Prison Break: Sara & Michael for those who don't want to watch the series :)
OK, I have scribbled up this note quickly for the very lovable and sweet dreamydaze who made me smile when she read my Prison Break fic even though she has barely seen any of the episodes. :) I have to say that I can understand why people might not want to sit through hours of violence, trauma, torture, angst and Lincoln (hee hees at tpeej) to catch a glimpse of the compelling pairing that is Michael Scofield and Dr Sara Tancredi.
For my own part, I do think it's worth watching the whole thing because it's a fascinating series and to be honest, the gritty awfulness of some parts, serves to emphasise how wonderful, fleeting and precious the feelings that possibly exist between Michael and Sara are. Nonetheless, below are video clips of all the shippy moments in the series that I liked for people who don't feel like sitting through the whole show. I feel bad for doing it, but well there are some who do like Michael/Sara and would like to read the fics without watching the series, so here we go :)
All clips are from Wentworth Miller Online and michaelandsara.org. It takes ages to go through the different folders, so hopefully this helps to make it easier to get to the shippiness. I shouldn't need to warn anyone but here we go - there are spoilers here. I basically give the whole game away. Ahem.
Updated: Because the sendspace links keep expiring, I am slowly uploading all of these to youtube. Be patient and they'll all be up soon :)
The 'hero' of our story is Michael Scofield, a structural engineer. Although he is successful in his career, his older brother Lincoln Burrows is something of a black sheep despite having been the one to raise Michael. The brothers aren't close, but when Lincoln is charged with murdering the brother of the vice president, the sentence he receives is death and he ends up on death row awaiting execution. The haste with which the sentencing was handed down and is being carried out makes Michael realise that there might be more to this than meets the eye.
It's only after Lincoln's life is put at risk like this that the brothers rediscover the importance of family. Although a somewhat implausible coincidence, we discover that it was Michael's firm that was responsible for designing Fox River - the penitentiary where his brother is being imprisoned.
Michael obtains the blueprints and his plan is to break his brother out. Disguising the blue prints and a huge number of clues and information as a very large tattoo that covers his upper body, he robs a bank in order to get himself imprisoned in the same penitentiary as his brother. In preparation for this, he has put a huge amount of time and effort into his plan. He has meticulously researched high profile inmates in the prison to see how they could be of use to him, he has plotted and schemed.
One of the people he has researched is Dr Sara Tancredi - a young doctor who is the daughter of the very right-wing, pro-death penalty Governor who never grants clemency in death penalty cases. Nonetheless, there are two reasons why Sara could be of use to Michael - her background indicates that she is a bleeding heart, compassionate humanitarian. Secondly, the infirmary is located at the place where Michael intends to break out.
We learn that Michael has something of a hero complex. He likes to help people, it's almost pathological, but at present his obsession and his mission is to help his brother. You can see that he's prepared to do deals with the devil and do whatever it takes to save his brother's life. Each person he encounters is assessed in the context of how he is helpful or a hindrance to the escape plan.
Michael's cellmate Fernando Sucre (armed robbery) is an an ally who becomes a friend. He makes dangerous alliances of convenience in former Chicago crime boss John Abruzzi and the psychotic pedophile T-Bag. There are other quasi-friends in C-Note (former soldier with a heart of gold), Westmoreland (armed robbery but not a 'bad' guy). He is brutalised by people like corrupt Captain Bellick, the leader of the Fox River State Penitentiary guards.
The warden Henry Pope is fundamentally a good man with a soft spot for Michael but Michael also takes advantage of him when planning the escape. As the series unfolds, we learn that Michael is a rather odd person. A genius and very brilliant in terms of logic and mathematics but he's also somewhat creative and artistic - yes a genius. Nonetheless, he often takes a rather simplistic approach to things, thinking that things can be planned and organised in advance. He sometimes fails to make allowances for inevitable variables arising out of the fact that humans are fundamentally unpredictable. In fact, he can't have predicted his own reaction to Sara Tancredi.
There are a number of reasons why the two are probably drawn to one another. They're very similar people in certain ways - compassionate yet easily hurt. Both of them are principled and idealistic but very flawed. I don't think that Michael was fully prepared for the horror of life in a prison. It's possible that the scheme seemed workable in theory but the realty proves to be very different.
