Episode 18: The Prisoner (1967) Episodes 14-15

Oh there, I'm Chris Stashu. No, I'm just fired. We are the host of the One Season Show podcast, where we take a look at TV shows that only lasted one season. Each month we tackle several episodes from the show, and on this episode we're still discussing the Prisoner. We are almost done and we're continuing continuing with episodes fourteen and fifteen, Living in Harmony and The Girl Who Was Deaf.

So, like just mentioned, these are the penultimate episodes of the show. So again, not in the original order, but so Living in Harmony aired December twenty ninth, nineteen sixty seven. It is directed by David Tomblin, is based off of a story by David Tomblin, and is also credit given to Ian Rakoff and Frank Maher Number two is played by David Bauer. Is okay, so this okay? Look?

This episode features a wild West town. It's a wild West allegory. It is a wild West allegory. It is a literal wild West episode of this show. It is insane.

There are saloons, there are cowboy hats, there are horses, there are gunfights. It is it is something that I should have liked, and I liked parts of it, but then it gets right back to this exactly the show that we're expecting. And yep, so this episode is actually on the last episode we discussed how ten out of seventeen of these episodes are essentially filler episodes. This one, as I was reading about it, is absolutely a filler episode. It was basically this is one of the ten concepts that they came up with when they were trying to add on episodes and Ian Rakoff for Rakoff, I guess like this story.

So this whole Wild West story, and the whole crux of this episode being that Number six is forced to become the sheriff of this town so that this girl can go free, Kathy I believe it's her name, And so the whole thing is that he will take the sheriff's badge, but he refuses to carry a gun. They send out people to beat him up and to try and you know, and encourage him to you know, keep a gun, but he does not. So I guess this story was influenced. Writer Ian Rakoff spent some time in South Africa during apart Bide, and I guess the story was influenced by a night where he and some of his group members were out and he ian Rakoff was encountered by this man who he felt was a racist, and ian Rakoff was prepared to, I guess, shoot this man and was stopped by a member of his group who told him that if he wanted to rise up the ranks, then he was going to have to give up the gun.

So there's that. And the other thing I found interesting about this episode is that I guess it didn't it was not originally aired, and because it was not originally aired in the first run right off the bat, because they said that it was because of the use of hallucinogenic drugs, but that doesn't make any sense because hallucinogenic drugs and might altering things have been used in the show before. The real reason that's evidently speculated is that because they didn't want it to be interpreted at Patrick McGowan not taking the gun as an anti war statements during the time because Vietnam, so we have essentially the The big reveal in this episode is that the Wild West Town was a ruse and it's all fake and we were just trying to get Number six to give us information by doing this instead, and yep, that's sure.

Sounds like a filler episode, doesn't it. Well, let's not kid ourselves. I mean every episode of the show has essentially been how can we try to get information from Number six? Which fine, I get that, because that's generally the goal when it comes to spies. You know, one spy is trying to get information from another, one government is trying to get information from another.

But there have to be subplots. There have to be other other things in the show happening to add layers and interest. Otherwise it's just, yeah, the same cat and mouse. They set up the traps, he avoids the traps, rinse, repeat, isn't it. Yeah, I mean this episode, it's insane.

This episode is the idea behind this episode is insane. Yeah, it's just a really elaborate another one, another one that they created, this whole other town. I just I want to know more about the village. I want to know more about the inner working. Like there's there's so many things in this show I want to know about, But I have to watch this same formula every episode.

YE keep wanting because it ain't yep, yep. We're not getting it anytime soon. We may get it in the last episode. But here's the thing. This episode, like the premise is interesting, but when you couple that with the fact that you know, this is one of those episodes that is admittedly filler who cares.

Yeah, Ultimately, ultimately it doesn't matter. And I mean there's so many you know, there's so many different rules and theories behind you know, a story approach and things like that. But if you're going to write in a formula, you're going to get formula born writing. That's going to grow old real quick. And boy doesn't mean I mean these the show hasn't changed in fort episode.

There's been one or two episodes that have changed up the formula slight Well, there are no other characters either, Like we number two will have like a lackey for an episode, you know, like he has somebody who assists him, whether it's you know, the scientists to switch the brains or you know, the number fifty five to kind of seduce Patrick and good whatever. Like, there's just we don't get to know anybody, and we don't get to know anything about Patrick McGowan because he's this whole thing is not giving information and so we're stuck in this weird place where we're we're inside a world that is for spies and government, and both of them are trying to avoid revealing who they are and what they're doing and why they're doing to the other one.

