Prison
Break follows
a man, Michael Scofield, on his mission to break his brother out of prison. Lincoln
Burrows (Michael`s brother) is an innocent man framed for the homicide of the
Vice President's brother and scheduled to be executed at a super-max penitentiary.
Burrows is on death row, and scheduled for execution within the month. It is up
to Scofield to save him with his genius scheme: install himself in the same
prison by holding up a bank and, as the final month ticks away, launch the
escape plan step-by-step to break the both of them out, with his full-body
tattoo acting as his guide; a tattoo which hides the layout of the prison
facility and necessary clues vital to the escape. I will be analyzing Michael’s
leadership style and characters in the first season of Prison Break.
Three
years before Lincoln was imprisoned at Fox River (State Penitentiary), Michael and Lincoln's relationships had grown strained because of their
differing lives. After Lincoln was arrested for Terrence's murder, Michael initially
thought Lincoln was guilty. However, upon discovering that his brother had
taken a $90,000 debt to pay for his education, Michael realized that his
brother was not the man he thought he was and started to see his brother
differently. Michael's discovery of his misperception of his brother and his
brother's sacrifice for him prompts him to change; apologizes to his brother
and decides to help Lincoln as, remembering how Lincoln had always looked after
him when he was a child, Michael swore to do the same. This would become the
reason why Michael would go to such extreme lengths to save his brother from
his death sentence.
Michael
begins to investigate his case full-time; his feeling of guilt and familial
obligation causing him to devote full-time to it. However, all the evidence
pointed to Lincoln as the murderer of Steadman. Over the next three years,
Michael reviewed Lincoln's case countless times but found he couldn't help his
brother via any legal means. After Lincoln's last appeals are denied, Michael
decided to take matters into his own hands. Coincidentally, Michael's firm had
been responsible for retrofitting Fox River; the prison where Lincoln is
incarcerated and being held until his execution. Retrieving the blueprints of
the facility, which the firm, and Michael himself, had access to, from this
information Michael spent a year creating an elaborate plan to break out his
brother.
Over
the course of four months, Michael had specific sections of the prison tattooed
onto his upper body by a tattoo artist, hidden within gothic imagery of
battling angels and demons. His chest features an image of a demon slaying an
angel and contains blueprints of the prison's underground tunnels and
passageways. His back has the angel attacking and killing the demon and hides
an overhead view of the layout of the prison. Michael also analyzed every
detail of the prison and the people inside; inmates he needed to recruit for
his plan and prison staff members he needed to manipulate, to form
relationships with in order to manipulate them.
In order to gain access to Fox River, Michael commits an armed robbery which results in his being sentenced to Fox River. In prison, Michael befriends the prison doctor Sara Tancredi when he pretends to suffer from Type 1 diabetes, in order to gain daily access to the prison's infirmary. The brothers' fight to ward off the execution is aided by their lifelong friend Veronica Donovan, who begins to investigate the conspiracy that put Lincoln in jail. However, they are hindered by covert agents, members of an organization known as The Company. The Company was responsible for framing Lincoln, and they did so because of Lincoln's father, Aldo Burrows, and his former connections to the company. Scofield recruits six other inmates, Fernando Sucre, T-Bag, C-Note, Tweener, John Abruzzi, and Haywire, who come to be known as the Fox River Eight, escape in the season finale. Michael put his plan into action while overcoming various obstacles. He began by having specific objectives he must accomplish in order to build an escape route out of the prison. One the way, Michael needed to recruit a number of people to aid in the escape: his cellmate Sucre to help him dig, mob henchman John Abruzzi to get him on PI ("PI" - which is the maintenance crew) and provide air transport once they escaped, Charles Westmoreland, who he believed to be "D.B. Cooper" and can help finance their lives as fugitives with his hidden $1.5 million dollars in cash (later revealed to be actually $5 million dollars). Michael also had to feign type 1 diabetes, which gave him daily access to the infirmary (the escapees' exit point from the prison) and allow him to build a relationship with Doctor Sara Tancredi, who happens to be the daughter of Frank Tancredi, the Governor of Illinois. After agreeing to help Warden Pope finish his Taj Mahal replica in his office, Michael also forms a friendship with Pope.
However, not everything went according to plan. More people join the escape team than Michael had speculated. This, coupled with other obstacles Michael faces, forces him to reformulate the plan time and time again. These obstacles begin when two of Michael's toes were cut off by Abruzzi, a mafia boss who wants to extract the location of mob informant Fibonacci from Michael. When Michael refused to divulge the information or crack for Abruzzi, he struck a deal: Abruzzi would supply an escape plane in exchange for Fibonacci's address. In addition to this, a portion of a section of Michael's tattooed blueprint on his back is burned off and lost after coming into contact with a steaming hot piece of metal as he hid from a guard, compromising the plan, and eventually landing him in Solitary Confinement for a period of time (when he refused to disclose information as to how he received the burn), dealing a severe blow to his motivation and morale. He later stages "brief insanity" to gain access to the penitentiary's Psych Ward premises to gain contact with one of its insane inhabitants gifted with photographic memory, in order to re-acquire the portion of the tattooed blueprint. These, however, are only a few setbacks he faced in his attempt to break his brother out of prison, and so Michael's cool facade also began to wear off.
Michael's
relationships with Warden Pope and Sara deepened over time, but he eventually
(and regretfully - demonstrated when he threatened the warden in his office)
manipulated both of them in the end to save his brother's life; most
prominently with Sara, who was part of Michael's secondary plan. When his
original plan failed, Michael pleaded Sara to talk to her father. Also, he
later relied on their relationship as, when he fails to steal the key to the
infirmary from her and she finds out about his motive for being in the infirmary,
Michael revealed his escape plan and asked Sara to leave the infirmary door
unlocked on the night of the escape. Sara decides to help Michael and does so
and, with the aid of an unlocked infirmary door, Michael finally succeeded in
helping his brother escape from Fox River, through the window of the infirmary
and escaped over the walls of Fox River with his brother in the nick of time,
but also aided in the escape of six other prisoners.
The leadership style that fits
Michael Scofield is pace-setting and bureaucratic. This
means that Michael Scofield expects and models excellence and
self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as
I do, now.” It also means that he follow rules rigorously, and is constantly
ensuring that his people are following procedures precisely.
He sets both high standards for themselves and
those they are leading. One of the key attributes of this style is the
"lead by example" approach. They don't ask their followers to
do anything they wouldn't do themselves. In the clip attached you will see that
he leads a group through dangerous tunnels following his precise calculations
and coming out on top, after crossing a wire. Although it is dangerous, he
risks his life first for the escape and expect the remaining inmates to do the
same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mj0oYO0tZk
(1:20-1:45)
He is also quick to
identify individuals that are not keeping pace with their expectations.
Poor performers are asked to rise to the occasion, and if they do not, they are
quickly replaced by pacesetting leaders. In the clip attached, you can note
that “T-bag” a member clearly lazier than the rest with a bad attitude is
recognized and eventually gets kicked out of the “Fox River Eight”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS-E8WdpqjM
(3:44-4:59)
He
doesn’t give his team a lot of positive feedback; he simply does not have the
time. On the flip side, ha has no problem jumping right in and taking over
if they think progress is too slow which is how he escapes a different prison
for the second time.
Michael successfully
saves the fate of many, including the people that mean most to him, by staying
true to his leadership qualities of pacesetting and bureaucratic.
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