Prison life is ugly, brutal and incredibly base. For someone as sensitive and creative as Michael, you can imagine that it's like a hell. The violence alone is very upsetting, but I know that things I found really distressing were the blatant corruption, the brutality and some of the scenes of implied sexual assault are just awful. In Australia we've had news stories about young men sent to prison for traffic offences who are put in with hardened criminals - raped and killed. I'm opposed to the death penalty, but every time I end up in discussions about the criminal justice system, we all know that prison isn't a place for rehabilitation. *sigh* In Prison Break on at least two occasions, we see two young men who are made to share a cell with known rapists. We don't see anything but we know what happens. The prison very much functions on a principle of survival of the fittest.
I'm quite careful about the fic and the comms that I read because I don't find a lot of jokes that people make about prison brutality amusing. I especially don't enjoy jokes about rape. For some reason people seem to think it's ok to make jokes about rape just because a male is the victim - whatever. In any case, this is the mightmarish world into which the rather sensitive Michael Scofield finds himself trapped.
Then he meets Sara Tancredi ......
This is their first encounter in episode one. He's smooth, slightly flirtatious - possibly because he's just using her.
This is a little in a flirtatious moment when he asks if she's complimenting him.
Here, Michael's just had his two of his toes cut off by John Abruzzi. Don't worry, this clip is after the fact. No violence here. Wentworth Miller is amazing here - you really feel for him although there's something weird about the filming. I think there's a blooper because they show him putting his hands up to his face 3 times.
Here, Sara tries to reason with Michael and get him to talk to her. He has a candid moment when he talks about fears, nightmares and monsters. This is where you can really feel that these two are connecting. Both of them are kind of trapped in a nightmare world and see the other two as sane, real and normal.
This is a gorgeous moment between the two when Sara patches Michael up yet again. Presumably they injure him so much so that he keeps needing to seek medical attention and see Sara :) He tries to turn on the charm, she's not impressed because she cares too much.
The following are shippy moments from episode 6 and 7 - Riots episode. These episodes are very significant episodes from the Michael/Sara point of view. There has been prison riot, Sara is trapped in a room - surrounded by prisoners who are trying to attack her. Michael sees her from the monitor and goes to rescue her. It's very romantic because Michael seems to go and rescue Sara simply because he wants to do so. I don't think he has an ulterior motive here. Sarah Wayne Callies who plays Sara Tancredi is excellent here in displaying panic and anxiety but she's also very gusty and tough in the face of what has to be blind terror. I've included a slight longer version as well of the 'trapped' scene because it makes it more suspenseful. Michael reaching down through the smoke to pull Sara out of the room just screams: "Hero! Damned Hero!" and if I wasn't already in love with him before, I was after that. I have a pic spam here.
After the prison riots, Sara expresses gratitude but she realises that Michael's lying to her about something .... I don't think she thinks that Michael's using her, it's just that she realises that he's not being honest about a few things.
Sara kind of goes into stalker mode and digs up information on Michael's past. His former psychiatrist reveals that Michael has a saviour complex. *swoon* Yes, he always has to help other people and he's a genius. Be still my endangered marsupial heart!!
Sara awkwardly tells Michael that he can talk to her if necessary but he tells her that he's no longer that person from before who used to want to help people. Is this true? Is he lying? Has prison really crushed his spirit?
These 3 scenes were what my fic was about.
In this scene, Sara tries to ask Michael who cut his toes off. He won't tell her and makes a snarky comment about her flowers. He's a bit of a git here actually but when he finds out it's her birthday, his tone changes and he becomes sincere again. I love the way you can see him change from being flip to being genuine.
Michael sees that Sara has thrown her flowers away. She's a bit cynical and cool and he tries to tell her that there is still faith and optimism. It's very sweet given his situation.
Oooh beautiful flirty scene in which Michael sees that Sara has still kept his flower.
Oh dear. The path of true love and all ... Sara discovers that Michael is married - to Australian pop star Holly Valance who is playing a Czech girl! :)
Sara is a very blunt sort of girl and confronts Michael about it directly and they have an odd 'breaking up even though we're not even together moment. It's hilarious.
