Alexander Mahone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prison Break character
Image:Agent Alexander Mahone Prison Break.jpg Agent Alexander Mahone
Alexander Mahone
First appearance:	S2E01
Season:	2, 3 Episode Count = 35
Portrayed by:	William Fichtner
Family:	Pam Mahone (ex-wife) Cameron (son)

Alexander Mahone is a fictional character from the American television series Prison Break. He is played by William Fichtner. The character was introduced to the series in the premiere episode of the second season of the series. He plays a prominent role in the second season and has appeared in every episode so far. Mahone has been a Special Agent of the FBI, specializing in manhunts for escaped prisoners for 14 years.^[1] After the protagonist of the series, Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller), successfully orchestrated the escape of eight prisoners from Fox River State Penitentiary, Mahone is assigned to spearhead the task force assembled to bring in the fugitives. He is 42 years old.

Contents 1 Background 2 Appearances 2.1 Season 2 2.2 Season 3 3 Characteristics 4 Concept and creation 4.1 Character creation 4.2 William Fichtner 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Background

In "Unearthed", Mahone's past is revealed by Michael Scofield under the guise of a federal agent. It is learned that Agent Mahone was not always the insensitive killer that he is now, but once was a very loving spouse to his ex-wife Pam. This all changed after the Oscar Shales manhunt, when he became withdrawn, aggressive, and very interested in gardening. The interest in gardening was a used as a way to bury Oscar Shales, whom he murdered, in his own yard.

[edit] Appearances

The character was introduced in the second season premiere and has appeared in every episode since becoming the main antagonist of Season 2 to Scofield and Burrows.

[edit] Season 2

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can (March 2008).

Mahone is first seen preparing for the press conference concerning the eight escapees from Fox River State Penitentiary. After reviewing the information on the eight fugitives, he decides to concentrate his efforts on Michael Scofield, who had been identified as the mastermind behind the breakout, and orders his subordinates to find out everything about Michael. He quickly tracks the escapees to Oswego, Illinois towards the end of the season premiere, "Manhunt".

Mahone continues to follow the escapees in the next six episodes but his manhunt comes to a temporary halt when he is questioned for the deaths of the two fugitives he captured. In the eighth episode of the season, "Dead Fall", Mahone's motive behind his execution of Tweener (played by Lane Garrison) and his provocation of John Abruzzi's resistance to arrest, which led to his death, is revealed to be blackmail from Paul Kellerman (played by Paul Adelstein) and "The Company". Kellerman knows the truth about Shales, and is forcing Mahone to kill all the escapees in exchange for his silence. Although he is hesitant, Mahone agrees when "the Company" threatens his family. From this episode onwards, Mahone appears or shares dialogue with Kellerman in the same scene in almost every episode. However, in the thirteenth episode of the season, "The Killing Box", Mahone is shot in the chest by Kellerman, who betrays him and Agent Kim (played by Reggie Lee). He survives and decides that he no longer wants to continue his manhunt in "John Doe". However, Mahone is forced to return to his job when his son is injured in an apparent car accident actually orchestrated by one of Kim's agents (coincidentally, the same agent who murdered Veronica Donovan and attempted the murder of Sara Tancredi). Before returning, however, he murders the agent who arranged the car accident and stuffs his body in his car trunk.

Returning to his F.B.I. field office in Chicago in the following episode, Mahone receives an update from other agents and quickly figures out that Michael and Lincoln's proclamation of innocence video was a way to contact Sara Tancredi (played by Sarah Wayne Callies) despite Michael, Lincoln and Kellerman's attempts to make him think they were going after President Reynolds. Although he deciphers their rendezvous location, the fugitives leave before he reaches them. Mahone is also informed by Agent Wheeler that Internal Affairs is investigating him. After Charles "Haywire" Patoshik murders a civilian, both Wheeler and Agent Kim pressurize Mahone to catch him. Agent Kim, who fears Haywire has information on the conspiracy, asks Mahone to kill him. Mahone resorts to Brad Bellick, who helped him decipher Michael's code, to find Haywire, and uses his connections with "The Company" (presumably) to have Bellick released from Fox River upon a Habeas Corpus hearing. After Bellick chases Haywire up a grain mill, Mahone climbs the mill and talks Haywire into killing himself.

