The Prisoner

We're back in the 60s! I didn't think I'd be watching too many shows from this era outside of Star Trek, but The Prisoner feels like that kind of urban legend show I had to watch at some point. All I've heard about it is that it starts off pretty normal before slowly descending into psychological mayhem before having one of the most controversial endings in all of TV history. It's like British Evangelion, and considering I adored NGE's (original) ending, I'm so excited and also terrified of what that entails. 

And because of The Prisoner's infamy and legendary cult status (as well as its short length), I wanted to bring back the reactions structure from TOS and the MCU shows just so you can see how I end up interpreting each individual episode. Aside from its reputation, I have no idea what this show is about or what ends up happening, I'm going into The Prisoner completely blind. Let's see how this goes...

Oh right, also, I know the episode order is a widely debated topic. I did a lot of research on the matter and looked at the arrangements that most people seemed to agree upon, ultimately settling on this:

1. Arrival
2. Free For All
3. Dance Of The Dead
4. Checkmate
5. The Chimes Of Big Ben
6. The Schizoid Man
7. The General
8. A, B, And C
9. Many Happy Returns
10. It's Your Funeral
    
11. A Change Of Mind
12. Hammer Into Anvil
13. Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling
14. Living In Harmony
15. The Girl Who Was Death
16. Once Upon A Time
17. Fall Out

Given how divisive the subject is, I doubt I'll ever pick a perfect order, but I'm sticking with the way it is now.

Arrival: Okay, this was actually really good. I was hooked from that entirely dialogue-less opening, and stayed engaged pretty much the entire time. The first episode of The Prisoner feels ahead of its time in that it's structured a lot like a Lost-esque "mystery box", plopping the main character into this weird new location and raising up a bunch of weird questions. Stuff like what is The Village? Why is the guard a giant white balloon? Why is the main character Number Six if there are way more than six people here? Why was Number Two replaced? It's not just Lost that seemed to have taken from it, though, watching this episode of The Prisoner reminded me of when I saw Casablanca for the first time, and all I can think was of all the later movies and shows that seemingly were inspired by this thing. Even though nothing was really answered here, Arrival also just works as a complete story about Number Six's repeated attempts to escape a place where surveillance is everywhere and no one is to be trusted.

I love how weird The Village looks, I was kinda expecting this show to take place in an actual prison but this is way more eerie and visually-interesting with all its strange and colorful architecture. My mind is already racing about what it could all mean. Is the show simply about public surveillance? Imprisonment? The paparazzi? There are so many strange one-off moments like the square-turned-round peg and the weird experiments in the hospital, along with stuff like those aforementioned white balloons (which are apparently called Rovers) that are goofy on the surface but genuinely kinda scary in action. I keep getting hung up on the Rovers, they're so cheesy, I laugh every time I see them, but they also terrify the hell out of me. The whole pilot felt a bit cheesy at times, between the overdramatic camera angles and Patrick McGoohan's constant eyebrow raising, but given how sincere-averse a lot of media is nowadays, I'm always down for a show willing to be a bit weird and colorful. Though don't get me wrong, I actually think McGoohan's mostly doing a good job. He has that main character energy to him, I think he could've been a great James Bond if he wanted to. So yeah, Arrival was actually really good. Even though it came out in the 60s, it feels so fresh and ahead of its time. The pacing was perfect, the show's already taking some pretty cool structural risks, and I'm fully engrossed in seeing what happens next.

Free For All: While a bit of a step-down, I still really liked Free For Al, and I think it works well as a second episode. Number Six is still desperately trying to escape and start problems in the Village, it's just that this time he's doing so by running to take over Number Two's position in an election. Of course, it's nowhere near that easy since the election is pretty blatantly rigged by the people in charge of The Village. Unlike in Arrival, where things are a bit more ambiguous, the themes of Free For All are pretty obvious. The episode is about how elections can be staged to give the public the illusion of choice, when in reality, the resolution was decided from the very start. It's a solid topic to cover, especially considering that I don't think people really discussed the potential failings of the electoral system in the 60s like this. Aside from the message, though, this is a solid if unremarkable episode, with a pretty great twist.

