I
recently purchased--at the unspoken behest of the geek hive mind--the classic
BBC series The Prisoner. I'm watching it offshore to pass the time and
sharing spoiler-free responses/reviews with the internet without provocation,
cause, or request because that's what the internet is for. Enjoy.
We
all remember things differently. There was once an episode of Batman: the
Animated Series where The Mad Hatter puts Batman into a dream machine where
everything is perfect except Bruce Wayne isn’t Batman so nothing is perfect at all. Inevitably, he gets out[1] and the first
thing on his mind--and that of the viewer--is how much The Mad Hatter knows
about his secret identity. Secret identities are a big deal when you’re 10;
they are urgent business. Luckily,
the writers and The Mad Hatter write it off with the fridge logic of “Nothing
can be learned from a dream.”
The mind that thinks is up probably deserves further analysis.
Disregarding
non-answers used as answers, the concept that nothing can be learned from
absurdity or lies is one for the smallest, least-creative minds. Just because
something’s not true doesn’t mean you can’t learn anything from it. How someone lies to you can be just as
informative as if they had told you the truth. As both Michael Garibaldi and
Greg House have mentioned, everyone lies. Untruths and half-truths are facts of
out existence, and learning to scavenge fact from falsehood is an essential
skill, one that requires more effort than simply throwing up your hands in
resignation whenever you learn that the story you’re listening to isn’t true.
It
should come as no surprise to anyone that The Keepers lack this skill.
As
for the meat of “The Girl Who Was Death,” after a moment of confusion, I
laughed at it for forty minutes straight, with the exceptions of the moments
where I laughed at it really hard. After
the twist came, I realized I had been laughing with it. For something that puts “death” in the title, it was the
most enjoyable episode so far, narrowly beating out “Hammer Into Anvil.” Maybe
if “Hammer Into Anvil,” could’ve squeezed in an alligator-scale gatling gun I
would feel differently, but alas.
I
wish it would have focused more on the framing and implications, though I’m hard
pressed to think of ways to do that which aren’t just old episodes rehashed.
And then, if there hadn’t been so much foot dragging for the sake of explaining
everything in idiotic detail, it wouldn’t have been so ironically good. Maybe
“The Girl Who Was Death” was just a bad story with a disclaimer tacked on.
Maybe it was a jab at some of the contemporary television programs of the day,
like the scene in the series finale of Moonlighting where Bruce Willis
and Sybil Shepherd make out in front of the omniscient producer in order to
increase the show’s sex appeal and stave off cancellation[3]. Maybe it was just
a fun, silly ride.
No,
it was definitely that last one.
[1]
Or does he?[2]
[2]
He does.
[3]
That really happened, right? I was 7 when that show got canceled and it’s not
like I saw it on TiVo.
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