But they've forgotten to reveal any of that to the audience. And the audience does get privilege information, I mean not always, but generally, especially when you're doing you know, like a long running series, the audience gets to know things that the characters don't, right, but here it feels the opposite. It feels like the characters know more than the audience does. But but in a way that means that we're never going to know. Like it's not in ahaha, I know something you don't know and it's going to be a twisty reveal at the end.

It's just now we're just never going to touch on it. I mean literally, look at the opening of the episodes. Every single episode opens the exact same way, and it is with a non is with a spoken part of Patrick McGowan putting in his resignation, but we don't get to hear it because they have removed the audio of the dialogue. Like that should be indicative of the show, as all the intro is. Yeah, if you hit skip intro on Amazon, it won't skip all the way through because the intro is so long, and it is kind of set up like we're picking up at the end there, the middle of an episode where he was still a spy.

But then it's just he wakes up in the village and again, Yeah, everything is the same. It is all the same and repetitious. And maybe that's the point. Maybe that's that's I don't know, but it's not an entertaining ride. Unfortunately, not always well.

This episode has some things that could have been interesting, they just none of it. None of it succeeds because when the curtain is pulled back, the response is a great right, more of the same? Cool? Yeah, I mean it is a bummer, right, like you know, Yeah, I mean the show's just it's a huge missed opportunity, and I mean, I guess it's not when we know the fact that there were seven specific episodes and maybe if you just watch those seven, maybe you get, you know, a better experience out of it. And honestly, if we can figure out which those seven, you know, which full seven episodes those are, I maybe wouldn't mind trying to watch it just that way.

But yeah, it's it's a missed opportunity and that's unfortunate because there's so much interesting and cool stuff going on here. I do like Patrick McGowan, as you know, number six, and I think that they you know, as you know, as small parts as they may have, the big characters are interesting when they're there. It's just we don't get to know anything about anybody, and we don't get to spend any time with anybody in doing anything, and then you ultimately have an episode like this where they try to convince you that the show is something else for the almost entire run of the episode, and then at the end they're like, oh, but never mind, because well because it doesn't matter are you are you talking about this episode or are you talking about the next episode?

Kind about both, I guess because it theoretically applied to Bolt. So let's talk about the Girl who Was Death. The third to last episode of this show on the in the order that we're watching it air January eighteenth, nineteen sixty eight, is directed once again by David Tomlin. It is based off of an idea by David Tomblin, with writing from Terrence Feely. Star Kenneth Griffith as Number two, and it has Number six is apparently back in London helping to do an actual spy espionage mission.

But you know, let's just cut to the chase. The entire episode turns out to be a story that Number six was telling to a group of children in the village. And I hate this episode. Yeah, this was the cardinal sin. This is the thing that you don't do.

And largely because of shows from this era and maybe you know a little later seventies and eighties, the whole trope of it was all a dream or you know, it's this sick boy looking into the snow globe and imagining this whole thing. Like that's a cop out. That's a huge, massive cop out. That is I don't know how to end my story, so we're doing it. And honestly, what this episode is evidently is an unused two part script from Danger Man.

Oh I know, I read that, and that's insane. So we effectively get an episode where Patrick McGowan is just Danger Man, which I mean, I haven't watched the show, but I can assume that you know what it's like. And he then, so this episode is really just Patrick McGowan's character, who we still don't get a name, Yeah, goes from place to place in where he's you know, find secret messages to tell him to go to the next place, and at that place he will inevitably be you know, an attempt on his life will be made, and he will come out of it, and then he will get another note to go to a different place, until he ends up at a lighthouse that is a rocket ship that he escaped, I guess, but not before having a conflict with people dressed the two men dressed up as like Napoleon and some other you know, military so and so, and Yeah, I guess you when you tell it, like when I say it like that where it's like there's a rocket ship and then there's these people dressed up a blah blah blah.

Of course, it sounds like a kid's story. And obviously, you know, as we watch the show, I wasn't really expecting number six to have, you know, gotten out or something. I didn't you know, I knew we were going to end up back in the village, but I'm kind of surprised that they didn't pull something like this ending earlier. Yeah, me too, right there with you like, it's kind of like, this is like lowest hanging of fruit, guys, and you waited this long and again this is the order that we're watching them in. But still I think this episode in general, with all the orders falls later.

I could be wrong, but it Yeah, it's it's waste. It's a horrible waste of an episode. It's the absolute lowest hanging of fruit of twist endings you could do. And it's not fun to watch. It's certainly not the show and that the episode you want to like end on right before you come to your finale.