Later, Michael tries to explain that it was basically a marriage of convenience.
In this scene, it's just before Michael is planning to escape. This conversation is his way of thanking and saying farewell to Sara. The handclasp is almost as intimate and romantic as a kiss.
Lincoln is to be executed and Michael appeals to Sara for her help.
Later, she has a moment of false hope when all think that perhaps her father the Governor will grant Lincoln a pardon.
Michael has worn a prison guard's uniform, but while he was wearing it, he was burnt badly. This is where he wakes up. Yes more medical treatment for him.
He refuses to tell Sara who did it, and she of course assumes it was another inmate or worse, a guard.
As a result of Michael's refusal to tell Sara who did it, she escalates it to the warden.
When the warden thinks that it may have been a guard, he puts Michael in solitary confinement. Michael basically pretends to go a little berserk in order to get put into the psych ward. He has reasons for wanting to get access to another prisoner there.
In this scene, Michael again is 'using' Sara to try to get out of the psych ward, and don't forget he also tricked her into thinking that he has gone crazy, but he does give her a little gift here and it's very sweet.
*sigh* This episode is pain and pleasure. They need access to the infirmary and Michael decides to steal the key from Sara. In this scene, he deliberately locks the door so that she has to take her key out and he can see which one it is.
This scene is The Kiss. *swoon* / *sob* Michael is unable to steal the key from Sara and it's so hard to know whether it's because he just couldn't steal it because of missed opportunity, or whether his feelings for Sara overcame his desire to steal the key .... It leaves me agonising about what was real and what wasn't. Poor Sara is so obviously very in love with him here.
In this scene, Sucre asks Michael if he's working a con. Michael says he doesn't know..... and neither do I :(
This scene is so upsetting because you can see that Sara has realised that it was Michael who is behind her missing keys. It makes her assume that the kiss and everything else was about him using her. She might be right, she might be wrong. We really don't know. I have a pic spam here.
In this scene, it's the confrontation between Michael and Sara. He has the guts to confess about the keys. He even confesses that he started out with an intention to use her but that things changed and he developed feelings for her.
I like Sara Tancredi a lot. At first she's almost like a Mary Sue - brave, smart pretty and talented. The thing is we discover that she's very flawed and broken as well. She's a recovering morphine addict and clearly has a lot of emotional issues, not to mention unresolved Family Issues relating to her father. A lot of people don't like her at all. Much as I enjoy recaps at Television Without Pity, I really hate reading the discussion boards there sometimes. There are at least 2 people there who seem to delight in bashing Sara Tancredi's character as venomously as possible. She's fictional! I don't understand why they have to get so nasty. Bottom line - I like her. I like that she's trying, that she has good intentions. I like that she falls over and is battered and bruised but she still tries.
Similarly with Michael, the shallow part of me likes him because he's hot, but I love that he screws up and that he's flawed but he's also trying really hard. He really is a hero who is an ordinary man without any super powers. I find him noble and appealing because he's logical yet creative. I mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of the angsty bad boy. I much prefer flawed heroes and if they're flawed heroes with humour and a sense of the ridiculous then I'm Totally Gone.
There are so many questions I have about this pairing. It's a definite that Michael starts out wanting to use and manipulate Sara, but as the series progresses, he clearly develops feelings for her. Nonetheless, his primary goal is to save his brother. When he asks Sara to compromise her principles and leave the infirmary door unlocked - he has no way of knowing how this will affect her. By that time I think that she is well on her way to being in love with him but is devastated to realise that he was using her and worse, that he is making this huge ask of her.
She does as Michael asks, but in the season finale - she overdoses on morphine - no idea if it's accidental or deliberate. We do not know whether she's alive or dead. Meanwhile, although Michael has escaped with Lincoln and a group of inmates, it looks as though they're about to be captured.
Would these two have been drawn to each other outside of the strange reality in which they met? Did they only like each other because they were the only two sane, normal people in the whole environment? I don't think so - they seem to be genuine kindred spirits, potential soulmates to me. There is humour and things in common for these two. Will they ever be able to overcome the earlier betrayal and rocky start - this is what I don't know? Actually, I don't even know if Sara is still alive although I certainly hope that she is.
