A great serial gone wrong

Nov 16, 2010 - akshay rajmohan

Ditch It: Prison Break
One of the greatest strengths of story telling on TV is that you can take a great story and spread it over a period of 3-6 months and keep your viewers glued to their television screens.

When Prison Break first started, I swore to myself that this is as good as TV programming can get. I even formed a small unit of friends, much like Michael Scofield’s roost of convicts and religiously watched every episode of the first season.
The season finale came and we felt good about it. Then the second season began and after every episode I was left with a bad taste in my mouth, like after eating stale pudding. And then season three began and I was convinced Ekta Kapoor’s team of able bodied writers had taken a crack at writing the show.
They lost a fan when they turned tables and sent in Lincoln Burrows to get Scofield out this time around.
I’m all for prolonging a TV show, but when you’re out of fresh ideas and you pull out a switcheroo from your bag of tricks, it becomes the aforementioned ancient pudding.
If you have a great idea, let it play out until it’s fresh and original, if there isn’t much else you can do with it, just let it be. As a viewer, I feel if I just had one season of a great show than a million seasons of a mediocre show, I’d be a fan for life.
Prison Break even tried to redeem itself by releasing the Prison Break: The Conspiracy videogame, a feeble attempt that failed miserably in resuscitating a one time great IP (intellectual property). R.I.P Prison Break.
— The writer is a BA graduate

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