Episode Recap: "Bang and Burn"

OK, color me a little bit confused. When I asked Jodi Lyn O'Keefe about the "fall finale" — which at the time was to air in mid-December, a few episodes from now — she mentioned the helicopter stunts. Then, thanks to the strike and Fox's rejiggered schedule, this week's episode was dubbed the "fall finale." And yet there the helicopters are...? This is something for me to figure out, but I had to share my puzzlement. [Editor's note: I have since been told that Jodi was mistaken when recounting the episode.] On with the recap!

I feel like so much has happened in the past three hours, after some middling, poky episodes. All of a sudden, Gretchen and the Company have some quasimilitary force at their disposal? Complete with a steely bunker for strategic plotting and unrolling maps?

I liked the sequence where Michael labored to get word to Lincoln at the same time Lincoln was trying to get word to Michael about Whistler's secret agenda. Good tension. Imagine if swaggering Sammy didn't bother to tell Lechero who was on the phone.

All of a sudden there's a tunnel beneath decrepit Sona, accessible by state-of-the-art keypads, both of which Lechero knows the code for? He never thought to round up his squad of goons to dig through the rubble? Or is the point that even if they did get outside, they didn't have a compromised section of fence to race for?

Lincoln and Sucre recording the gunshots — is that for something later? Or is that another clue that this episode was some sort of mishmash of "Bang and Burn" and the actual "fall finale"? I know, I'm getting caught up in that again. Sorry.

I sense that Dominic Purcell's want for Linc to get hot and heavy with Sofia may be a step closer to fruition now that Whistler's lady feels all betrayed and such by "Gary Miller." What does this guy know, what is he capable of doing, with the stakes so high for "the General" and his Company to bust him out? Seeing as how it almost worked (and that it would have were Michael not locked up in Sona), why wasn't "bang and burn" Plan A from the get-go?

Then there is Mahone. I can't tell if he was able to save his bacon as he eventually reached some sort of lucidity at the end there. Did Lang see him coming around, or did she toss the drugs as a form of giving up on him? Again, I can't tell.

This was the last new episode for a while, gang, until Jan. 14. Good cliff-hanger.
Source: TVguide.com