I don't get it.
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I don't get it.
I don't get it.
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be saging you
maybe it's better this way. One question though: did you want to actually discuss this TV show or one aspect you didn't understand, or did you just want to make a Cinemaphile post using a thoughtless ready-made template?
THE TOE BONES CONNECTED TO THE FOOT BONE
I just watched this kino. Great shit and excellent usage of "All You Need Is Love" during the climax. Btw OP if you don't get it, Number Six was being held prisoner and elaborately interrogated by his own people to find out why he quit MI5
But that's just the basic premise of the show. What the frick did anything in the last episode mean?
What specifically didn't you understand?
MacGoohan just ran out of time to wrap up the show when the producer gave him the ultimatum, so he went on an LSD bender one weekend to write an episode and reused the sets from the previous episode.
That said, think the finale is brilliant, but don't try to actively make sense out of it.
That episode reminded me a lot of Pink Floyd's "The Trial", can't help but think it was inspired by the show
Both were probably inspired by The Trial by Kafka.
>the finale is brilliant, but don't try to actively make sense out of it
Yeah see that to me is a recipe for absolute trash.
>nah man it's supposed to be nonsensical and just an hour of meaningless noise, that's what's so brilliant about it
God damn hippie bullshit. Is that really all there is to it? Just nonsense?
Maybe it's like watching a 3d picture. You see the real image by not focusing on it.
Personally I find the finale perfectly satisfying as it is. I can't help you if you insist on logical answers for everything.
Pat and the other creator had a disagreement over whether the prison was purely a metaphor (the direction they ended up going) or a literal prison that No. 6 had to escape. I wish they would have gone the latter route tbh.
Both are defensible, but the latter option would have made it more a run-of-the-mill spy TV show. Like the other anon said, ultimately The Prisoner wasn't a fully well thought-out concept, they have misses and duds for every hits, but the conflicts of vision between the creators probably ended up working in favor of the show's legacy.
In case it wasn't obvious, this show is more about ubermensch vs clown world. The last episode is merely a culmination in both alignments emotional heights ,not necessarily their logical heights.
I tend to think of Once Upon a Time as the real finale with Fall Out as the trippy coda.
short answer, Six will never be truly free even if he gets rescued. long answer, the last two episodes Six was drugged to the gills to make him break and he decided if he was to be a number he would be number one and that mindbroke him and everything after the raid was a hallucination.
I’m not done with it yet but it’s very interesting. I loved the episode where he was running for office
It's the best episode for me. Maybe one of the best satire of politics ever aired on mainstream TV.
Stupid McGoohan deprived us all of kino by turning down the offer to play James Bond. He would have been so much better than Lazenby and Moore.
a sexless James Bond would have been interesting.
A Sexless Bond Experience?
Although I really liked the show, I don't think that McGoohan's acting was its greatest strength. He was alright but I don't think he'd have been better than Moore as Bond. Lazenby probably, I'm trying to imagine McGoohan in On Her Majesty's Secret Service now. Definitely hits different, Bond's romance with Tracy is particularly important in that one and idk if McGoohan would sell it as well but that aside I suppose he'd be better than Lazenby
Don't know if you were aware of this, but Patrick Macgoohan was a real-life prude and refused to kiss onscreen.with his female costars. He's got one scene in the Prisoner where he barely caresses the girl in Chimes Of Big Ben, that's as far as he was willing to go.
I wasn't aware of that but I had noticed a lack of romance in the show and when it did happen it felt clumsy
He literally turned down the role of James Bond because he didn't want his children to see him on screen kissing a woman who wasn't his wife. Absolute legend.
This kinda checks out based on interviews and his general stiffness
Though it doesn;t quite mesh with his very hippy-inspired free love promoting musical version of Othello he directed so I don;t know if this is entirely true
He softened up a bit as he got older. A lot of The Prisoner was shot when dude was shitfaced drunk, and I attribute some of his weird personality glitches to alcoholism. The anecdote about him berating the adulteress from Scanners is true, as is the one about him beating a bit player senseless on the set of The Prisoner to the point that he was genuinely scared for his life. No I will not explain how I know this.
>I'm trying to imagine McGoohan in On Her Majesty's Secret Service now.
He plays a spook in an episode of Columbo along side Leslie Nielsen.
That’s probably my favorite McGoohan Columbo appearance.
There's one anon that usually spams a copypasta about MacGoohan shaming an actress working with him in Scanners 1981 because she married multiple times.
You need to watch McGoohan in Columbo. He was a great actor and his episodes of Columbo were the best.
how very uncomfortable for you then, old chap
>guy who makes challenging anti-authoritarian art which filters plebs
>why did he not star in my favourite anti-intellectual capeshite series for manchildren
feck off you gormless twat McGoohan was too good for that shite
Too bad MacGoohan never did any other anti-authoritarian art after The Prisoner.
I would have liked to have seen him step in after Lazenby. People like to shit on the dude, but while he might have been a failed actor, with a dub he was the perfect Bond. You just can't match a chin like that.
