The Prisoner

Ok, I think this is one of those you-had-to-be-there sorts of shows. Kind of like Star Trek is for me. It looks and sounds horribly dated, and if you came to it after a bunch of other sf shows, it looks tawdry and kind of pointless. It's all been done before, and better. That's the thing about seeing tropes out of order.

I've watched five episodes of The Prisoner this afternoon, and I just guess you had to have been there. A lot of people whose taste I respect a lot rave about this show. Its marvelous surrealism. Its depth and subtlety. Its passion. Patrick McGoohan. I hit it too far out of it's time. It looks dreadfully dated. Those lava lamps everywhere, for god's sake. And you know that in the nature of the show, you're never going to find out where the village is and you're never going to find out why he resigned. Those things are essential to the serial nature of the show. It doesn't have an on-going arc, so there isn't any promise of change.

I thought I'd like it. Hence, watching five shows instead of just one. But really, I could have stopped with just one. The first one has everything that it's going to ever have. And my god, could the plot move any slower? Sixties television is not speedy. McGoohan gets a couple of good lines now and then, but the reptartee is slow in comparison to say, West Wing. And psychiatry has moved on, now. The types of things that they show the blinky lights doing are simply not believable. Besides which, you can't condition someone to be left-handed in a month worth of shock therapy. All you can do is make him muddled. And the peel-off mole. I mean please, they can do all this kinky stuff with brains, but they can't manage minor plastic surgery? (As you can see, I most recently watched The Schizoid Man. Which is number five.)

Ok, heretic here. Sorry about that. But I am not afraid of an oversized beach ball. And the special effects are terrible.

If you loved the show, try telling me why. I'll listen. But I think I just hit it too far out of it's time.