We watched season one of Prison Break, we’ll admit it, but how many times can these guys escape from a Prison?

We probably just made ourselves look like idiots by not understanding some perfectly logical plot twist (Michael can only live without prison food for 6 weeks), so we’ll get down to the shit.

You remember when Sarah Wayne Callies, who played a hot doctor on the show got her head cut off and sent to the guy who played Dracula in Blade III (character names for Prison Break fans: Dr. Sara’s head in Lincoln’s hands)?

That was the result of a really nasty contract fallout between Callies and Fox. Callies was pregnant and needed leave and the Prison Break creators were planning to kill off her character towards the end of season three. The initial plan was to give her character about 13 episodes to build to the point of death, closing the emotional arc for fans of the show.

Sadly, the stipulations in her contract stated that if she wasn’t picked up for the full 22 episode season, she was allowed to renegotiate her contract. She wouldn’t.

Prison Break executive producer Matt Olmstead explained this to TV Guide:

It looked like a pretty good deal on the face of it. We definitely came up in money. Thirteen episodes would have allowed the character to have a proper exit. We were willing to push the start date back [to accommodate her maternity leave], which would have meant her coming in [around] Episode 10, but that wasn’t accepted. So then we offered to come up [to Canada] before she gave birth and film at her house. Pretty good money and she wouldn’t even have to leave her house. That wasn’t accepted. So it was a little curious to me and to others why she was taking such a hard stance. [Maybe] she felt that she was made certain assurances about being part of the show this season. And in fairness to her, those assurances were given, because she was such a valuable member of the show…. Also, she’s up [in Canada]. She’s comfortable. She’s starting a family. Maybe she didn’t want to have to fly down and have to do this stuff. Or maybe she felt like she wanted to be part of the show [full time], not just half the season. Perhaps she felt a little jilted. Our [original] plan was to definitely keep her for [all of] Season 3, but after a couple of times of getting it kicked back from the network, we had to come up with a new idea and that necessitated her character being killed.

After that nasty…um…break, imagine our surprise when TV guide turned around and reported that Dr. Sara will be returning this season.

WTF, mates?

Turns out TV Guide went right back to Olmstead with the same question:

It was kind of a confluence of events. We saw on the message boards that a lot of fans were wondering if she really was dead. And then that led to conversations of, “Well, what if she isn’t?” But then we put that on the backburner and moved forward with what we had to do, because it wasn’t anything that could be dealt with right then. And then when we came back after the strike and we realized that we were not going to finish Season 3… we creatively decided to blow it all out, jump forward in the timeline and get a fresh start. And, so, when we pitched that, a lot of those elements remained, but we were still looking for what that emotional core was for Michael. We were kind of exactly where we were in the beginning of Season 3, which led to her demise, quote unquote. So we went back and revisited [the idea of bringing her back to life]. And once we started talking about it, it was mentioned again that fans are still wondering about her. And when people who are fans of the show — and of Sarah — are asking, “Is she really dead?”, what they’re saying, essentially, is, “I hope she’s not dead.”

And, we come full circle: this is why we don’t watch Prison Break.

There’s no real mention of the contract, the fallout, the anything that resulted in a “sort of” killing of a main character in the series.

Anytime a conflict like this surfaces then dissipates, you have to wonder whose wheels are getting greased and with whose money…