I just watched the full series for the first time and really enjoyed the series for the first eleven episodes. However I thought it derailed starting with the twelfth and continuing through the last. It seemed as if they just wanted to get it over with. Does anyone else agree with me?
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Gotta agree with the apparent majority opinion here - the 3 episodes preceding the finale weren´t in any way up to snuff with the rest of the series. The one with that goofy wannabe-murdress woman was almost, dare I say, idiotic. Definitely felt like just padding things out by whichever means available. Even the second to last episode that did have a promising concept, was for some reason executed with applying lots n´ lots of unhinged buffoonery. The finale, however, was indeed quite monumental (and woulda been even more so without the overuse of that bone song).
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I watched the entir show last yea4r. Thats one seriously fvkced up show yo. I loved it for about the first half but then it turned into total crap. WTF was up with that ending? I mean WTF? dancing in a truck? pigs? musical numbers? dem bones dem bones? WTF????????????????
(In case yer wonderin' who I am, I'm danforlife4. Some ass-hat reported me for posting a political cartoon, and IMDb deleted my account. Friggin' moderators.)
I'm still wondering why the OP never answered my question about just what episodes he meant in his thread title, given multiple orders (admittedly, he surely includes "Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out" among his "Last Five" but ITC's initial telecasts had "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" and "Living In Harmony" in their last five, although what was for at least the next 20 years the standard order placed them significantly earlier) and his total of 16 rather than the actual 17. It was a definitely relevant question; even granting that "First Eleven" was merely an accident and should have been "Twelve," just what the other three of his "Last Five" were really needed to be specified.
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Pretty sure McGoohan never intended it to last as long as it did. I think the ending was purposely left obtuse, so that each viewer could interpret it as they saw it.
shareAgreed...everything I've ever read about the series indicates PMG only intended it to last for seven episodes, but he could not sell a series that brief to the networks. He apparently wrote the ending over a single weekend, and I think the finale certainly touches on a number of thematic concerns of his; it seems pretty clear, imo, that McGoohan was more interested in getting the viewer to give thought to the questions and issues raised within the show itself, issues and concerns he obviously felt were congruent with and pertinent to things that were happening in the real world of his time (and which still are, that's why the series remains so relevant today), than he was in having us figure out in terms of pure plot what it was all supposed to be 'about'.
shareamyghost: ...everything I've ever read about the series indicates PMG only intended it to last for seven episode, but he could not sell a series that brief to the networks.Replace "intended" with "would have preferred" and I agree. To intend to do something is to actually plan on doing it, but--as you say--McGoohan knew a seven episode run was an impossible sale, and therefore never could have "intended" to actually make a seven episode series. Well, not at ATV/ITC anyway. The BBC was already not adverse to such limited runs or intellectually challenging material (if without precedents this challenging), implying that Patrick was under some form of commitment, restriction or limitation to the commercial company.
LOL...Ah, the pitfalls of semantics...
But, true enough, in this context it is more correct to say that a seven-episode run would have been his preference as opposed to intention. A pity that the conditions that exist today, what with cable channels and etcetera, were not available to him at that time. I wonder what a leaner 'Prisoner' series might have been like, and yet I can't say I'm at all displeased with the existing 17 episodes, or even that the series might have been improved by a diminished number of installments.
After all, 17 episodes as opposed to 7 just gives us 10 more episodes of PMG, and that's not at all a bad thing, imo!
Yes, I noticed it. The series just became more surrealistic as it neared the end. Nonetheless, there were many insights that made viewing the series well worth the effort.
I have no doubt that Patrick McGoohan was privy to insider knowledge about the Illuminati and "The Prisoner" television series was made to reveal to the masses, in plain sight, who really rules this world.
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in the first seven or so episodes behind the penny farthing bicycle in Number Two's office you will see a slightly disguised Masonic map and compass design with what looks like an "all-seeing eye' near the top. It disappears around episode number 8, though I realize the series may not have been filmed in the order shown.
shareI am in the minority as my 2 favorite eps are "Many Happy Returns" and "Do Not Forsake Me". I also like "the Girl Who Was Death". "Fall Out" was dreadful and "it's Your funeral' was fairly lame.
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I agree with the OP. The show definitely goes off the rails starting with Living in Harmony. It's very clear that by that point, McGoohan stopped being committed to the show's premise.
