NoCelebrity
16-11-2009, 03:50 AM
The Prisoner -- 2009
Well, I think the gist of my review will be that I am going to watch the next episode.
I liked the first episode better than the second. “Arrival” owed more to the original than did “Harmony.” There are interesting and unusual comparisons, not all positive.
I think the elements I like least are mind control enhanced by a pill that apparently causes varying degrees of retrograde amnesia, a pill that everyone in the larger desert Village seems exposed to except, perhaps, Number Two. 2 has a comatose wife and a “strapping” young son, both of whom seem especially susceptible to the drug, a ubiquitous blue-green pill also found in the ubiquitous sandwich wraps.
Number Six alone is convinced there is an outside world, and his beliefs are like a slow contagion amongst the Villagers. Like the original, it doesn’t pay to become too close to 6, and an Extra Large balloon awaits those who stray too far from their roles. There are also other loving (or respectful?) nods to the original. The friendly Taxi Driver, verbal mind games over what is real, “Be seeing You!” and the slow reveal. Occasional uniforms with piped jackets or horizontal red-and-white stripes. But not the bike... Nor the little butler in tails.
For a purist, this strays too far from the original in other ways. It is serial and not episodic, despite episode titles. Having only one also 2 makes this easier. I figure six to seventeen episodes is plenty--if they go for more than that, I’m bailing!
6 has occasional flashbacks to what we believe was his true past life, but in the second episode “Harmony” (presumably a nod to the original episode “Living In Harmony” -- an hallucination through drugs, hypnosis, and visual/verbal reinforcement) his memories are cleverly confused by new planted memories 6 simply cannot reconcile, and perhaps neither can we. (That’s how they make serials last longer without getting “soggy”--pun intended.)
6 believes he was an analyst for a secret corporation, analyzing and predicting the behavior of various targets. He writes “RESIGN” in big red letters on a window office divider at his work. A clever woman lets him believe he is making a connection with her, feeling sorry for his vague story about quitting. She is the man with the gas-filled umbrella in the Original, and 6 knows he is being set up.
6 apparently develops a taste for pork he never had, served by his pretend brother’s wife in the ubiquitous “wrap.” The Village would seem to be in a desert an hour or two from the ocean, where steering wheels are on the right, and 6 is to believe he drives a tour bus. For people who never leave The Village, a tour bus should stretch everyone’s imagination too far. But The Village is far larger than the original.
What I liked least of all was the feeling that the entire second episode was mired in a drug-induced haze and began to make no sense, blurring the lines too far between reality and hallucination. The payoff is dubious as 6 is wheeled into the Village asylum at the end of “Harmony” because we know he’ll be out in the next episode to keep the plot moving and interesting. Unless the new author is turning “The Prisoner” into an homage to “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Well, I think the gist of my review will be that I am going to watch the next episode.
I liked the first episode better than the second. “Arrival” owed more to the original than did “Harmony.” There are interesting and unusual comparisons, not all positive.
I think the elements I like least are mind control enhanced by a pill that apparently causes varying degrees of retrograde amnesia, a pill that everyone in the larger desert Village seems exposed to except, perhaps, Number Two. 2 has a comatose wife and a “strapping” young son, both of whom seem especially susceptible to the drug, a ubiquitous blue-green pill also found in the ubiquitous sandwich wraps.
Number Six alone is convinced there is an outside world, and his beliefs are like a slow contagion amongst the Villagers. Like the original, it doesn’t pay to become too close to 6, and an Extra Large balloon awaits those who stray too far from their roles. There are also other loving (or respectful?) nods to the original. The friendly Taxi Driver, verbal mind games over what is real, “Be seeing You!” and the slow reveal. Occasional uniforms with piped jackets or horizontal red-and-white stripes. But not the bike... Nor the little butler in tails.
For a purist, this strays too far from the original in other ways. It is serial and not episodic, despite episode titles. Having only one also 2 makes this easier. I figure six to seventeen episodes is plenty--if they go for more than that, I’m bailing!
6 has occasional flashbacks to what we believe was his true past life, but in the second episode “Harmony” (presumably a nod to the original episode “Living In Harmony” -- an hallucination through drugs, hypnosis, and visual/verbal reinforcement) his memories are cleverly confused by new planted memories 6 simply cannot reconcile, and perhaps neither can we. (That’s how they make serials last longer without getting “soggy”--pun intended.)
6 believes he was an analyst for a secret corporation, analyzing and predicting the behavior of various targets. He writes “RESIGN” in big red letters on a window office divider at his work. A clever woman lets him believe he is making a connection with her, feeling sorry for his vague story about quitting. She is the man with the gas-filled umbrella in the Original, and 6 knows he is being set up.
6 apparently develops a taste for pork he never had, served by his pretend brother’s wife in the ubiquitous “wrap.” The Village would seem to be in a desert an hour or two from the ocean, where steering wheels are on the right, and 6 is to believe he drives a tour bus. For people who never leave The Village, a tour bus should stretch everyone’s imagination too far. But The Village is far larger than the original.
What I liked least of all was the feeling that the entire second episode was mired in a drug-induced haze and began to make no sense, blurring the lines too far between reality and hallucination. The payoff is dubious as 6 is wheeled into the Village asylum at the end of “Harmony” because we know he’ll be out in the next episode to keep the plot moving and interesting. Unless the new author is turning “The Prisoner” into an homage to “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.”