Watched It’s Your Funeral yet?
OK. Be seeing you.
I forgot to mention, but I actually dug Kosho, and wish it had become a real sport. :)
As to The Girl Who Was Death, I haven’t watched it yet, and can happily skip it. I agree, it’s a terrible episode of The Prisoner, per se, but from what I recall of it it was an amusing send-up of the campier spy shows of the day like The Avengers or The Man From UNCLE. But where did those kids come from?
Anyway, let’s reconvene back on the Sunday schedule for Many Happy Returns. Be seeing you.
Oh, Many Happy Returns, how you let me down. I remember liking the episode when I first watched it - liking it a lot, in fact. But this time it just didn’t work for me.
The business with the gun runners goes on way too long and feels like padding. Also I doubt anyone - even No 6 - would easily be able to take down two healthy guys singlehandedly after being at sea for almost a month and only getting 4 hours sleep/day. But the biggest issue is what No. 2 is trying to accomplish is never clear, as opposed to Chimes of Big Ben. If the point is to prove to 6 that even if he escapes they can bring him back any time they want, I would think that’s something they would demonstrate a lot earlier in his captivity.
Then again, maybe it was all about the pun.
That said, there are still some elements that work effectively. The sudden disappearance and reappearance of the Villagers has a dream-like quality. (Spoiler: It’s not all a dream). Also the location of the Village is made even muddier. Here we’re told it lies somewhere between Portugal and Morocco, but in Chimes the location is given as the Baltic, off the coast of Poland.Also, there’s a significant clue as to the identity of No. 1
On to the Final Four, and a return to the quality that is the hallmark of the series. In fact, one of the episodes is among the finest hours of television ever (imo, of course).
Next time Living In Harmony. Be seeing you.
In Chimes of Big Ben, No. 6 tells No. 2 that he plans to escape, return, and wipe the Village off the face of the Earth, so that was a given. Plus even if he hadn’t come looking, they would have found a way to bring him back.
As to not showing the new No. 2 in the intro, that’s a bit of misdirection, since it turns out to be Mrs. Butterworth in the end.
Yeah, well you haven’t watched it half a dozen times over the years :)
I’ve fallen off due to time, but just wanted to pop in and say that The Girl Who Was Death is one of my favorite episodes. Sorry. It feels like a nice break from the seriousness of The Village. My favorite bit is the subsequent order of vomit inducing shots following the poisoned beer. I’ll always remember that particular order in case of emergency.
I have to admit that I have a soft spot for the poisoned beer scene as well. Is this your first time watching?
I agree it was a good choice to take some of the themes of the show and translate them to a different genre, and it works for the most part. I especially liked the idea of converting Rover to lassos. I’m not crazy about the postscript, because it felt sudden and out of nowhere. As to The Kid being silent, I’m guessing it was because Alexis Kanner couldn’t do an effective American accent, but I could be wrong, He’s certainly a compelling presence, and we’ll be seeing him again soon (in a different role). Of course, I could be way off base.
Fun fact: When the series first aired in the US on CBS in the Summer of 1968, Living in Harmony wasn’t included. CBS claimed it was because it referenced hallucinatory drugs, but clearly that’s bullshit, In 1968, on American TV, Westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza were still enormously popular, and no network was going to air something that messed with the tropes. Also the country was bitterly divided over Viet Nam, and the network that was censoring the Smothers Brothers for their (mild) jabs at the Johnson administration (see the excellent documentary Smothered if you don’t know the story) certainly wasn’t about to let something with a clearly pacifist slant go out over the airwaves.
A year later, Westerns were on the way out, the public had mostly turned against the war, and when the series ran again the episode was back in.
Coming into the final 3, Hammer Into Anvil. Be seeing you.
I always took it that he was too much into character, but it still feels like they had to shoehorn an ending.
More Kosho! :)I
I have a friend who used to say “You either play the game or the game plays you.”. In Hammer Into Anvil we see that not only has No. 6 learned to play the game, he plays it better than his captors. What next?
Shit’s about to get real, yo, with Once Upon A Time, aka Degree Absolute - Part One of the finale.
The Village stops fucking around, and a favorite returns.
Be seeing you…
I noticed the re-use of the computer prop but really hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
I did want to mention how great McGoohan is in this episode. There’s a moment early on in one of the first scenes with him and No. 2 where you can see in his eyes that he’s caught on to the way to bring him down.
Good guess.
This close to the finish I didn’t want to wait another week so went ahead with Once Upon A Time, still as powerful today as it was 50 years ago. So now we know why No. 6 resigned, and got another clue as to the identity of No. 1.