The next episode finds Mahone pursuing Benjamin Miles "C-Note" Franklin in Minnesota. Before beginning the pursuit, he contacts his son Cameron, who is still in the hospital, marking the first actual appearance of his son. C-Note narrowly evades Mahone, but later due to his daughter Dede's declining condition, C-Note contacts Mahone and offers to turn himself in, if his wife Kacee will be released from prison. In return, C-Note offers information on Michael. Mahone agrees, and is later seen placing a 'Get Well' gift by Dede's bedside before escorting C-Note out of the hospital.

Later in his holding cell while C-Note attempts to contact Michael through the website europeangoldfinch.net, Agent Kim calls Mahone with confirmed location of Michael hence requires of Mahone to eliminate C-Note as he would be no longer required. Mahone reluctantly tells C-Note that in order to save his wife and daughter, he will accept a package and should use whatever is inside. Later, C-Note receives the package and opens it to find a rope tied with a hangman's noose inside.

Over the next few episodes, Mahone's sanity starts to deteriorate from his determination to catch Michael and Lincoln and his evident drug problem. After Sara is arrested, and Michael and Lincoln have boarded a ship to Panama, Mahone completely loses it trying to think of where Michael and Lincoln could have gone. After solving the last of Michael's Tattoo plans, he realizes the two are in Panama, and he lures Michael and Lincoln into a trap by impersonating Sucre over EuropeanGoldFinch.net. Mahone successfully captures Lincoln and holds him in a warehouse. He later contacts Michael and orders him to surrender Westmoreland's money and his boat. Michael with nothing left to do agrees, however he has a group of Panamanians purchase him another boat and plants drugs in the Christina Rose beforehand. After an attempted set up for Bill Kim, Mahone runs for the boat and speeds away, only to later be arrested at a dock on drug charges. Mahone is next seen exiting a prisoner transport vehicle next to Michael's. He is thrown into Sona along with Michael and Bellick.

[edit] Season 3

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can (March 2008).

In Orientación Mahone attempts to convince Michael Scofield to form a partnership while they are both in the dangerous prison, but Michael refuses since Mahone killed his father. However, when Michael is forced into a fight with another inmate Mahone gives him advice, and even steps in and kills the other inmate when he is about to stab Michael with a shank. In Fire/Water Mahone learns about the bounty placed on fellow inmate James Whistler, and manages to find him and deliver him to prison boss Lechero. However, Lechero removes the bounty as a favor to Michael, after Michael restores water to the prison. As time passes within the prison, Mahone begins to suffer from withdrawal from his medication, becoming increasingly irrational and spastic. When his state appointed lawyer informs him that his trial is almost a full year away, Mahone gets violent, prompting guards to get involved.

After Whistler questions him about Scofield, Mahone confronts Michael about his purpose in the prison, correctly deducing that Michael is planning to break Whistler out. Mahone wants in on the escape, but Michael first refuses. Later, as Michael's resolve to escape the prison is strengthened, he agrees to let Mahone in on the plan, and immediately sets him on the task to find a black felt-tip pen. At this point Mahone has started hallucinating from withdrawal, and begins to see visions of Haywire, who urges him to kill Michael, stating that he cannot be trusted. Mahone is approached by Nieves, and later T-Bag, with offers to give him heroin to calm himself, and eventually caves in and uses it. In a drug-induced euphoric state, Mahone then confronts Michael with a shank, informing him that he will not be as easily tricked as the other prisoners and that he will definitely be escaping with Michael, or else he will kill him. In "Interference", Mahone saves the plan, mentioning a coffee cup he managed to acquire in the prison. As the guards are drinking from them, if they can have the cup, they can have a guard. Before he can join in the escape plan, however, Agent Lang approaches him with an offer from Internal Affairs; if he testifies against the Company, he will be released from Sona. Mahone agrees, and is released from Sona, but by this time, he has become greatly agitated by his withdrawal symptoms, and he begins to show signs of obsessive paranoia. He is eventually no longer able to hide signs of his drug addiction, which damages the credibility of his testimony. Consequently, he is forced to return to Sona.