Dance Of The Dead: Dance Of The Dead is easily the weakest episode so far. There's a decent amount of stuff I liked, but it just didn't quite come together like Arrival did. On one hand, I thought the titular carnival event was really colorful and visually-appealing, Number Six's James Bond costume was a clever way of showing how he thinks he has more freedom than he has, and Mary Morris was a ton of fun in her turn as Number Two. On the other hand, this episode felt a bit aimless. I get some of the themes it's going for, particularly in regards to death, but the actual story beats struggled to really coalesce. In particular, the Dutton thread and the carnival thread, despite sharing that theme of death, felt like two separate episodes, and the connective tissue of the kangaroo court couldn't really fix that disjointedness. I also found the ending to be way too open. Even as someone who likes ambiguous endings, Dance Of The Dead kinda just ends with nothing resolved, leaving me scratching my head as to what just happened. Dance Of The Dead isn't a bad episode, there's still a lot to love, but it just didn't really land for me. I've seen lists that put Dance Of The Dead before Free For All, but I don't think it works as a second episode. Sure, Number Six seems a bit more new here, but DotD doesn't make the best impression, and I doubt Free For All's twist would be as novel if I met this episode's female Number Two first.

Checkmate: And I thought the election episode wasn't subtle. It's pretty obvious what the living chess game recognizes, but the sheer colorfulness of The Prisoner's visual aesthetic made for a really fun opening sequence. The concept of Checkmate is really cool, and follows the events of Free For All really well. Number Six did say he wanted to figure out how to differentiate between the prisoners and the wardens, and in this episode, he figures out how to do just that. Number Six's escape attempts were always some of the most fun scenes in the first three episode, but the sheer amount of preparation he put into finding allies and planning out his escape made for easily the most entertaining one to date. The only thing I didn't really like was the subplot about Number Six's love interest getting hypnotized into being a mole, which already was a bit hard to watch but felt especially frustrating since it didn't really lead to anything. Otherwise, though, I liked this episode, it was generally pretty fun.

The Chimes Of Big Ben: Number Six really does keep upping the ante in his escapes, huh? Like with Checkmate, I don't really have much to say about this one other than it just being yet another pretty good episode with a great escape attempt. Number Six has repeatedly gotten the rug pulled under him every time he tried to escape, to the point where episodes like Free For All and Dance Of The Dead felt a bit too cruel, but I really like the fake London twist here. It was fun and creative, still humiliating Number Six but not in a way that left me depressed after watching it. I also really liked the Number Two in this episode, Leo McKern strikes a great balance of outwardly affable and internally malicious that makes for a very fun opponent for Number Six. My only gripe is the Number Eight twist, it feels like a mix of some of the previous episode's twists and leaves me wondering if the show is already starting to run out of ideas so early on. 

The Schizoid Man: Actually, forget what I said about the show running out of ideas. The Schizoid Man is easily the most fun and creative episode of The Prisoner so far and a great breath of fresh air after the slightly repetitious last few episodes. The Schizoid Man could have so easily just brought in an evil double for Number Six to contend with for the episode, but it went the extra mile by having Six himself be told he's the clone instead. It's such a mindscrew of a plot, but a very well-crafted one and it led to Six's most understated and smooth escape attempt. Patrick McGoohan was especially great here since he had to play both himself and his double, Twelve. Once again, not a super subtle performance, but McGoohan was incredibly fun and played off himself super well. I especially loved how goddamn smug Twelve is throughout The Schizoid Man, making for easily the highlight of the episode. As a whole, this was just a really fun and entertaining episode, easily my favorite one since the pilot. Please give me more weird stuff like this!

The General: The General has an interesting premise, a computer that can instill knowledge and education into people's heads at the press of a button. I think there's a lot you can do with this concept, in particular, maybe have a storyline where The Village tries to use the computer to instill biased information or propaganda into people's minds. Unfortunately, The Prisoner was still made in the 60s, so the episode mostly devolves into a standard dated "computer bad" storyline. Given how ahead of its time this show has usually been, it's a bit strange to see an episode date itself so blatantly. However, I also wouldn't say this makes The General inherently bad, otherwise I'd hate Star Trek episodes like The Changeling and The Ultimate Computer when that's definitely not the case. Unlike Dance Of The Dead, The General is still actually comprehensible, and something I really liked about it is that Number Six finally manages to get a win for once. However, while a decently fun time, the dated story still renders this as one of my least favorite Prisoner episodes so far.

