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Michael Scofield is the fictional main protagonist in the American Television Series , '' Prison Break ''. He is portrayed by Wentworth Miller . The character first appeared in the Series Pilot as a man who stages a bank robbery in order to get sent into the prison where his older brother, Lincoln Burrows ( Dominic Purcell ), is being held until his execution. The premise of ''Prison Break'' revolves around the two brothers and Michael's plan to help Lincoln escape his death sentence. As a principal character, Michael has been featured in every episode of the series. Although both Lincoln and Michael are the protagonists of the series, Michael has been featured more extensively than Lincoln, especially in the first season. Various flashbacks from subsequent episodes provide further insight into the relationship between Michael and his brother, and the reasons behind Michael's determination in helping Lincoln to escape his Death Sentence . In the episode flashbacks, the younger Michael is played by Dylan Minette. BACKGROUND After his father deserted the family, Michael Scofield was given his mother's maiden name as his surname.Dialogue spoken by Paul Adelstein as Paul Kellerman, " Cute Poison ", Prison Break season 1 episode 4. After their mother's death, Lincoln became his guardian and took care of him. Having lost both their parents, Lincoln descended into a life of crime while preventing Michael from suffering the same fate. Michael was a gifted student, and finished his secondary education at Morton East High School in ''. The sixteenth episode of the series, " Brother's Keeper ", reveals Michael and Lincoln's relationship three years before Lincoln was imprisoned at Fox River and the reason why Michael would go to such extreme lengths to save his brother from his death sentence. Michael's discovery of his misperception of his brother and his brother's sacrifice for him prompts him to change and help Lincoln. APPEARANCES Season 1 The opening scene of the series shows Michael's final preparation of his plan to infiltrate Fox River State Penitentiary; the tattooist is applying the finishing touches to Michael's tattoo, which is Prominently Featured in the first season. In order to get into Fox River, Michael stages a bank robbery, pleads No Contest at his trial, and requests that he be sent to the prison nearest to his home. Michael begins his sentence on April 11th, exactly a month before Lincoln is set to be Executed .As shown in the scene where Michael looks at the diary on Henry Pope's desk after the fight with Abruzzi in the Series Premiere . Once there, he scrutinizes every detail regarding the prison and its inhabitants. The season follows Michael as he puts his plan into action while overcoming various obstacles. In the first 13 episodes, Michael is seen to have a specific objective in each episode that he must accomplish in order to build an escape route out of the prison. On the way, he recruits a number of people to aid in the escape: his cellmate Fernando Sucre ( Amaury Nolasco ) to help him dig, mob henchman John Abruzzi ( Peter Stormare ) to get him on PI ( Prison Industries ) and provide air transport once they escape, and Charles Westmoreland ( Muse Watson ), who he believes to be D. B. Cooper and can help finance their lives as fugitives. Michael feigns Type 1 Diabetes , giving him daily access to the infirmary (the escapees' exit point from the prison) and allowing him to build a relationship with Dr. Sara Tancredi ( Sarah Wayne Callies ), who happens to be the daughter of Frank Tancredi ( John Heard ), the Governor Of Illinois . After agreeing to help Warden Henry Pope ( Stacy Keach ) finish his Taj Mahal replica in his office, Michael also forms a friendship with Pope. Michael's relationship with Sara is featured prominently in the nineteenth episode, " The Key ", where he fails to steal the key to the infirmary from her. Although she finds out about his motive for being in the infirmary in the following episode, Sara decides to help Michael by leaving the infirmary door unlocked on the night of the escape. Towards the end of the season, Michael finally succeeds in helping his brother escape from Fox River State Penitentiary, through the window of the infirmary in the nick of time, but also aids the escape of six other prisoners. Season 2 In the second season of the series, the story continues to follow Michael, his brother and other escapees as they try to evade the authorities pursuing them. Away from the prison setting, Michael and Lincoln are frequently featured in scenes together in the first seven episodes. Michael and Lincoln travel