OK, combined with the Michael/Sara fan videos i recommended in an earlier post, hopefully this gives background on the pairing for anyone who wants to enjoy the ship without the Other Stuff :) If any of the links don't work, let me know and I'll fix them. I hope people enjoyed the fan videos, I know I did!
For my own part, I do think it's worth watching the whole thing because it's a fascinating series and to be honest, the gritty awfulness of some parts, serves to emphasise how wonderful, fleeting and precious the feelings that possibly exist between Michael and Sara are. Nonetheless, below are video clips of all the shippy moments in the series that I liked for people who don't feel like sitting through the whole show. I feel bad for doing it, but well there are some who do like Michael/Sara and would like to read the fics without watching the series, so here we go :)
All clips are from Wentworth Miller Online and michaelandsara.org. It takes ages to go through the different folders, so hopefully this helps to make it easier to get to the shippiness. I shouldn't need to warn anyone but here we go - there are spoilers here. I basically give the whole game away. Ahem.
Updated: Because the sendspace links keep expiring, I am slowly uploading all of these to youtube. Be patient and they'll all be up soon :)
The 'hero' of our story is Michael Scofield, a structural engineer. Although he is successful in his career, his older brother Lincoln Burrows is something of a black sheep despite having been the one to raise Michael. The brothers aren't close, but when Lincoln is charged with murdering the brother of the vice president, the sentence he receives is death and he ends up on death row awaiting execution. The haste with which the sentencing was handed down and is being carried out makes Michael realise that there might be more to this than meets the eye.
It's only after Lincoln's life is put at risk like this that the brothers rediscover the importance of family. Although a somewhat implausible coincidence, we discover that it was Michael's firm that was responsible for designing Fox River - the penitentiary where his brother is being imprisoned.
Michael obtains the blueprints and his plan is to break his brother out. Disguising the blue prints and a huge number of clues and information as a very large tattoo that covers his upper body, he robs a bank in order to get himself imprisoned in the same penitentiary as his brother. In preparation for this, he has put a huge amount of time and effort into his plan. He has meticulously researched high profile inmates in the prison to see how they could be of use to him, he has plotted and schemed.
One of the people he has researched is Dr Sara Tancredi - a young doctor who is the daughter of the very right-wing, pro-death penalty Governor who never grants clemency in death penalty cases. Nonetheless, there are two reasons why Sara could be of use to Michael - her background indicates that she is a bleeding heart, compassionate humanitarian. Secondly, the infirmary is located at the place where Michael intends to break out.
We learn that Michael has something of a hero complex. He likes to help people, it's almost pathological, but at present his obsession and his mission is to help his brother. You can see that he's prepared to do deals with the devil and do whatever it takes to save his brother's life. Each person he encounters is assessed in the context of how he is helpful or a hindrance to the escape plan.
Michael's cellmate Fernando Sucre (armed robbery) is an an ally who becomes a friend. He makes dangerous alliances of convenience in former Chicago crime boss John Abruzzi and the psychotic pedophile T-Bag. There are other quasi-friends in C-Note (former soldier with a heart of gold), Westmoreland (armed robbery but not a 'bad' guy). He is brutalised by people like corrupt Captain Bellick, the leader of the Fox River State Penitentiary guards.
The warden Henry Pope is fundamentally a good man with a soft spot for Michael but Michael also takes advantage of him when planning the escape. As the series unfolds, we learn that Michael is a rather odd person. A genius and very brilliant in terms of logic and mathematics but he's also somewhat creative and artistic - yes a genius. Nonetheless, he often takes a rather simplistic approach to things, thinking that things can be planned and organised in advance. He sometimes fails to make allowances for inevitable variables arising out of the fact that humans are fundamentally unpredictable. In fact, he can't have predicted his own reaction to Sara Tancredi.
There are a number of reasons why the two are probably drawn to one another. They're very similar people in certain ways - compassionate yet easily hurt. Both of them are principled and idealistic but very flawed. I don't think that Michael was fully prepared for the horror of life in a prison. It's possible that the scheme seemed workable in theory but the realty proves to be very different.
