As I have noted earlier in this publication, the Fox TV series Prison Break is an excellent example of how genre fiction can rise above its formulaic roots and engage important concerns in a serious way.

By "important concerns" I don’t mean stories that deal directly with the hot issues of the day. The latter aren’t intrinsically interesting to any reasonably mature person, and in fact such political relevance can often hurt the moral depth of a story.

For example, having characters debate global warming, or to show them living out choices based on their beliefs about the phenomenon, would not be inherently dramatic, because the two choices—living one way because you believe global warming is a manmade crisis, versus living another way because you think it’s not—are morally equal. They both involve living up to one’s convictions. The global warming dispute is over facts, not over what choices we make when we know the facts, and the latter is the real basis for drama—our moral choices—as Aristotle pointed out two millennia ago.

Certainly Prison Break touches on serious contemporary problems such as government corruption, the flaws of our justice system, the ability of big corporations to do much damage if they act irresponsibly, the scandalously barbaric conditions in many of our prisons, the dangers of computer predation, and literally numerous others. Yet in each case the issue is used as a means of forcing the characters into difficult moral choices, and inviting the viewer to judge the characters’ actions not only in terms of their shrewdness but also, and I think mainly, for their moral rightness.

Thus in the season premiere last week we saw Linc promise revenge against the disgraced former FBI agent Mahone for his role in Linc having been falsely convicted of murder in the show’s first episode, thus drawing attention to Mahone’s choice to go along with the initial scheme as well as Linc’s understandable but morally dubious thirst for revenge.

Of course, the producers’ (and audience’s) thirst for thrills and excitement means that the show pushes every scene into stark melodrama, making each choice as difficult as possible and each betrayal more shocking and implausible than the last. And that lack of realism, of course, makes it more difficult for audiences to identify with the situations the characters find themselves in.

Yet because the characters are basically plausible, identifiable types, and some of them even rather likeable, it’s fairly easy for audience members (those with a bit of imagination, anyway), to envision how they themselves might act if put in similar situations—and hence learn something about the limits of their own moral strength.

That’s a decent accomplishment for any work of art—pop culture or otherwise.

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Prison Break, Mondays at 9 ET, Fox TV Network