Did any episode ever top Chimes of Big Ben?
for me
>A B and C
>Many Happy Returns
>Hammer unto Anvil
>Dance Of The Dead
>Free For All
>Fall Out
>AAAAGHHHHHHHHHH
by seed or by feed, you will
Six "Wins", discovers his entire personality is now based around the opposition to the village, and the he is the centre of it he is it's focus.
It's the difference between:
"Who is number one?"
"You are number six."
and
"Who is number one?"
"You are, number six."
There is a break down and an escape, but an escape to a place where there's a dwarf butler and automatic doors. He's either escaped back to the village, or he's come to see the world as the village.
One way of looking at it anyway.
We are all the prisoners despite him getting off the island he is still in the prison. We are all rats in the cages.
>We are all rats in the cages.
This show was pretty good but imo there were too many episodes where Six either
>a) learns absolutely nothing new
>b) has zero "wins" against his prisoners
Or both. And despite that it still felt like a lot of the script was the main character having a wank over how special he is (McGoohan also being the director, of course). Unique and ambitious series but clearly not fully thought-out. The best episode was where he drives the Number 2 of the week insane.
The best episodes for me are the dark ones.
Many Happy Returns is almost a joke how much it messes with no. 6.
I like hammer Unto Anvil but the other "No. 6 wins" episodes kind of feel like other normal TV shows of the time. Formulaic disingenuous entertainment vs. honest art.
I don't mind dark but like I said I want him to at least learn something new rather than reinforcing the shit that's already been established. For instance I'm pretty sure there were two "false escape" episodes. One where he never really leaves the village despite thinking he did and one where he actually does leave but it's all according to keikaku and he once again ends up where he started. No new ideas.
It was definitely a different concept of television. Self-contained episodes vs long-form storytelling and "arcs". People back then didn't even have VCR, if a show required you watched all the previous episodes to fully enjoy and understand, they'd lose a lot of viewers by the end of the series. They had to keep the shows relatively simple and self-contained back then, most viewers of the time weren't willing to pay too much attention to a TV show.
Yeah that makes sense, especially with the intro that gives you the full re-cap of premise. I guess those were pretty common back then.
The Prisoner definitely isn't a flawless masterpiece as a whole, a lot of episodes are very uneven. But the kind of show you perhaps would have preferred it to be wasn't possible in 1967. They had to recruit TV writers that were working in the medium at the time and weren't prepared to revolutionize the form in one fell swoop, and even if they somehow did so, it probably would have alienated its contemporary audience in the process. It just slowly paved the way for more complex, better thought out TV shows in the ensuing decades.
also meant to say his captors* if that wasn't obvious
The Schizoid Man episode was a trip. Amazing mindfrickery by the villains there.
>amazing mindfrickery by the screenwriter
this episode requires too much of a suspension of disbelief for me to enjoy seriously. i don't need my shows to always be realistic, especially if it's a way to make a point that couldn't be made othereise, but this episode was just too silly and pointless.
I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!
15 Minute ~~*(walkable*~~ City.
A "Global Village" as the concept will be realized.
>Being able to get around on your own two feet is a israeli conspiracy
>Having to buy a car that you then have to constantly pump fuel into is the true meaning of freedom
Maybe it's best if you keep playing dumb about it.
Honestly yes. I’ve lived in walkable/public transit cities and car cities and I had a lot more freedom of movement in car cities. And that transfers over to your mindset, gives you a feeling of independence.
?feature=shared
With a car you can go anywhere you want.
>Who is number 1?
>You are, number 6
They tell you right in the intro
I really think that was an unintentional coincidence and a conclusion reached in hindsight. MacGoohan struggled with the no 1 reveal in the final episode, it wouldn't have happened if it was all laid-out beforehand. No. 1 was more a placeholder and a mystery than a rational scheme hinted by gradual clues in various episodes
>quit the brit equivalent of spook agency
>get kidnapped by '''''''mysterious''''''' people right as you quit
>put on prison island
>spend the entire time trying to figure out who your captors are
>somehow never make the most apparent connection
>spend the entire time trying to get off the island
>have a couple of near escapes
>finally get off
>huuuurduuuuuuuur let's go back to MI6
>let's take a plane and go back to find the island
>pilot jetisons out mid flight
>surprisedpikachu.mp4
>end up crashing on the siland because top goverment secret spy never learned how to fly airplanes
And brainlets in here think somehow that the show had any decent writting and that the last episode was because of some impossible studio enforced deadline instead of the writer being a cokehead moron that wrote themselves in a corner from the getgo?
i think the creators were more interested in stand-alone episode story ideas than long-form storytelling. the village and its mysteries were pretexts for the episodes they did write.
the final episode being pressured by the producer and the creators initially being in a corner to wrap up the show, both aspects are true.
man what
what, what? the series episodes order is more a matter of preference for individual viewers than a one-size-fits-all viewing requirement. apart from the pilot and the last two episodes, no two episodes build up on the same plot points or even characters. there is only a moderate arc of "no. 6 always gets fricked over" to "no. 6 starts to get the upper hand"
(Gong clash)
(Oriental music)
There is a lot of meta shit involved along with fanpress telephone based on the fact that back in the 70s and 80s, you didn't have the internet, VHS tapes, and an easy way to access old media let alone foreign media.....