Prison life is ugly, brutal and incredibly base. For someone as sensitive and creative as Michael, you can imagine that it's like a hell. The violence alone is very upsetting, but I know that things I found really distressing were the blatant corruption, the brutality and some of the scenes of implied sexual assault are just awful. In Australia we've had news stories about young men sent to prison for traffic offences who are put in with hardened criminals - raped and killed. I'm opposed to the death penalty, but every time I end up in discussions about the criminal justice system, we all know that prison isn't a place for rehabilitation. *sigh* In Prison Break on at least two occasions, we see two young men who are made to share a cell with known rapists. We don't see anything but we know what happens. The prison very much functions on a principle of survival of the fittest.
I'm quite careful about the fic and the comms that I read because I don't find a lot of jokes that people make about prison brutality amusing. I especially don't enjoy jokes about rape. For some reason people seem to think it's ok to make jokes about rape just because a male is the victim - whatever. In any case, this is the mightmarish world into which the rather sensitive Michael Scofield finds himself trapped.
Then he meets Sara Tancredi ......
This is their first encounter in episode one. He's smooth, slightly flirtatious - possibly because he's just using her.
This is a little in a flirtatious moment when he asks if she's complimenting him.
Here, Michael's just had his two of his toes cut off by John Abruzzi. Don't worry, this clip is after the fact. No violence here. Wentworth Miller is amazing here - you really feel for him although there's something weird about the filming. I think there's a blooper because they show him putting his hands up to his face 3 times.
Here, Sara tries to reason with Michael and get him to talk to her. He has a candid moment when he talks about fears, nightmares and monsters. This is where you can really feel that these two are connecting. Both of them are kind of trapped in a nightmare world and see the other two as sane, real and normal.
This is a gorgeous moment between the two when Sara patches Michael up yet again. Presumably they injure him so much so that he keeps needing to seek medical attention and see Sara :) He tries to turn on the charm, she's not impressed because she cares too much.
The following are shippy moments from episode 6 and 7 - Riots episode. These episodes are very significant episodes from the Michael/Sara point of view. There has been prison riot, Sara is trapped in a room - surrounded by prisoners who are trying to attack her. Michael sees her from the monitor and goes to rescue her. It's very romantic because Michael seems to go and rescue Sara simply because he wants to do so. I don't think he has an ulterior motive here. Sarah Wayne Callies who plays Sara Tancredi is excellent here in displaying panic and anxiety but she's also very gusty and tough in the face of what has to be blind terror. I've included a slight longer version as well of the 'trapped' scene because it makes it more suspenseful. Michael reaching down through the smoke to pull Sara out of the room just screams: "Hero! Damned Hero!" and if I wasn't already in love with him before, I was after that. I have a pic spam here.
After the prison riots, Sara expresses gratitude but she realises that Michael's lying to her about something .... I don't think she thinks that Michael's using her, it's just that she realises that he's not being honest about a few things.
Sara kind of goes into stalker mode and digs up information on Michael's past. His former psychiatrist reveals that Michael has a saviour complex. *swoon* Yes, he always has to help other people and he's a genius. Be still my endangered marsupial heart!!
Sara awkwardly tells Michael that he can talk to her if necessary but he tells her that he's no longer that person from before who used to want to help people. Is this true? Is he lying? Has prison really crushed his spirit?
These 3 scenes were what my fic was about.
In this scene, Sara tries to ask Michael who cut his toes off. He won't tell her and makes a snarky comment about her flowers. He's a bit of a git here actually but when he finds out it's her birthday, his tone changes and he becomes sincere again. I love the way you can see him change from being flip to being genuine.
Michael sees that Sara has thrown her flowers away. She's a bit cynical and cool and he tries to tell her that there is still faith and optimism. It's very sweet given his situation.
Oooh beautiful flirty scene in which Michael sees that Sara has still kept his flower.
Oh dear. The path of true love and all ... Sara discovers that Michael is married - to Australian pop star Holly Valance who is playing a Czech girl! :)
Sara is a very blunt sort of girl and confronts Michael about it directly and they have an odd 'breaking up even though we're not even together moment. It's hilarious.
Later, Michael tries to explain that it was basically a marriage of convenience.
In this scene, it's just before Michael is planning to escape. This conversation is his way of thanking and saying farewell to Sara. The handclasp is almost as intimate and romantic as a kiss.
