First off, let's just take the part where his hand is chopped off by a wood axe. The escapees have been running like prey through the night, and then you loose a hand (and all the nerve endings that go with it). I would bet good money that a person would easily pass out and never wake up again if his hand is just chopped off. Add that on top to loss of sleep and exhaustion, and you have quite a combo. Well Ol' T-Bag doesn't pass out (at least not for long), and quickly picks up his hand and runs off before the search dogs come get him.

So anyway, T-Bag has his radial artery and ulnar artery bleeding for a few hours... while he runs. Let's also suppose that he was lucky enough to have his blood clot on two major artieries (which people use to commit suicide). That is a lot of blood loss. When you lose blood, bad things happen. You pass out. You become delerious. Dizzy. Keeping away from search dogs on your blood scent is quite a feat when your fucking hand has just been chopped off.

At daybreak, a few hours later, T-Bag stumbles upon a campsite with a cooler full of ice. He carefully wraps his bloody hand in the cooler and carries it off. Before he runs off, the young couple camping come out of their tent. T-Bag threatens them that if they call the cops he will kill them. Just for sake of argument, I will attribute this stupidity to extraordinary blood loss and exhaustion. If he just ran off, the probably would not have had a good look at T-Bag, but now they have. More importantly they now know his condition.

T-Bag finally gets to a small town with a veternarian, and he forces the vet with a screwdriver shiv to sow his hand back on. This is where it gets stupid. No. I am serious.

You are a doctor. A man with a hand in a cooler comes in and forces you at knife point to sow his hand back on. He won't let you call an ambulance to take him to a proper facility. He also won't take anesthesia when you operate. Do you: (a) act like you are gathering supplies and bolt out the door or through a window hoping that a man without a hand can't catch you, (b) slice the fucker's throat when you use the scalpal to cut away the dead, infected flesh, (c) use an acid, caustic, alcohol, or even hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound and throw it in the psycho's eyes and then run away, or (d) do what the psycho says and sew his hand back on.

Well the vet decides to be a good samaritan and carefully take a few hours to clean the wound and sow T-Bag's hand back on. T-Bag of course moves around like his bone and flesh do not have a gap between them, and then again holds the vet at knife point. Now I will give the vet this credit: he did try and run away when T-Bag told him the vet was going to die, by running backwards, trying to place a small metal cart in between them, and backing up against a sink (in his own fucking office). Give me a break, even a fat kid could get away.

Now before we kill the vet. Let's just compare the campgoers to the vet. Neither know who T-Bag is. Both have reason to call the cops. The campgoers gave T-Bag ice and lived. The vet took hours to sew his hand back on, and gets to die. Let's add another piece to this. If T-Bag kills him most likely he will get a head start for a couple hours until the dead vet's wife wonders where he is, calls the cops, etc. The cops come and find T-Bag's fingerprints everywhere. If T-Bag just ties him up. The same thing happens. Sure, the identification might be a little quicker, but still T-Bag only gets a few hours head start, especially since he stole the vet's truck. All in all, it feels like "evil" was just added for the sake of adding shock factor and evil.

Then the vet gets tied down on his operating table and is lethally injected. The End.

I have to say for such a good show, they really just added all sorts of fantastic to T-Bag's story...in my opinion, to the point of ridiculousness. I get that sometimes a railroad of stupidity is needed for one theme, T-Bag is indeed evil, but come on. The Fox intern that came up with this shit could have done better. At least the others' stories make a whole lot more sense without adding such nonsense.