A, B, And C: Well, this episode was a trip. I was literally just praising The General for being straight-forward only for A, B, And C to easily be the most confusing episode in the show so far. But let me try to get this straight, Number Two is trying to get Number Six to reveal why he resigned by bringing people he met outside of The Village into his dreams to interrogate him. It's really hard to tell what's a dream in this episode and what isn't, but on a conceptual level, I do kinda like the three ghosts of Christmas type of structure. It was fascinating to see the differences between the three titular agents along with how Number Six went about dealing with them. But honestly, there were really two things that stuck out to me in A, B, And C. First is the fact that Number Six managed to secure yet another victory, probably even a more powerful one than in The General. But even more, is the fact that this is the first time a Number Two has been carried over from another episode. I didn't find Colin Gordon's Number Two all that special in The General, but he did a really good job at portraying a more panicked and nervous version of Number Two. While most of these episodes somewhat stand alone, I can't imagine not watching The General right before A, B, And C, they fit perfectly together to form a mini-arc of the time Number Six managed to turn the tables on an unsuspecting Number Two.

Many Happy Returns: This was literally just The Chimes Of Big Ben again. Like, literally the same plot. Number Six manages to go to London before having the rug pulled out from under him, yet again. Granted, I do like how this episode actually went further with the concept. The London stuff wasn't just crammed into the third act, and it wasn't an illusion either. Number Six actually went to London, it's just that there are so many Village operatives in London that there was no way he could stay there for long. And that's legitimately a really cool concept too, it gives off a sort of paranoia thriller vibe. The fact that Number Six can't just escape the Village to be truly safe raises the stakes even more. So yeah, Many Happy Returns is a strange episode for me. I kinda hate that it just felt like a copy of a previous episode, but it was also just flat-out a better version of The Chimes Of Big Ben. It showed way more potential and explored the central premise way more thoroughly.  

It's Your Funeral: Every once in a while, The Prisoner tosses out a visual so weird and wonderful that I want to see an entire episode's worth of it. The real life chess game in Checkmate was a big one, but after this episode, I don't think anything with top the utter bizarreness of Kosho, that jousting/trampolining hybrid that took up three whole minutes of the episode. While the Kosho scene probably biased my view of It's Your Funeral, I thought this was a pretty fun if a bit straight-forward. The main premise is about Number Six trying to stop the assassination of the currently retiring Number Two. Assassin-related storylines are always pretty fun, and The Prisoner did a good job at using Number Two's typical mindgames to make this episode all the more enjoyable. I also liked how It's Your Funeral actually took a bit of time to explore and flesh out the revolving door of Number Twos, showing off how Number Twos retire and get traded out. The ending was also interesting in how uncathartic it was, sure Number Six stopped an assassination, but it was meant for the authority that he was fighting against throughout the show. 

Change Of Mind: The Prisoner was always about conformity, Number Six's refusal to just give in and settle down in The Village is an integral part of the show. Change Of Mind brings this to the forefront, with Number Six's rebellious nature leading him to be shunned by the residents of The Village. It's very 1984 with a mix of mob mentality, which ultimately ends up making this episode feel kinda unoriginal by today's standards. Like, don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly fine story but it just doesn't really feel like it adds much to the conversation nowadays. Seeing Number Six turn the table around on Number Two was a fun ending, it's always nice to see Number Six get a win, but otherwise, I really don't have much to say about this one. It was fine, but fairly disposable.

Hammer Into Anvil: It's interesting to watch The Prisoner in this order because it feels like Number Six is starting to win increasingly more. As a matter of fact, the only episode in the last five I watched where Number Six didn't succeed in his goal was Many Happy Returns. I think this is because Number Six has stopped trying to escape and started trying to beat the Village at its own games, more specifically mindgames. Hammer Into Anvil is such a fascinating (and fun) episode because Number Six and Number Two have practically switched roles. Now Number Two is the one being humiliated by Number Six, and seeing the latter's intricate, ridiculous, and frankly hilarious plan to cause Number Two to think he's a plant is nothing less than an utter joy. It also helps that this episode has one of the better Number Two actors, Patrick Cargill, whose slow descent from cruel to paranoid is perfectly portrayed. Add in the glorious return of Kosho, and you get what is easily one of the most enjoyable The Prisoner episodes yet.

Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling: The fuck was that? The Prisoner has honestly not been super crazy up to this point, but all of sudden, we get a body-swap episode where Number Six spends the entire episode played by a different actor? First off, as weird as The Village is, there was rarely anything that wouldn't have been feasible in real life, Rover excluded but I'm sure even they're possible with some clever robotics. The body swap machine feels completely out of place here, and breaks my suspension of disbelief. Next is the fact that the actor they got to play Number Six, Nigel Stock, didn't do a very good job at playing Number Six. From what I'm aware, Patrick McGoohan was unavailable for this episode, so this was how the crew worked around it. I haven't seen anything else Stock is in, so I don't want to judge him too harshly, but he just isn't able to capture Patrick McGoohan's mannerisms. That's a real shame since the joy of body-swap episodes is in seeing actors try to mimic other actors, but it also means that this feels like an episode from an entirely different show. The series couldn't even do the obvious thing and at least allow us to learn more about Number Six's identity. Well, actually, we do learn he has a fiancée, but that feels so out-of-line with what we know about the character that we might as well have been watching someone else. So yeah, this was easily the weakest The Prisoner episode so far by a longshot, and you can tell McGoohan wasn't involved because it lacked any of the charm that the rest of the show had. While I'm excited about the prospect of getting some more weird shit, I can only hope that they're at the very least better than this.

Living In Harmony: Glad to see my wishes were granted. This episode of The Prisoner was definitely weird, and it was in fact better than the last one. One of my favorite episodes from the original Star Trek's mostly bad third season was called Spectre Of The Gun, an episode with a budget so bad that the crew had to resort to using pre-made western props despite it being, you know, a sci-fi show. Despite the limitations though, or maybe because of it, the writers managed to turn what could've been a mess into a genuinely gripping and fun episode about fighting fate. Living In Harmony is basically the exact same thing. It's hard not to imagine that the crew behind The Prisoner was running low on budget and had to use a pre-existing western set because this entire episode is a western. But what keeps Living In Harmony from deviating too far from the series's standard is the fact that the central story at its core is basically yet another The Prisoner episode. Number Six, despite being a cowboy now, is still the social outcast, once again fighting against the episode's Number Two. Living In Harmony is quite simply an encapsulation of The Prisoner's premise, in western form, and I think that's pretty fun. It was also genuinely scary at points, especially The Kid.

The Girl Who Was Death: I was going to start this paragraph with "Damn, that was weird", but I don't think I really need to say that after the last two episodes. The Girl Who Was Death is basically a lighthearted Bond-esque action film with goofy comedy, bombastic action, lots of guns and explosions, and an overdramatic score. It's decently fun if a bit cheesy and surreal, but what I found especially interesting is the episode's implications. We all know McGoohan turned down the role of James Bond, so maybe this episode was a "What Could Have Been?" for if he had been in the role. Or maybe, this episode was a middle-finger for those who wanted him to be James Bond, or wanted The Prisoner to be more of a standard spy drama. The fact that the entire episode ended up being a fairy-tale possibly justifies this theory. As far as the actual episode's story goes though, the bedtime story reveal does border on "it was all a dream", but the fact that it was also revealed to be Number Six thwarted Number Two's plans again did help a little bit.  

