With all the recent series finales, there’s been another round of mentions for how The Prisoner ended back when. I’ve never quite understood all the fuss; it strikes me as largely being the most straightforward way to wrap everything up.
I mean, imagine you’d never seen the last episode – and imagine you handed off the show’s other sixteen episodes to ploddingly unimaginative folks tasked with scripting a final episode. What, exactly, would they come up with?
“Al – what have you got for me?”
“Well, in the first episode, Six is led to believe he’ll be able to leave the Village – but it turns out they set it up to give him false hope and then yank it away; the whole thing was designed ‘just to remind him escape is impossible’. This is also pretty much how things play out in Many Happy Returns, and it’s also pretty much how things play out in The Chimes Of Big Ben; the oddball episode is Free For All, where he’s instead led to believe he’ll be given an esteemed position of authority in the Village amidst ceremonial trappings – and, in the end, the whole thing is just a set-up designed to smack him at the end with a ‘Will you never learn? This is only the beginning’ smack upside the head. He tries to rally everyone anyway, but the other prisoners don’t listen; he tangles with a couple of guards solo, and holds his own for a while before they overwhelm him and deliver a beatdown.”
“So?”
“I guess I’d write a finale where he’s yet again led to believe he’s free to go; that’s, like, their go-to move. And the most obvious way to do it would involve their other go-to move: a ceremony where he’s expressly offered a ‘lead us or go’ position of authority in the Village, which simply puts everything he needs at his disposal: a cool million in petty cash, a literal passport valid for anywhere, whatever.”
“Easy enough. Bob – what happens next?”
“Hmm? Oh. Well, you gave me a copy of Schizoid Man, in which they plainspokenly lay out their latest plan for messing with the chap who’s recently been pumped full of drugs and hit with hypnotic treatments: ‘You know, you really do bear a remarkable resemblance – remarkable – your job, Number 12, will be to impersonate him. Take his sense of reality away. Once he begins to doubt his own identity, he’ll crack.’ And, man, that’s it. And if that’s their other other go-to move, then in my ploddingly unimaginative way I’d figure they follow up that whole ‘lead us or go’ ceremony by simply putting a lookalike in front of him.”
“Really?”
“It was practically the whole plot. I can’t much extrapolate anything else.”
"Really?"
“Well – there was one other thing, at the end. Right before they hit Six with the whole Make Him Think He Gets To Leave But Then Yank It Out From Under Him ending, the agent who’d helped to con him expresses regret: ‘If I had a second chance, I want you to know: I wouldn’t do it again.’ I don’t quite know what to do with that.”
“Interesting. Carl?”
"Actually, what he was saying dovetails with the episodes you gave me – namely, the last three ones leading up to the finale. In one, the folks who’ve been putting him through his paces discuss the occupational hazard of filling the guy with hallucinatory drugs and talking him through scenarios: ‘You said yourself we would get involved, and do what we would in the real situation … It seems I’m not the only one who got involved.’ They start fighting amongst themselves – and two of 'em promptly wind up dead as a result – with one of 'em specifying that ‘I wish it had been real’.
“Hmm.”
"Likewise, in the next-to-last episode – where he’s yet again pumped full of drugs and yet again talked through various scenarios:
‘You chose this method, because you knew the only way to beat me was to gain my respect.’ - ‘That is correct.’ - ‘And then I would confide?’ - ‘I had hoped you would come to trust me.’ - ‘This is a recognized method-’ ‘-used in psychoanalysis. The patient must come to trust his doctor totally.’ - ‘Sometimes they change places?’ - ‘It is essential in extreme cases.’ - ‘Also a risk-’ ‘-a grave risk-’ ‘-if the doctor has his own problems.’ - ‘I have.’ And so, as in Living In Harmony, our hero breaks the agent trying to break him in Once Upon A Time – much as he did in Hammer Into Anvil, and also in A Change Of Mind, but never mind that now. The point is, I’d been figuring that the finale involves them again failing to break him, such that would-be breakers who’d come to respect him when trying to win his respect would yet again wind up on his side; in my ploddingly unimaginative way, I’d simply use the agents he broke in those previous episodes."
“Are you sure about him earning won-over helpers?”
“Oh, yeah. You should see how the I’m-beginning-to-like-him guy bristles like crazy when he’s unknowingly marked as a rat by the drugged-and-regressed guy he’s trying to win over; the ending for that episode got telegraphed pretty thoroughly.”
“Hmm. David?”
"As it happens, the whole point of Six’s plan in Checkmate was figuring he could get the win by just rallying a small number of allies – and, near as I can tell, it explicitly would have worked: we’re told that the one thing he overlooked was that the ally who tied up the enemy leader in the control room came to believe Six was undercover and conducting a loyalty test, which prompts the poor sap to release the guy.
“Al?”
“You know, our hero really was right there in the control room when he tried to rally some allies right after the ceremony in Free For All; putting him there was part and parcel of the enemy’s plan, all to make him believe he was this close to getting the win. And, again, there weren’t all that many guards he needed to fight off; he only lost because he was alone.”
“The control room, you say. Carl?”
“As it happens, that was something he mentioned in The Girl Who Was Death: right before the penultimate episode where he breaks the would-be breaker, he explains that he knows the big tower houses a rocket and makes clear that – if he can fiddle around in the control room – he can pretty much ruin the enemy’s plans.”
“Ah.”
“That’s also his plan in The General.”
“The General – is that another one where he teams up with an ally?”
“Yes – and, given brief access, he plays saboteur-in-the-control-room for the win.”
“So it goes from motif to running gag, even.”
“Yup.”
“Can you lot script me the most obvious and straightforward finale, then?”
“Effortlessly.”