Now we've seen all the episodes of "The Prisoner" (for me, perhaps for the twelfth time, since I own two sets of the DVDs) let's admit Patrick McGoogan's "The Prisoner" is the most overrated show ever. Like abstract art people praise as genius the less sense it makes. I've been watching this show since I was a teenager back in the 1970s. I was captivated by its color and, I'll fess up, by its weirdness, the way I was as a first-generation American "Monty Python" groupie. Or the way I loved its contemporary spy show "The Avengers" (another confession: when I was a teenaged lad Diana Rigg had a lot to do with that show's captivating me).
Let us all come clean and admit "The Prisoner" was an elaborate practical joke, especially this notorious swan song. Oh, it may not have started out that way. After playing so many grim but solid episodes of "Danger Man" McGoohan and his collaborators might well have started out trying to make a statement or two about the individual; statements with which I wholeheartedly agree, as a lifelong and proud individual in a world increasingly collectivized, where people are forced into groups like so many branded cattle. "A Change of Mind" is more relevant than ever in the twenty-first century. I've been treated like no. 6 in situations where if you're "unmutual" they shun you and maybe blow your house down.
But is the humor pervasive in most episodes (which is similar to the wonderful "Danger Man" episode "The Ubiqitous Mr. Lovegrove") a byproduct, or is it the point?
And what about McGoohan? Despite featuring some of the most fetching women ping-ponging around 1960s British TV from "The Saint" down (this side of D. Rigg)--Annette Andre, Jane Merrow, Angela Browne--no. 6 can't be romantically involved. Given his situation, it makes sense to elude a honey trap. Obviously in "Schizoid Man" he and Alison (Alison?) Are just friends, the way I've been with some women all my life. This is because of McGoohan's Catholic beliefs. Fine
He also doesn't use a gun (and did only a few times in "Danger Man." Like that other big, fat, lying hypocrite, MacGyver.
"MacGyver's" refusal to use guns nearly lost him some innocent people. And though he didn't want to kill anyone with a gun he (like McGoohan) he didn't mind using sledgehammer, disfiguring fisticuffs. And MacGyver loved rigging up Rube Goldberg devices so a ton of lumber would smash down on villains' heads, perhaps giving them brain damage. I'd rather be shot.
And how honest was the uber-Catholic McGoohan? In some interviews he's claimed he even hummed the music. I'm in the arts, though not music. But let me extrapolate what I do. If I were hired to do the music for a TV show and the star butted in, I'd tell him to bug off. Or I'd quit, saying I was hired to do the music and if the star can do a better job, let him.
What other lies did McGoohan tell over the years? That he could only think up about sixteen or seventeen stories. Now we know that's rubbish. In fact some episodes, like the one we all hate where poor Nigel Stock--a good actor but hardly Mr. Excitement--was left blowing in the wind on a leathery-creaking rope until our star got through making "Ice Station Zebra," were intended for series two.
In fact, "The Prisoner" died hemorrhaging money to maintain its quality and wasn't long for the world.
Allegedly McGoohan, insomniac, penned this episode over a weekend. I wouldn't have believed he gave it that much thought. My personal belief is, he wrote this episode to get back at the people who yanked the rug out from under his lovely show. It has all the earmarks of a revenge killing. Or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
I love "The Prisoner." I'm tickled by its straw hats and pennyfarthing bikes and its band music and lava lamps and its officials who wear silk toppers with striped shirts with no collars or ties. It all adds up to make "The Prisoner" genuinely timeless. It doesn't seem stuck in the 1960s where youth culture preached "love, love, love" (unless you disagreed with them; they were indeed the fathers and mothers of today's snowflakes).
Even the lava lamps don't date the show as they fit right in with the rest of the old-fashioned look. I'd even want to live in Portmerion except for the weather on Wales.
My Favorite episode may be "It's Your Funeral," with the funniest no. 2--despite and perhaps because I had to watch it three times running before I understood it. I love the series' occasionally more serious episodes if the actors are up to it (as with Patrick Cargill's gradual meltdown in "Hammer into Anvil"). But most of all I respect and dote on the silliness. The child-like maps of "Arrival" leading to an almost childlike attitude throughout, the childhood glee blending with childhood fears of a monster in the closet. Like an idyllic childhood full of swell adventure but broken by school where teachers demand answers.
"The Prisoner" was one of the most beautiful shows ever. The writing was clever. It was chock full of fine actors (not only as no. 2s but in other parts here a Donald Sinden, there a Christopher Benjamin--and can that really be Richard Caldicott? And John Castle?
This quality meant long filming and a lot of money to produce. And so the show ended and McGoohan wrote this despicable mess of a final episode. Now we can freeze it and go through it frame by frame. And we can invent answers or take it for what it is--the result of a desperate man writing with no destination in a fit of pique, dashing ideas against a wall and not caring if they stuck; showing about as much cleverness as "Bobby in the shower." If not for the old spiritual "Dry Bones" (is there any better music than old spirituals?) and a few more bits of weirdness shoehorned in, this episode would be a total wreck. It's static, pedantic, self-righteous and ugly.
It's all a big leg-pull. But coming off at the end of a delightful and well-written series it's like finishing a mug of your favorite drink and finding a cockroach at the bottom. Or "You have just been poisoned."
But I forever enjoy that feel-good shot of the three men in the caged truck dancing down the freeway.
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