Fun fact: Leo McKern actually suffered an emotional breakdown from the intensity of some of the scenes, and filming had to be suspended for several weeks.
Strap yourself in for Fall Out, where we learn the identity of No 1, the location of the Village, and why the Butler has remained mute throughout the series. Two out of 3, actually. Plus The Beatles! Carmen Miranda! And another returning figure.
I’m looking forward to reading your take on it all. Be seeing you.
Watching them back to back may be a little tough. Good luck with that.
In Chimes of Big Ben, No. 2 says “I’m a lifer”., and 6 says that he’s a prisoners too. As to the voice, I think it belongs to the Supervisor. Interesting that he says “Die, No. 6, die”, further confirming that they’ve really switched roles.
In previous episodes 6 says that he resigned for “peace of mind”, and as “a matter of conscience”. Now we know that he had a drive to POP (protected other people). Piecing it together I take it to mean that as an agent he was forced to carry out an order - perhaps killing an innocent or innocents - that went so against his morals that he couldn’t live with it.
I never noticed that bit with Rover. Nice catch.
There is no “on the mark”, since it’s all open to interpretation, but yours is almost identical to mine.
I have some work to do and errands to run but will expand on that later.
Just a couple of minutes to post some fun facts:
The shaving scene seems like a bit of extraneous Village weirdness, but in reality there’s a more ordinary explanation - Fall Out and Once Upon A Time were filmed a year apart, and McKern had shaved off his beard in the interim. I gues it was felt this was better than just gluing a fake one on.
It may be coincidence, but at the time of filming All You Need Is Love was No. 1 on the charts.
Once Upon A Time was originally intended to end the first season with a cliffhanger, but at some point the series was cancelled, forcing McGoohan to come up with an ending in a very short period of time.
McGoohan claimed he didn’t know who No. 1 was going to be until he sat down to write the ending, but clearlyt that’s bullshit for the reasons you cited above.
Up to that point no television show had ever ended in such a cryptic fashion. The BBC was flooded with irate calls, McGoohan was accosted on the street, and he had to go into hiding for several weeks, I can only imagine how the internet would have reacted, had it existed.
Six of One, the international fan society, holds an annual convention in Portmeirion. It’s on my bucket list.
OK. So first to address some of the questions you raised -
I think the globes are an indication that the Village is everywhere - world wide. That’s also why No. 6’s door in London opened the way it did at the end. And remember - this is 30 years before anyone was talking about a “global village”. Also, in CoBB, McKern says he dreams of a day when the whole world it like the Village, so that may have something to do with why they brought him back as opposed to any of the other No. 2’s. McGoohan didn’t forsee the Internet or social media, which is a shame. It would have been interesting to see what he did with them.
The ape mask represents our primitive, most primal selves. We are all prisoners of our basest instincts, which is why, once No. 6 resorted to violence in the end, he is never truly free. Also, No. 1 has 3 faces, which if you want to break down in Freudian terms could be the Id, Ego, and Superego. As Walt Kelly said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
One of the great things about The Prisoner is you can always find something new. Re-watching Fall Out there were a few things I never paid attention to before that really resonated.
Moreso than the Beatles, the key piece of music is the old spiritual Dem Bones, which refers to a passage in Ezekiel in the Bible. According to Wikipedia:
The chapter details a vision revealed to the prophet Ezekiel, conveying a dream-like realistic-naturalistic depiction.
In his vision the prophet sees himself standing in the valley full of dry human bones. He is commanded to carry a prophecy. Before him the bones connect into human figures, then the bones become covered with tendon tissues, flesh and skin. Then God reveals the bones to the prophet as the People of Israel in exile and commands the Prophet to carry another prophecy in order to revitalize these human figures, to resurrect them and to bring them to the Land of Israel
So No. 6 is the prophet, sent to lead the “dry bones”, the soul-less, unthinking residents of the Village, to the promised land of Individuality and free thought.
Why does a rocket take off from the Village? McGoohan was no Luddite, but he did express concern in several intervals that technology was advancing faster than our ability to use it wisely. I have a feeling that the “rocket” is actually supposed to be a nuclear missile, but who knows?
And finally, in the end, No. 6 is no longer even a number. He is just “Prisoner”. Not even THE prisoner. He is generic, with no identity at all, less than he was in the beginning. Perhaps because he resorted to violence in the end, he has now become a stand in for all of us. McGoohan’s production company was called Everyman for a reason.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed it. There are a couple of very good features on Youtube. This has some good backstage dirt:
Much better is this 6(heh) part examination of the themes running throughout the series.
Enjoy.