Well, and that's the thing is, you know, it does automatically set up like oh, he's in London, Like how did that happen? Okay, so this is a dream or something, and instead of it just being a dream, it's a story sequence. And what just because it isn't a dream, you think that somehow better, You think that this is the more excusable concept. Yeah, it's not excusable. This is an inexcusable episode.

It really is, absolutely And I mean that's the appointment that I feel towards this show and this episode specifically is really shocking, because, like you said, this is the this is the worst, worst of the worst of the worst things you can do if you have a show like this, or any show, any show, any show, any movie, if you end any of your unless you're dealing with dream logic and dream worlds, do not introduce the it was never there, it never happened. It's just like the trope of you know, the dead person in the movie that isn't actually the whole time it has been dead the whole time, where it's like, oh, that one character is only being spoken to by that other one character, so gee, or they're in there or they're in their head or something like that.

So yeah, it's it's a cop out because it means that you don't that everything that you wrote up to this point did not matter at all. Honestly, that's kind of how I've felt about the first part of The Avengers, you know, finalize. But but yeah, no that I it's no, this is unfortunate. It's are you starting to are are you starting to fall into the front of the podcast. Mike White's opinion of this episode.

This episode has pushed me in that direction a lot harder than anything else, as it's you know, you know, we're at these we're at this point now where we've had essentially three episodes in a row. You could even make the case of four episodes in a row that have felt completely unnecessary, that it felt like a complete waste of time. I mean, Living Living in Harmony. It's not as bad as this episode because at least thing but it pretty much does the same thing. Yeah, but I guess like the execution is a bit more interesting than just him being danger man in London and then dressed up like Sherlock Holmes.

I mean it's pretty much a simulation though, right, I mean Living in Harmony with a simulation, and this is a construct of the reader's mind. When it comes to the story that he's telling. It's just it's lazy. It's lazy, and it like there's parts where he's writing a rollercoaster and it's green screen and it looks cheap, and it just it looks it looks cheap, it feels cheap, and the twisted the end is the cheapest part of a very cheap and disappointing episode that Patrick mcgoughan definitely didn't want to be part of. And here's like the thing about about that whole you know, green screen and everything.

When Patrick mcgoon was talking about um and everything that I've read about this has just been sources from various books that have been written on the show. But um. When he was talking about the filler episodes, his goals for them were to a continue the theme that violence does not pay off and b make them, as you know, visually exciting as he possibly can. Well that it's a failure, especially on this episode at the beginning. Yes, this visually.

Yeah, at the beginning, this show was really striking and cool and interesting looking, and I wanted to see more of it. But as I've said before, we're not seeing anything new. So everything that was previously interesting is now old. That first episode seems like a lifetime ago. It really does, right, It's just it's shocking how quickly the show kind of fell apart and then just started getting mired in the muck of its own problems.

But we're almost done. Yeah, I know. But the biggest disappointment about that is I know that we're almost done, but so what, right, Well, we don't have to watch anymore? Yeah, yeah, No, that's I mean, you're not wrong, but you know what I mean by so what, Like we're yeh done, but and I mean ultimately costly. I think we're going to feel that way a lot about shows like this because they only lasted one season.

And I mean I think that that's true. Large wasn't even this bad. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'd still rather watch more episodes of The Prisoner thially half the length of any episode of this show, probably just because this show I would not mind having on in like background is just like something that I can tune in and out of. And I don't feel so much that way about Kitchen Confidential.

But I think again this comes down to like our varying tastes, and what I'm more willing to put up with is different from what you're more willing to put up with, like if it falls into something that you would otherwise be interested in. And I think that I'm as an like sort of art piece. I find this show interesting as you know, a concept, and I find this show interesting as a failure. I find this show interesting because I do find myself you know, I still am thinking about it when we're not launching it, and I still am wanting to know more about it because it is such an anomaly. Well it's definitely in an anomaly.

I mean, look this, this feels like a failure, but like a failure upwards for the most part. Yeah, and I mean that's again, this is sort of a prototype show. I mean that we can look at it as is. It's a prototype. It was a high concept television show at a time where high concept TV did not exist really outside of like doctor I mean it did so it did in British television.

That's fine. I mean there were Doctor Who and everything was there, but you know, into American audiences, high concept television not so much. Maybe things like twilight Zone, but that was you know, and I guess it's still sci fi and this show paved the way for a lot of things. As we've talked about before, it's super influential. So yeah, as a prototype, it has a lot of bugs, and it has a lot of failures, and it doesn't really work, but it does.