Lincoln is to be executed and Michael appeals to Sara for her help.
Later, she has a moment of false hope when all think that perhaps her father the Governor will grant Lincoln a pardon.
Michael has worn a prison guard's uniform, but while he was wearing it, he was burnt badly. This is where he wakes up. Yes more medical treatment for him.
He refuses to tell Sara who did it, and she of course assumes it was another inmate or worse, a guard.
As a result of Michael's refusal to tell Sara who did it, she escalates it to the warden.
When the warden thinks that it may have been a guard, he puts Michael in solitary confinement. Michael basically pretends to go a little berserk in order to get put into the psych ward. He has reasons for wanting to get access to another prisoner there.
In this scene, Michael again is 'using' Sara to try to get out of the psych ward, and don't forget he also tricked her into thinking that he has gone crazy, but he does give her a little gift here and it's very sweet.
*sigh* This episode is pain and pleasure. They need access to the infirmary and Michael decides to steal the key from Sara. In this scene, he deliberately locks the door so that she has to take her key out and he can see which one it is.
This scene is The Kiss. *swoon* / *sob* Michael is unable to steal the key from Sara and it's so hard to know whether it's because he just couldn't steal it because of missed opportunity, or whether his feelings for Sara overcame his desire to steal the key .... It leaves me agonising about what was real and what wasn't. Poor Sara is so obviously very in love with him here.
In this scene, Sucre asks Michael if he's working a con. Michael says he doesn't know..... and neither do I :(
This scene is so upsetting because you can see that Sara has realised that it was Michael who is behind her missing keys. It makes her assume that the kiss and everything else was about him using her. She might be right, she might be wrong. We really don't know. I have a pic spam here.
In this scene, it's the confrontation between Michael and Sara. He has the guts to confess about the keys. He even confesses that he started out with an intention to use her but that things changed and he developed feelings for her.
I like Sara Tancredi a lot. At first she's almost like a Mary Sue - brave, smart pretty and talented. The thing is we discover that she's very flawed and broken as well. She's a recovering morphine addict and clearly has a lot of emotional issues, not to mention unresolved Family Issues relating to her father. A lot of people don't like her at all. Much as I enjoy recaps at Television Without Pity, I really hate reading the discussion boards there sometimes. There are at least 2 people there who seem to delight in bashing Sara Tancredi's character as venomously as possible. She's fictional! I don't understand why they have to get so nasty. Bottom line - I like her. I like that she's trying, that she has good intentions. I like that she falls over and is battered and bruised but she still tries.
Similarly with Michael, the shallow part of me likes him because he's hot, but I love that he screws up and that he's flawed but he's also trying really hard. He really is a hero who is an ordinary man without any super powers. I find him noble and appealing because he's logical yet creative. I mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of the angsty bad boy. I much prefer flawed heroes and if they're flawed heroes with humour and a sense of the ridiculous then I'm Totally Gone.
There are so many questions I have about this pairing. It's a definite that Michael starts out wanting to use and manipulate Sara, but as the series progresses, he clearly develops feelings for her. Nonetheless, his primary goal is to save his brother. When he asks Sara to compromise her principles and leave the infirmary door unlocked - he has no way of knowing how this will affect her. By that time I think that she is well on her way to being in love with him but is devastated to realise that he was using her and worse, that he is making this huge ask of her.
She does as Michael asks, but in the season finale - she overdoses on morphine - no idea if it's accidental or deliberate. We do not know whether she's alive or dead. Meanwhile, although Michael has escaped with Lincoln and a group of inmates, it looks as though they're about to be captured.
Would these two have been drawn to each other outside of the strange reality in which they met? Did they only like each other because they were the only two sane, normal people in the whole environment? I don't think so - they seem to be genuine kindred spirits, potential soulmates to me. There is humour and things in common for these two. Will they ever be able to overcome the earlier betrayal and rocky start - this is what I don't know? Actually, I don't even know if Sara is still alive although I certainly hope that she is.
OK, combined with the Michael/Sara fan videos i recommended in an earlier post, hopefully this gives background on the pairing for anyone who wants to enjoy the ship without the Other Stuff :) If any of the links don't work, let me know and I'll fix them. I hope people enjoyed the fan videos, I know I did!