You won't bother to watch the entirety of this here but I can't resist. I have the opportunity to embed any whole episode of The Prisoner, the historic 1967 TV series by Patrick McGoohan. I picked the first but you can view any one of them over on this page of the AMC Website. I gather they've been placed online as a teaser for a forthcoming DVD release of well-restored prints.
There are also little "Prisoner-in-a-Minute" videos there that chop each installment down to a fast summary. Some of you may find them no less coherent than watching the entire hour.
I was not as big a fan of this show as some of my friends when it first aired. It would have required too much effort to be as big a fan of this show as some of my friends when it first aired. You'd have had to talk about it every waking moment and find double, triple and quadruple meanings in every line of dialogue and every prop or piece of scenery. What I guess intrigued me the most was that every time a new episode aired, I'd hear the discussion and analysis all over the schoolyard. No two people agreed. No two people seemed to be remotely on the same page as to what had happened, let alone what any of it meant.
And of course, everyone was blood certain that they and only they understood the show. I used to occasionally wade into these conversations, not because I had any better grasp but because it was fun to lob in a grenade or two. I'd stroll up to the mob and having no idea what I was talking about — but unlike the rest of them, knowing that — I'd ask, "And did everyone notice the scene that represented the Cuban Missile Crisis? And the sign in the background of the last shot that said, 'Number Six is Number Nine?'" This was back before we had VCRs, so no one could race home and replay the show and freeze-frame it to see that I'd made that up. It made the discussions somehow livelier.
The only other thing I can think of to mention about the show is to tell the following story. One evening about 1973, I was on a date with a young lady whose all-time favorite TV show was The Prisoner. I learned this when we were walking in Westwood and she suddenly noticed someone about thirty yards down the sidewalk and shrieked. "Omigod," she gasped, pronouncing it that way (as one word). "There's the star of my favorite TV show." I couldn't see who she'd spotted but I ran after her as she sprinted up to the gentleman. Before I could stop her, she accosted him and blurted out, "Mr. McGoohan, I have to tell you that I think The Prisoner was the greatest TV show ever made and I think you are a genius."
The man thanked her, very so politely, but said, "I'm sure Patrick McGoohan will be pleased to hear that but my name is Patrick Macnee and I was on a TV show called The Avengers." Then he looked at me and said with a smile, "Don't worry…this happens all the time." Here's the other Patrick in her favorite show…
