It's easy to lose track after a long summer of not watching television, but Fox's new season begins Monday night with the season premiere of PRISON BREAK and the series premiere of VANISHED.

William Fichtner, late of INVASION, is PRISON BREAK's new regular, playing a sheriff tracking down the escaped cons. Should be fun.

Fichtner, now billed as "Bill Fichtner," is a great addition to PRISON BREAK, giving the brilliant Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) an adversary his intellectual equal. The second-season premiere also killed off a main cast member, and I'd be surprised if there aren't more deaths to come. I'd say only Scofield and his brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) are indispensible. I also like the easy manner in which new actor Jeff Perry (NASH BRIDGES) slid into a vital role played occasionally last season by John Billingsley, who took a full-time job on the new series THE NINE.

Anyone else hooked on PRISON BREAK?

I just whipped through the first two Season 1 discs via Netflix. I enjoyed the show enough to continue and, for my next three rentals, they are sending me discs 3-5. I'll probably be finished with PRISON BREAK Season 1 by next week... and I'll gladly dive right in to the new season.

The show's first eight episodes were entertaining enough to keep me wanting more.

Not surprisingly, they ran out of gas about halfway through the season and started struggling for ways to plausibly keep the inmates inside the prison until the season finale. One episode, a flashback obviously inspired by LOST, may be the worst TV episode I saw all of last season.

Thankfully, the last handful of episodes picked up considerably, and so far Year Two is great fun.

I hope someone else is enjoying this fast-paced Fox show, since I believe it's even better this season than last. Yes, it's THE FUGITIVE MEETS TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, but I'm really loving the twists and cliffhangers, as well as the skillful Texas locations posing as Utah, Illinois, New York, Las Vegas... The addition of William Fichtner (he was Bill in the opener, now back to William) as an obsessive FBI agent pursuing the escapees was a great move, although I'm intrigued as to how the writers plan to work the character's latest actions into the season.

Well, I wish they were still in Illinois, personally. My old college roommate worked on the show last season and, because of the move to Texas, he lost his job on the show! He's none too thrilled about the move and has been out of work for a while because of it. Shame, really.

Oh well, at least he worked on 5-25-77 to pay the bills. That was shot mostly in Chicago, too.

Guess what? Season 3 started this week. I have to say that I've never seen anything quite like PRISON BREAK, and it at least lives up to its title as the new episodes begin, as, once again, Scofield (Wentworth Miller) has to break somebody out of prison. What could feel like deja vu in lesser hands is still meaty, because this time it's a TERMINAL ISLAND-type Panamanian prison with no guards and where the inmates rule. While I actually wouldn't mind seeing the series go for broke with a full-out TERMINAL ISLAND remake in a subsequent season (what's Phyllis Davis doing these days?), the show's new setting (if not a new format) is quite intriguing so far.

Like last season (and like INVASION the year before), William Fichtner is the show's secret weapon. He has one terrific scene in the premiere that makes his star quality quite clear.