After his return, he is approached by T-Bag to challenge Sammy by throwing down the chicken foot, and kill him by "do[ing] that one,that... neck thing(snapping the neck from a clinch)", in return for a free supply of heroin. Alex does not answer, but when T-Bag visits him to deliver his dose, he finds him suffering badly from withdrawal symptoms, shaking, and sweating. After Alex declines the syringe, T-Bag lectures him on how withdrawal is the worst way to die, and that he won't help him with another dose, unless Alex takes Sammy on. After Mahone declines by saying "See you on the other side...", T-Bag knocks him to the ground, kicks him several times, and mocks him on his fall from favor, then leaves him convulsing on the cell floor. Mahone is among the 4 would-be escapees that actually make it out (Lechero is shot; T-Bag and Bellick get caught due to Michael setting them up to be caught). Mahone may have been tricked too, but knowing Michael decided it would be safer to follow him. After escaping prison, Mahone and the escapees run through the woods nearby the beach and got to carry Whistler after he falls on his ankle. When arriving to a warehouse safely along with his fellow escapes, Mahone is about to leave but is stopped by Lincoln, who points a gun at his head. Michael tries to stop his brother, but Linc wants to revenge the death of his father. Mahone replies that if it wasn't Linc's dad, it would've been his own family, referring to the Company. Mahone is able to escape the warehouse after Whistler jumps through a window, leaving the two brothers again. In the following episode "The Art of the Deal" Mahone is seen waiting in a bar for someone most of the episode. Later, Gretchen and Whistler meet him there and ask him to join them in some task that is not revealed to the viewers. Mahone agrees. He is next seen in a scene sitting in the back seat of a car with Gretchen and Whistler.

[edit] Characteristics

Alexander Mahone is depicted in the series as serious and intelligent. In his first appearance in the series, Mahone quickly proves his status as a capable adversary against Michael when he discovers the secret of his tattoos and profiles Michael's meticulous scheme while combing through his former apartment. His first step in cracking the code leads him to the location of Michael's supplies stockpile just moments after the fugitives have excavated it. This demonstrates Mahone's intellect, and his analysis and interpretation of his surroundings which is similar to Michael's. Craig Blanchard from the The San Diego Union-Tribune describes Michael as the "Brains of the Operation" and Mahone as his "'Arch nemesis', sort of his equal on the other side of the law".^[2]

His thoroughness and excellent investigation skills allow him to extrapolate the fugitives' location. In the third episode of the second season, the protagonist remarks, "It's like he knows where we're going, what we're thinking."^[3] The ability of Mahone to move from various locations in a short amount of time prompts Andy Dehnart from MSNBC to comment that the character "sometimes magically appeared wherever the convicts happened to be, apparently possessing the power of teleportation".^[4]

The skill Mahone shows in his work is portrayed through his constant movement from his office to the field but is rarely featured in his home. He is shown to be frustrated and agitated when Michael outwits him. In "First Down", after Michael tries to fool the authorities about his brother's and his deaths, Mahone refuses to believe it and shouts at his subordinates to keep searching for the two fugitives.

Mahone, like the other main characters in the series, is not a straightforward character and the character's history is revealed as the series progresses. According to the series' creator Paul Scheuring, the writers try to let all the characters in the show "inhabit a gray area".^[5] Regarding the frequent intake of pills by Mahone, the series' executive producer and writer Matt Olmstead is quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying:

“

Mahone has certain things in his past, as far as what he's done in the service of his country, things he's done around the world - he's starting to hear footsteps from all of that. It doesn't throw him off his game at all but the sum total of his life does begin to present itself.[6]

”

Mahone's anxiety is especially evident when he reaches for his midazolam pills hidden inside his pen. In "Map 1213", when Mahone runs out of his pills, he is shown to be highly tense and easily agitated. In regards to the erratic behaviour of his character, Fichtner comments, "The more twisted the better! Who wants to play a straight-away FBI guy?" He further elaborates that the actions that Mahone takes are affected by "some of the things that Mahone has in the back of his closet — and in the back of his mind, the voices he is hearing about his own life".^[7]

Dehnart from MSNBC observes that Mahone "as played by William Fichtner, always seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown".^[4] In "Unearthed", Mahone is unnerved when Michael finds out about the fugitive, Oscar Shales, who he had killed and buried. His paranoia about the murdered Oscar Shales buried in his yard leads him to excavate the site.