Once Upon A Time: Holy shit. Once Upon A Time felt like the perfect "final battle" between Number Six and Number Two, basically a mindwar between the two that trapped Patrick McGoohan and a returning Leo McKern (great choice, by the way) in a room together and basically just had them act their hearts out for 45 minutes straight. Out of all of the episodes of The Prisoner so far, Once Upon A Time feels the most Evangelion. Through Number Two holding plays based on Number Six's life based around Shakespeare's Seven Stages Of Man, we get a much more effective look into Number Six and his psyche than whatever Do Not Forsake Me was doing. My theory about The Prisoner being more about McGoohan and his decision to reject the role of James Bond last episode also got even more credence during this episode, especially when I did some research and learned all of the plays were based off of McGoohan's actual life. But what was the most surprising was just the complete and utter shock of the ending. The Prisoner did have some hollow continuity but it was always fairly episodic and the ties between episodes are left up to the viewer. So Number Two being killed off, Butler changing sides, and Number Six finally being able to meet Number One was pretty surprising, and was a fantastic set-up for the looming series finale. Overall, Once Upon A Time was exactly was I was hoping for from The Prisoner all this time.

Fall Out: Huh... Well, that was interesting. I didn't love Fall Out, though not for the reasons you might expect. Fall Out wasn't a very satisfying finale. Sure, Number Six triumphantly broke out of The Village, but it's not like we got many answers. We don't really know why Number Six resigned or what his name is, we don't know why Number One and Number Six are the same, and the ending is super ambiguous. However, I'm actually perfectly fine with this, and let me explain why. First off, using that "The Prisoner is about Patrick McGoohan" theory, we don't need to know why Number Six resigned. It's not our business to know. The only person who has to know why Number Six resigned is Number Six himself. The Number One reveal adds an interesting possibility, that the Village was all in Number Six's head. Once again, this borders dangerously close to "it was all a dream", but that would explain the inconsistencies and give greater context to Number Six's arc. Hell, maybe The Prisoner refers to Number Six being a prisoner in his own mind. 

And I actually adore the ending for all of the possibilities it could lead to. If The Village was real, the ending would further serve that revelation in Many Happy Returns, that Number Six hasn't yet truly escaped because there are The Village operatives everywhere. Maybe that's why we don't know his name yet, because he's still not free. This even lends to the aforementioned McGoohan theory since he would be proceeded to be hounded with questions about what the ending meant after Fall Out would be aired. If The Village was in Number Six's head, the ending would simply mean that Number Six just hasn't fully gotten over his turmoil over resigning, or that he never will. This is why I love ambiguous endings, because once I finish a show, my mind will be racing to think about the different possibilities of what will happen or what it would all mean.

Unfortunately, while I liked Fall Out on a story level, I kinda hated watching it, because as much as I enjoyed The Prisoner's weird streak, this finale was just weird for the sake of it. Once Upon A Time was a strange episode, for sure, but the weirdness felt purposeful. I could understand the unconventional choices McGoohan made, and they made the episode better. That is not the case in Fall Out, which packed in many strange non-sequiturs that messed with the tone and only served to leave me even more confused. All the strange music choices, the bizarre closeups, the goddamn monkey costume, I feel like they all made for an even worse viewing experience for me, leaving me mixed on a finale that I feel like I could have really loved.

So, overall, what did I think about The Prisoner? Honestly, I'm not all that sure. On one hand, I thought The Prisoner was brilliant and ahead of its time. The pilot episode did the Mystery Box years before Lost did, the last few episodes deconstructed the show's own genre (that being spy fiction) years before Evangelion pulled the same trick, and every episode is rife with symbolism and potential interpretation, ranging from real world issues to McGoohan's own life. The sum of The Prisoner's parts is massive.

However, those parts are also very flawed. The first few episodes with Number Six's escape attempts felt repetitive, certain twists and premises were repeated as well, the ending while clever was dragged down by its tonal inconsistencies, and Do Not Forsake Me is one of the worst episodes of television I've seen in a while. As a result, I feel like The Prisoner is one of those shows I'm going to look back on fondly for its progressiveness and willingness to be weird, even if the process of watching it was inconsistent in terms of enjoyment and, at certain points, somewhat frustrating.

3/5 Stars?

Here's my ranking of the episodes:

1. Once Upon A Time
2. Arrival
3. The Schizoid Man
4. Many Happy Returns
5. Hammer Into Anvil
6. The Chimes Of Big Ben
7. Fall Out
8. It's Your Funeral
9. Free For All
10. Living In Harmony
11. A, B, And C
12. Checkmate
13. Change Of Mind
14. The General
15. The Girl Who Was Death
16. Dance Of The Dead
17. Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling