Finished The Prisoner
Wow, what can you say about one of the greatest TV series of all time except, it's very good! I am going to type up thoughts on the ending so I'll spoil it, therefore if you haven't watched it yet (and you should, the entire series is on youtube!) stop reading.
It's also a show that subverts it's expectations multiple times in creative ways. What if Number 6 was back in London? What if it were a western?
My favorite episodes were Hammer Into Anvil and Many Happy Returns. Hammer is also my friend's favorite episode, and it's delightful the amount of psychological damage number 6 does to
The Prisoner is the most videogame of TV shows. Number 6 spends a lot of time figuring out how to get out of situations and testing the limits of The Village and sneaking around. There's also a long term goal (escaping) and short term goals (defeating the current Number 2, rescuing someone, etc). I kept thinking how it would make for a great adaptation for an immersive sim videogame. The Village is it's own kind of sandbox with lots of tools, toys, characters, and things to do.
There is a kind of paranioia that creeps into the viewer: are characters being "real" or is it a ruse to try and break Number 6? I kept wondering that, and that parinoia really comes into play in an episode like "It's your funeral" where alligences shift and you aren't really sure what the truth is until the very end of the episode.
This is also what made Fall Out such a wild episode. Was this all a ruse to break Number 6? They reveal that they're going to let him go, after defeating Number 2 in Once Upon A Time, and it seems like they won't? And then somehow he gets away. I like to think that despite the show hinting that he never "escapes" he does get out of The Village alongside everyone else in it, and seemingly destroys the core of it, and get to drive his car and live in his flat in London. During the entire last episode I kept expecting the show to reveal "No, it was all a hallucination!". Even during Many Happy Returns I kept wondering when "The Trick" would be revealed (it is, at the very end) but does establish that The Village is On Earth and it's possible to get back to London and isn't in fact a separate dimention.
Fall Out doesn't explain anything about the show, despite finally showing the viewer the village's inner sanctum and getting a glimpse of Number 1. I did find the ending to be satisfying, the shot with Number 6 and the Butler getting on a bus felt like a return to reality after the 16 episodes of un-reality.