It did open a lot of doors. I think. No, I completely agree. I mean that is the that is the success of the show. Yes, is that through its failure, of which you know, as a storytelling it is a huge failure.

It did open up a new realm though for story and television that I think, I mean, we are much better, sir, for having, thank god, still watching twenty eight episodes of shit like Gilligan's Island. Yeah, but Gilligan's Island is endearing. I'm not sure that is endearing. Well, no, but this show is not trying to be endearing. This show wants to you know, it has been conspiracy in paranoia and you know, government, and there's there's a lot of more you know, intellectual and you know, layered depth, the issues peppered throughout this where our shows like Gilligan's Island were what they were supposed to be, twenty five minutes of endearing charm and until you go to bed.

Yeah, No, you're I mean, you're completely right. I just I just feel like sitting here watching this episode, specifically this episode just is this episode sucks. Yeah, I mean this episode, this is the this is the worst offense the show has ever put in front of us. Barred No. Yeah, And I mean I guess it's better that it's later on because it doesn't.

You know, like I feel like this would have really soured things much sooner if this had been higher up and like this had been if we had watched this closer to the beginning. But I don't know. It's not good. It's not a good episode at all. These episodes weren't good.

The last couple of episodes weren't good. Is unfortunate that we're like stuck in just the swamps of filler episodes at the moment, because I do really want to know how this ends, and I am, you know, looking forward to finishing it and kind of discuss saying, you know, overall the show, but once we have that that ending cap on it. But right now, it just feels like it's a balloon just losing air forever. Yeah, like relutely got popped a long time ago. The reality of this show is that it is a race to the bottom and we are still on the decline.

And I don't think that we might get an uptick in the second to last episode once upon a time. But if everything is to be believed that we've heard about fallout, it is going to be nuclear failure, right, because let's not kid ourselves. Fallout has probably has to do with a nuclear weapon of some former I would assume, so, yeah, but I yeah, this is the It is unconscionable that they put this episode together and tried to pass it off as something worth watching. It really is. Yeah, there's like nothing positive to say about the episode, Like, I don't it's this is one of the few times doing a podcast where I don't.

I don't want you to watch this because I have seen it. Yeah, and this serves no purpose and it gives you. It gave me no satisfaction to watch it. And if you watch it knowing that Jess and I have said this is bad, really, don't watch this, and you watch it and come a boy saying it is bad, you're watching it at your own peril. Yeah, I would say, I mean, and we'll talk about this, you know when we wrap up the shows, when we guitar order and probably throwing episodes that we would eliminate.

Um, this is definitely one of them. If you're watching this show, you can totally skip it. It does not matter. Just just don't because spoiler alert, it was all a dream slash, It was all the story slash. It never happened slash slash.

Who cares, right, because apparently the people who made the show didn't care, so why should we Nobody but Patrick McGowan, Well, nobody who made this show cared. IX yeah, except for Patrick, but whatever, it's unfortunate. But what what are you going to do, Patrick McGowan, Because we can't do anything. We can't help you because you know, apparently everybody else didn't care enough about your show to give it a fair shake anyways. So I mean that's the truth.

They wanted more episodes, and this is what happens. They diluted an idea down into something that is barely an idea worth talking about. Yeah, they wanted more episodes so they could sell it to American markets to make more money, and they in turn killed a show that would never see the light of day again, like woun any more seasons because they again just squeezed every ounce of anything that it was out of it, which really begs the question what this show would have been like, right if it had only been seven episodes. If this show had been seven episodes only, would this be widely considered to be one of the greatest shows of all time? As oppose that's what I am, That's what I wanted, right, Yeah, that's what I wonder.

That's why I want to you know, like I want to know which seven episodes are those episodes? And then kind of like take those out and examine them just as a group together, because yeah, I think the show, with all the potential that it had, could have been one of you know, like best TV shows of all time, but unfortunately it's it's definitely one of probably the most you know, intriguing shows of all time, I guess, you know, initially on paper. But yeah, it feels like episode Yeah, this is feeling more and more like Where Will, because Where Will That at its core was also a very interesting like show and like it had the potential to really be something special. And then two years later, or not two years, but several years later, a show came out that really turned the industry on its head, which was The X Files, and Where Wolf could have been that show.