together, after the fugitives separate to accomplish each of their individual goals. When they fail to retrieve ( Rockmond Dunbar ), T-Bag ( Robert Knepper ) and Tweener ( Lane Garrison ) . The seventh episode of the season, " Buried " marks the first time Lincoln and Michael separate, when Lincoln decides to go after his son, L. J., who has been released from prison. Michael fails to retrieve the money after being fooled by T-Bag. Nevertheless, Michael continues to execute his plan in order to meet the coyote at the 'Bolshoi Booze' location. Prior to leaving for 'Bolshoi Booze', Michael meets Sara at the location which he encoded in his messages to her inside the origami cranes. Thinking that she had declined his invitation to Panama, Michael goes to meet the Coyote , who has the location of an escape plane to Mexico. There, Michael is reunited with Lincoln, Sucre and his father, Aldo Burrows ( Anthony Denison ). When Aldo is killed by Agent Alexander Mahone ( William Fichtner ), Michael and Lincoln decide to confront " The Company " and the conspiracy, and bid farewell to Sucre, who alights the getaway plane to Mexico. After a brief capture by Mahone, Michael and Lincoln are aided in their escape by Paul Kellerman ( Paul Adelstein ), who turns against "The Company" in an act of self-preservation. Kellerman takes them to Terrence Steadman , the man Lincoln is accused of murdering. Steadman's suicide forces Michael, Lincoln and Kellerman to find Sara since she holds the key to unlocking information that can expose the conspiracy. After Sara joins them, Michael, Lincoln and Kellerman head to Chicago, where Sara's father has hidden the information. On the way, Sara tells Michael that she has fallen in love with him and later in the same episode Michael reveals that he feels the same. With the help of the former Fox River warden Henry Pope, Michael and Sara succeed in getting the USB drive in Frank Tancredi 's private locker. After leaving Kellerman behind, Lincoln, Michael and Sara soon found that the recorded conversation on the USB could not be used as evidence due to its modified time-stamp. They decide to blackmail Reynolds instead. When this also fails, Michael and Lincoln are forced to escape to Panama but are forced to leave Sara behind after she is arrested. Upon discovering that T-Bag is in Panama City , Michael decides to go and capture him, which he Successfully Does . However, when Michael returns his boat with Westmoreland's money to find Lincoln missing, he receives a call from Mahone, who demands the boat and the money in exchange for Lincoln's life. Michael outsmarts Mahone and escapes with Lincoln. At his new boat, Michael and Lincoln are reunited with Sara, who tells them that Lincoln has been exonerated after Kellerman's testimony. Their happiness is short-lived when Agent Kim ( Reggie Lee ) arrives and threatens to kill Lincoln and take Michael to Sona, which causes Sara to shoot him. As the three flee from the scene with the police pursuing them, Michael and Sara separate from Lincoln and end up surrounded in a small isolated Shack . After expressing their love for each other, they leave the shack. Unbeknownst to Sara, Michael confesses to Kim's killing and is arrested in her place. Michael is then imprisoned at the Penitenciaría Federal de Sona (Sona Federal Penitentiary). SEASON 3 In the first seventeen minutes, Michael sees a man be killed by another inmate, he makes some more enemies at SONA, Mahone requests his help in escaping for which he refuses and Lincoln informing him of Sara's mysterious disappearance and his prison transfer that will happen the following day. CHARACTERISTICS In the flashback episode of the first season, "Brother's Keeper", Michael is shown to be proud and successful. He looks down on his brother and thinks of him as a "ne'er-do-well". Brother's Keeper , Prison Break Season 1 DVD commentary, Paul Scheuring and cast. After finding out about Lincoln's $90,000 debt to pay for his education, however, Michael starts to see his brother differently. According to creator Paul Scheuring , this was emphasized through the actors' performance in their different heights and the use of camera angles. His feeling of guilt and familial obligation causes him to devote all his time to his brother's case. After he cannot help his brother via any legal means and Lincoln's last Appeal s are denied, Michael decides to take matters into his own hands. Michael has been clinically diagnosed with Low Latent Inhibition , a condition in which his Brain is more open to incoming Stimuli in the surrounding environment. As a result he is unable to block out peripheral information and instead