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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.tv
Subject: Re: The Prisoner
Message-ID: <1945@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 00:43:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1945
Posted: Wed Oct 23 00:43:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Oct-85 00:18:01 EDT
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>> The last episode of the Prisoner was just played here in New York.  I was
>> wondering if anyone else has ever seen it, and if so, if you could explain
>> to me exactly just what happened?  I watched it, but was totally mystified
>> by the show.  It was totally unlike all the other episodes I have seen.
>> ...  [LARRY LIPPMAN]

>     Granted, this episode is just a little bit bizarre.  I do have my 
> own hypothesis about what the episode was trying to say.  In the end, Number 6
> finds out that he is Number 1.  He finds out that he is in fact an individual,
> under no one's control but his own.  At least this is what he is allowed to
> believe.  No matter how hard he tries, his beliefs, decisions and in fact 
> his whole persona are influenced by other people.  Specifically,  the gov't
> still has control of him.  He is just allowed to believe that he is in 
> control.  This is what's going on in the courtroom, when he is trying to
> give them a speech.  He is now Number 1 but no one will listen to him (is he
> in fact, in charge?).  The fact that he is not in control of his own life
> is also demonstrated at the very end.  When the butler goes to
> the front door of Number 6's (now Number 1) apartment, the door opens
> automatically.  He is free, but is he really? [PETER LITWINOWICZ]

I've had similar feelings about that last episode (and the series in general).
I've also come to the conclusion that part of the message therein is that
the way to enslave "ultimate individuals" is to make them FEEL that they are
free, all the while controlling/directing their behavior in some manner,
contrasting the "1984" style of totalitarianism with the (apparently much more
successful) "Brave New World" style of despotism ("Everybody's happy
nowadays").  But...

>      Then again, "they" (the show's writers) may be just playing with our
> minds.  They may have written the last episode so that people for years to
> come would discuss it and say "wasn't that bizarre?"

For that last episode the "writers" were Patrick McGoohan himself.  I'm not
positive, but I think the original series was slated to be 13 episodes (a
standard for British TV series), but the distributors requested (demanded?)
another four (which were made somewhat later).  I get the feeling (from the
general feel of the shows) that among those four were the one that took place
in the "old west" (which starred the actor who played "young man" in that
final episode), called "Living in Harmony", and the episode in which #6 was
actually reading a fairy tale all along to a group of children (with the
confrontation with the mad scientist dressed as Napoleon in the same
lighthouse where #6 eventually met #1?), called "The Girl Who Was Death". 
AND the final episode, "Fall Out".

If you think about it, the penultimate episode ("Once Upon a Time") provides
a neat enough wrapping up of the series, in its own hazy way.  (An article
posted in February by Kevin Dowling at Rutgers, excerpting from the Prisoner
Episode Guide, indicated that I may be right at least in part.  He said that
"Once Upon a Time" was the 13th episode to be filmed, representing the end of
the first "season", and that "Fall Out" was not filmed till several months
later.  This would account for Leo McKern's very different appearance in "Fall
Out" from the way he looked in "Once Upon a Time".)  How does it end?  With #6
proving his individuality over #2, who dies in the process, and getting the
chance to meet #1.  As the episode ends, he walks off with the bald
"supervisor" to meet #1, and that's it.  Fini.  Any *less* "deep" than "Fall
Out"?  Not really.  But you do get the feeling throughout that episode that
McGoohan was indeed having a good laugh at our expense. I've heard a story
(unsubstantiated as yet) that the actor who played "young man" was a friend of
McGoohan, who just happened to have a "hit" single out at the time of the
filming.  The song?  "Dem Bones"!!! (or whatever that song is called)  At
times it almost seems like he picked up a book on Freud, and opened it
randomly to different pages and included whatever he found that could be
surrealistically interpreted as being "deep" (this WAS the sixties, after all!)
into the script (?).

I think one of the "deepest" interpretations I've yet heard came from a friend
of mine.  When #6 confronts #1 in the "tower", #1 is at first dressed like
just another white robed figure with a black/white mask (although he had
a "1" on his robe).  But #6 reveals #1's identity by *repeatedly* *and*
*successively* *removing* *masks*.  The first mask, half-black, half-white,
represents cold black & white logic and reasoning on the exterior.  The second,
the monkey face mask, represents the animal within us that we hide under the
outer mask.  But the innermost mask, the one we hide most thoroughly of all,
is the true face, the true self.  (If that's not deep, what is?)

No, my friend does NOT partake of illegal chemical substances, nor do I.

I vacillate between believing that this episode really has that deep meaning
I like to think it has and believing that McGoohan is just having a great big
laugh on all of us.  Sometimes I think surrealism can best be defined as the
art of making people think that something has meaning when it doesn't.

I think it's also worth noting that a great deal is made of asking what is
the real reason that #6 did resign.  When we, too, ask the same question
(as the keepers of the Village did), we are missing the point.  The point is
NOT the reason that he resigned.  The point is that it's HIS business and
no one else's.

(Allow me to insert a plug for the mail.prisoner mailing list run by Dave
 Iannucci.  Some very interesting discussions about aspects of the series
 have been discussed in that forum.  Dave can be reached at:
!!grep iannucci ../prisoner*
	ihnp4!allegra!sjuvax!iannucci  OR
    {{ihnp4 | ucbvax}!allegra | {psuvax1}!burdvax | astrovax}!sjuvax!iannucci )
-- 
Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus.
						Rich Rosen   pyuxd!rlr