And this show came out when Star Trek was out, and Star Trek turned the TV industry on its head, and this show could have done the same thing, and to some extent, it did, but it doesn't have the staying power right because they I mean, look, even episodes of Star Trek aren't very good. But I'll tell you what. Oh, now, I'll tell you what. Even the worst episode of Star Trek is better than the best episode of this show. With that doubt unless the last two episodes are going to be some grand experiment in storytelling.

I would take the worst episode of Star Trek, the original series, a show that came out around the same time as this show, than any of the episodes of this show period. Yeah, I'll go and just put Coos on in the background on shuffle on Netflix or on my Plex server. But I would not put this on shuffle on my Plex server. I just wouldn't because I run the risk of getting one of these episodes like Living in Harmony or The Girl Who Was Death. And I find something very comforting about the sounds of television shows from the sixties, like the sound effects, the music, like the transitional music and stuff like that.

I don't know, there's something about it that I just did. I like the atmosphere that it creates. So having something like this in the background would be for me because I'm not paying attention to it, and I just like that that, you know, I like the sonic sounds of it. No, I completely get it. I mean, I just if I'm gonna put something on from the sixties, it's not gonna be this.

It would Yeah, I would rather watch The Twilight Zone yeah, I mean that. I mean you know that too. I mean you know you've got all these choices of shows that do so much more. I mean, again not kidding ourselves that there are not good episodes of the Twilight Zone. I mean, or there are bad ones.

I mean there's more, probably more middle of the road episodes of the Twilight Zone than good. Oh yeah, because there's so many episodes of that show. But at the same time, the episodes that are good at the Twilight Zone are transcendently good. People are still talking about them fifty sixties, seventy eighty, god knows how long much longer in perpetuity. You know this, this show is a missed opportunity in the biggest and most egregious way.

Would you rather watch this show or the new Twilights the twenty nineteen. I'd rather put a blindfold on watch. I'd rather put a blindfold on and go walk and take a long walk over sure branch, a blindfold on and could walk into traffic out behind my house and see what happened. I'll put my I'll put I'll put my hands in the in in something you know, something greater than myself, and see if I can make it to the other side of the street without getting hit by a car. Because the Twilight Zone twenty nineteen is just trash.

I mean, it is the definition of race baiting, click baity, garbage television that serves no purpose in twenty nineteen other than to rile up people for no reason. And this show, at least, this show doesn't have any of those problems. It has its own problems, but it's not trying to essentially pigeonhole itself as a show that could only exist in twenty nineteen and no time else, right, I mean, that's the thing about the Twilight Zone from the sixties that made it so great is the stories in the allegories or timeless and to some extent, the Prisoner is a timeless show with the with what it's talking about. But yeah, Twilight's one twenty nineteen. It is.

It is so pigeonholed itself into a show that can only exist in the twenty first century, in the woke culture of the century, that the one year of twenty first century light. Yeah, Oh, it's it's the it's the Trump twilight Zone. It's pretty much what it builds because that's what we want, right, Yeah, A show that when you watch it, you know, if you watch it ten years from now, people to go okay, like, yeah, I do remember when our child, when our president was a child, I do remember that. And next heavy handed hit me over the head with that giant sledgehammers. So again I were ragged on this show.

But you know, we wouldn't be watching the show if we didn't think it had something to add. But this episode really just when I was done watching it, I just I just was frustrated to say the yeah, it was good. I was gonna text you and be like, you're gonna hate this episode. Well I hated it from like five minutes in when I realized that it's clearly it'll only be one thing. Yeah, it has to be a dream or some variation on a This doesn't actually exist.

This is not existing in a way that's reality. So yeah, so so what are we talking about on the next and fine episode I guess second to last episode of this season of the one season show. Yes we are. We are wrapping up the series Prisoner with the final two episodes, which are Once upon a Time and fall Out. So until then, Jess, where can people find you?

You can find me on Twitter at writer Jess Byrd and you can find me twice a month on your show, Chris, The Culture Cast, where we're talking movies every months a different theme. Man. You can find both of us over on our other podcasts, Scary Stories We Tell, where we chat true crime, paranormal, horror culture, all that good spooky, kooky stuff. So if you like that, head on over and check it out. What about you, Chris, You can find me on Twitter at Casualty Underscore Chris.

I talk about all the projects that I'm on there. Jess already mentioned most of them, so there's no point in plugging all of them at One Season Show on Twitter is where you can find us, and one seasonshow dot Com is where you can find the other two seasons of this show. Big thanks as always too. Mustaches and Martinis. That is the music for this season of the one season show, and we'll catch you on the next episode.