One of the major twists of the series was Mahone's decision to execute the captured Tweener in "Buried". This was followed by a meeting in the following episode between Mahone and one of the show's villains, Paul Kellerman. Although Mahone shows his reluctance to kill all the fugitives as ordered by Kellerman, he complies when Kellerman threatens to expose his secret about Oscar Shales. The comparison between the characters Michael Scofield and Alexander Mahone is explored further in "Rendezvous", where Mahone says to Michael, "There's one big difference between you and I, Michael. You just proved it. You can't kill. And that's what's gonna to take to stop me because I don't have the same reservations. I can't."^[8] His willingness to commit murder in order to preserve his life is shown when Michael asks if he would kill two innocent men to "get his life back", and he replies, "Absolutely."^[9] However, even though Mahone would kill innocent men to protect himself, he does have remorse over it. This is evidenced when he killed Tweener. Before he killed Tweener he told him that he earlier told a half lie about Oscar Shales. When Mahone first talks to Tweener he tells him that he never caught Shales, but he does tell him about his drugs. Before he shoots Tweener he begs for his forgiveness.

In Season 3, as Mahone knows the terrible situation of the prison (Sona) in Panama. He misses his family, and also he needs his midazolam, so he relies on Scofield for breaking out of Sona. While in Sona and unable to get his pills, he begins to suffer from withdrawal and turns to heroin as a substitute. He later forces himself to go without it, but the effects of withdrawal are occasionally evident in his character.

[edit] Concept and creation

[edit] Character creation

The character of Alexander Mahone was not in the original plan of the Prison Break staff writers for the second season. The concept of the character began with a suggestion made by Peter Liguori, the Fox Broadcasting Company Entertainment president. After the writers approached the Fox network with their version of Prison Break's second season, it was well received but a suggestion was made by Liguori to include a fugitive pursuer who was "not corrupt"; a character who is "like the Tommy Lee Jones character in The Fugitive".^[6]

Along with Paul Kellerman and Brad Bellick, Alexander Mahone became a fugitive hunter at the start of the second season. The writers however, were aware of the increasing amount of antagonists in the show which led to Olmstead's remark in an interview, "If there are too many people pursuing them, [the pursuers] are rendered inept because they’re not all catching our convicts, and you can only have so many close calls." Thus, the writers decided immediately that the character of Alexander Mahone was to be a "very formidable" nemesis for the protagonists and the "flip side of Michael Scofield".^[6] It can clearly be seen in the early episodes that Mahone is capable of anticipating Scofield's actions, deciphering several of his tattoos. In a press conference, Scheuring acknowledges the reference made between Mahone and Les Miserables's character, Inspector Javert, "He certainly is Javert to Michael's Valjean, but you can express it however you want. He's his nemesis."^[5]

[edit] William Fichtner

The role of Alexander Mahone was not cast until a few days before the principal photography for the premiere episode of the second season was scheduled to start.^[10] William Fichtner, who was previously involved with the television series Invasion, was approached with the scripts of the first two episodes of the second season. He subsequently joined the cast of Prison Break as F.B.I. Agent Alexander Mahone even though he did not intend to appear in another television series after working on Invasion in the previous year.^[7] Fichtner admitted in an interview that he was initially uncertain about his character's background after reading the first two scripts but he was attracted to "the potential of who this guy is".^[5] Furthermore in the same interview, Fichtner commented that he thought the scripts were "incredibly written" and that he was glad he accepted the part in the show.

Regarding William Fichtner's performance in his first Prison Break episode, Jeff Commings from the Arizona Daily Star comments that "William Fichtner is going to be the best actor on any show this season. He's brooding, sexy, enigmatic and a little scary as the FBI man waiting for the clan to cross state lines and make this a federal case. Add in the reliance on those pills he's hiding in that pen and I think I smell Emmy!"^[11] Similarly, Brian Zoromski from IGN believes that the "strongest portions of 'Manhunt' deal with the introduction of a new character, an FBI agent named Alexander Mahone, played by the great character actor William Fichtner."^[12]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official biography of Alexander Mahone at Fox.com

v • d • e Prison Break characters Main John Abruzzi · Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell · Brad Bellick · Lincoln Burrows · Lincoln "L. J." Burrows Jr. · Veronica Donovan · Benjamin Miles "C-Note" Franklin · Norman "Lechero" St. John · Paul Kellerman · Sofia Lugo · Alexander Mahone · Gretchen Morgan · Michael Scofield · Fernando Sucre · Sara Tancredi · James Whistler Secondary David "Tweener" Apolskis · Maricruz Delgado · Roy Geary · Daniel Hale · William "Bill" Kim · Felicia Lang · Luis "McGrady" Gallego · Charles "Haywire" Patoshik · Henry Pope · Caroline Reynolds · Sammy · Manche Sanchez · Nick Savrinn · Terrence Steadman · Frank Tancredi · Charles Westmoreland List of Prison Break characters · List of Prison Break minor characters