MacGoohan was th star of Danger Man, a pap by the numbers spy show riding the spy-craze created by the James Bond movies. PM hates the show and is doing it purely for a paycheck while he tries to break into the movies.
the end of the series, there is an episode where Danger Man infiltrates a school for training spies in which is built like an English village and where the staff running and training the spies that come through, are held hostage in the town unable to leave, since they are the only ones who know the identity of the students sent there by the man who is in charge of recruiting the would be spies.
>>PM loved the episode and wanted to do a follow-up: a friend of his character is kidnapped and held prisoner in a seaside resort town that is a holding pen for retiring spies who "know too much" and can't be allowed to retire lest they might be kidnapped and tortured to give up secrets. The resort town is shut down and the punchline is that Drake was responsible for it; having pitched the idea for the town to his superiors early in his spy career, but wanting it to be 100% voluntary and not a holding pen, but a place where retired spies who might be targeted for retaliation by foreign powers, could live out their lives post-retirement in a safe place. The network rejects the script for being too morally ambiguous for their likings.
Man is cancelled and the network wants to keep PM around; offers him a deal for a new show and total creative freedom to get him to reup. PM pitches a modified version of his rejected pitch, with a nameless spy called Number Six who is imprisoned in a seaside resort town where "troublemakers" are kept prisoner. And that the theme of the show would be the individual vs the majority and conformity versus individuality.
>>PM wants to do seven episodes with a definitive ending, the network wants more so they can sell it for US distribution. A compromise for 17 episodes is decided upon, resulting in the filler the show had.
>>Show is a hit but then CBS sees "Living In Harmony" and bans the episode and there are complications in production when PM gets a role in Ice Station Zebra. An episode with Number Six getting involved in a body swapping plotline (Do Not Foresake Me My Darling) was done to buy time while another unrelated unused Danger Man script (The Girl Who Became Death) was rewritten to be an episode of Prisoner by one of PM's producer friends. The show gets canceled and PM has come up with an ending (as he was resigned to do a second season with the more normal spy premise of the Village letting Number Six out to do missions for them and Once Upon A Time was supposed to be the season finale).
>>PM produces a convoluted ending which restates the individualist theme of the show. He also rejected the network wanting the dwarf butler character to be Number One and decides to go Gainax before Gainax exists and has Six unmask One only to see his own face. And an ending shot where Six's house on the outside world, after being freed, is similar to his Village flat. Which indicates that he's not entirely free of the Village.
airs and everyone is confused/pissed off. PM goes dark to avoid the backlash.
becomes a huge cult series. BUT people start fanwanking the idea that DangeR Man and The Prisoner are connected and the Prisoner is a sequel to Danger Man and Six=Drake.
>>The biggest spreader of this lie is Vincent Terrance. Terrance was a TV nerd who wrote books about TV shows for a living. He wrote several books that covered the history of TV and cult TV, where he loudly proclaimed that "The Prisoner is a sequel series to Danger Man and Six is Drake from Danger Man". When people started calling bullshit on him, Terrance made up shit about how the mind swap episode (DNFMMD) was a direct sequel to an episode of Danger Man that "never aired in the United States" and TGWBD being an old Danger Man script and what he claimed was a character calling Six "Drake" in OUAT (which is not true/people mishearing a line from the episode that sounded like someone calling Six "Drake"). He also claimed that DNFMMD revealed why Drake resigned. Though that was partly due to the fact that, by the 1970s, rumors started flying that DNFMMD had it's entire original script thrown out once it became apparent that PM would be finished filming Ice Station Zebra a lot sooner than expected; however the original script didn't say why he was resigning).
>>It wasn't until 1985 that PM publicly declared Prisoner/Danger Man were not linked and Six not Drake. And several officially licensed Danger Man books started coming out that debunked Terrance's books and claims.
to this, PM gave permission for DC Comics to do a sequel to the series "Shattered Visage" which retcons the ending where Fall Out is revealed to be a mental breakdown Six had after being dosed with LSD to try and break him. The Village was liberated as shown on the episode, but a mindbroken Six went into hiding in the bowels of the Village until he comes across a female spy who's boat crashed onto the shore of the Village and gets invovled in a plot by the original Number Two, who was the fall guy for the Village, who seeks to get his hands on the nuclear weapons in the Village and was the true mastermind behind the Village (as there was no Number One at all and that all of the other Number Twos were flunkies who ran things when Two wasn't around).
While a red pill on individually it never said that about the cold war jingoism-wise. PM explicitly pushed a black pill view on the cold war with the idea of the Village being the west being as fricked up and corrupt as the Commies in Russia and the idea that the village from the show was just one of many similar prison colonies and that every country had one.
it's a red pill on individualism and the west. He literally says "the cold war will end when the west looks at russia and see's its looking into a mirror" and he was right
KINO!
It's easy to get filtered if you didn't also watch Danger Man