For fans who tuned in that Monday night, the image of Michael Scofield, standing at a dusty crossroads, map in hand, FBI choppers on the horizon, was proof that the title still worked—even if the prison was now the entire United States.

When Prison Break premiered on Fox in August 2005, it was a cultural lightning rod. The high-concept thriller—a structural engineer named Michael Scofield gets himself incarcerated to break out his wrongly convicted brother—seemed unsustainable beyond one season. The question looming over the show’s explosive first season finale (which saw the brothers and a handful of cons fleeing Fox River State Penitentiary) was simple: How do you do a second season of a show called “Prison Break” when the prison has already been broken?