processes every aspect and detail of any given stimulus. This, combined with a high IQ , as a psychiatrist explains in the episode " Tweener ", theoretically makes him a creative Genius . Due to a feeling of abandonment and abuse during childhood, Michael has absolutely no sense of Self-worth . With the low latent inhibition, this has made him become very attuned to all the suffering around him. As a result of being unable to block out other people's suffering, he is extremely Empathetic and Altruistic towards other people's Emotion s; he is more concerned with other people's welfare than his own. Michael's enhanced creative ability allows him to design a tattoo with a hidden blueprint of Fox River Penitentiary that normal people cannot discern. Over the course of four months, Michael had specific sections of the prison Tattoo ed onto his upper body, hidden within Gothic imagery. Each part of his tattoo had to be precise, which provoked the tattooist's comment to Mahone about Michael being a "detail Nazi" and that the tattoo was "some sort of inside joke" that only he got.Dialogue spoken by Sid (Michael's tattooist), " Manhunt ", Prison Break season 2 episode 1. As shown in each episode of the first season, Michael is meticulous and well-prepared as he uses his knowledge and intellect to achieve each step of his escape plan. The first three episodes of the second season demonstrate again the level of intricacy of Michael's plan. Prior to his incarceration at Fox River, Michael prepared an alternate escape route outside the prison in the event that he and his brother fail to board Abruzzi's getaway plane. His hidden cache in Oswego proves to be useful in "Manhunt". CONCEPT AND CREATION Character creation The character was conceived after Paul Scheuring, ''Prison Break'''s creator, developed an idea by another producer, about a man who deliberately imprisons himself to break somebody out. From the initial proposal, Scheuring then justified the character and story by making him a structural engineer who worked at the architecture firm that had access to the prison's blueprints." Inside Prison Break: Chain male " '' Sydney Morning Herald ''. February 1 , 2006 . Retrieved on October 22 , 2006 . Portrayal Michael Scofield is portrayed by Wentworth Miller. For most of the first season of the show, Miller utilized a limited range of facial expressions which generated both positive and negative criticisms. It was for this performance in the first season that Miller was nominated for a ''. August 20 , 2006 . Retrieved on October 22 , 2006 . In the show's second season, the character of Michael Scofield shows a wider range of emotions as Miller explains, "He's going to have some lighter, more colorful shades... now that he's off with his brother, around whom I think Michael is willing to show a side of himself that he's not with others, there's a lot more that I can explore."" Wentworth Miller on Prison Break Season Two " ''CanMag''. August 17 , 2006 . Retrieved on October 22 , 2006 . PRODUCTION Tattoo The tattoo, which covers the entire upper body of Michael Scofield, is featured extensively in the first season of the show and to a lesser extent in the second season. It contributes a major part to the plot of the series, containing various details of the protagonist's plan to escape from prison and from the country. Incorporated within the tattoo are the blueprints of the prison in which the protagonists are incarcerated during the first season. Wentworth Miller, who plays Michael Scofield, has commented that questions about the tattoo are amongst the most frequently asked questions when he is interviewed about the show.Ryan, M., " Wentworth Miller: Don't ask about the tattoo ", '' Chicago Tribune ''. March 16, 2006. Retrieved on March 30, 2007. Other In the series pilot, Michael's jail entrance form held by Bellick shows that the character was born on September 8 , 1978 in Toledo, Ohio . However, the birthdate is inconsistent with the characters' dialogue in later episodes. In " By The Skin And The Teeth ", Michael remarks to Lincoln that their father left them thirty years ago. Since the series is set in the year 2005," Wash ", ''Prison Break'' season 2 episode 18. the birthdate shown on the prop cannot be considered as Canon . Thus Michael is 27 years old since last episode in Season 2, Sona , took place on June 17th 2005. This is according to the last three messages posted on europeangoldfinch.net http://www.europeangoldfinch.net/home.htm# and the fact that it took Michael twenty-four hours to reach Mahone by boat. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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