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I'm a huge fan, but the o/p has got a good point. The last episodes both look shoddy compared to earlier episodes (back projection in Darling outside shots, and cheap sets and poor rocket matte work in Fall Out) but lack some professionalism in scriptwriting. Reading the history it is obvious McGoohan was under such great pressure by now from trying to do too many jobs at once, and hardly getting any sleep at all. Hence the obvious improvisation padding out Once Upon, and despite not wanting a Bond/Only Live Twice type finale, we get something similar with machine guns and helicopters etc. Still even with those caveats it remains THE classic series, just as relevant and fresh all these years later. A remarkable achievement by McGoohan.
shareTrue, he was clearly under enormous pressure & facing a deadline. But that's not necessarily a bad thing -- sometimes the best, most creative work can come out of such a state -- and I think it does in "Fall Out" -- like an eruption from the depths of the Unconscious, the episode has the bizarre logic of an intense dream/nightmare, making sense on its own symbolic terms & only seeming a chaotic mess to the waking, logical mind that wants everything neatly tied up in a bow.
And it's very much of the zeitgeist of its time, which is so utterly different from the current one with its emphasis on geek minutia & making every single little detail fit tightly into one another. Theater of the Absurd & revived Surrealism were very big at the time, with visceral imagery & psycho-drama favored over strictly linear, traditional storytelling. True, the current model is more detailed, more subtle, and definitely explainable in the end, down to the smallest point ... but it lacks the primal power of a program like The Prisoner, at least to me. And (again for me) "Fall Out" is everything good & dynamic about the creative mode of that era -- vivid, dazzling, messy, overwhelming, and leaving an impact that still resonates for me after nearly half a century now.
And it's very much of the zeitgeist of its time, which is so utterly different from the current one with its emphasis on geek minutia & making everything single little detail fit tightly into one another. Theater of the Absurd & revived Surrealism were very big at the time, with visceral imagery & psycho-drama favored over strictly linear, traditional storytelling.
True, the current model is more detailed, more subtle, and definitely explainable in the end, down to the smallest point ... but it lacks the primal power of a program like The Prisoner, at least to me. And (again for me) "Fall Out" is everything good & dynamic about the creative mode of that era -- vivid, dazzling, messy, overwhelming, and leaving an impact that still resonates for me after nearly half a century now.
At the time of first transmission it was reported that the original plan was for 13 episodes (which was and is quite usual) and that an additional 4 were added last minute because of the early success. That would explain the lack of location filming at the end of the series and the decline in dramatic quality of several very studio bound episodes. I have no idea if this was the real reason but it makes sense to me.
shareThat could well explain the difference in tone ... but I respectfully disagree with "decline in dramatic qualities" if applied to the final episode. For me, it's an artistic triumph -- yes, born of expediency, intense pressure & looming deadlines -- and yet, all the more potent for that. I've always felt that McGoohan tapped into something very deep & personally primal when forced to write that final episode practically overnight, and that it wouldn't have been anywhere near as powerful if it had been more consciously, deliberately developed over time. It has the intensity & paradoxical symbolic logic of a shattering dream, one that stays with you for years after. Or so it strikes me, anyway.
shareI actually agree with you on the last two episodes and did not mean to imply they were the ones that declined in quality. It is the ones before those that strike me as rather below par for the series. Perhaps the two final episodes were as intended. As a teenager, I watched the series weekly on first transmission and loved it which is why I can remember what was reported at the time.
shareAh, I see! I agree that an episode like "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" really doesn't deserve to be in the series -- unless it had turned out to be an attempt to convince No. 6 that he had a different past than his own or something like that. I do have a real affection for "The Girl Who Was Death" though, as it strikes me as a raspberry directed at those viewers still expecting a typical spy adventure, as well as having some wonderfully absurdist & even Jungian touches. But individual taste will vary on that one, I think. :)
shareI found the final episode, Fall Out, to be mess, and highly disappointing. It would have been nice if they had given the audience at least SOME semblance of "Number 6's" real story, and why he resigned. That was, after all, the core point of the ENTIRE series, the people who run "The Village" wanting to know why he resigned. I think focusing THAT much on one plot point, that the writers kinda owed the audience at least a PARTIAL bone in that department in the end. I also thought the discombobulated "hint" that "Number 1" was actually 6 himself, was flat out stupid, and lazy.
I understand that part of the point of the show, at the time, was to buck conventional TV trends. But that doesn't mean you have to abandon telling an actual good story altogether. In a way, the series is more a collection of events, than it is an actual narrative. I find some episodes entertaining, even outright interesting. But that finale somewhat killed it for me. I've seen others in this thread state that the finale was basically thrown together at the last minute. And it sure as hell seems like it. Which is a damn shame, it's a disservice to all the time and effort they put in to (most of) the rest of the show, to have such a ridiculous, nonsensical end to the whole thing.
Why he resigned isn't really the point of the series. As more than one No. 2 states, it's simply to get No. 6 to cooperate by revealing just one thing. It could be anything. But if he does reveal it, they believe that they can then completely break & control him. The series begins as a spy story, but swiftly becomes a complex allegory. And it's all the better for that.
For me, the ending is one of the most daring & shattering endings of any TV series or film. Yes, it was thrown together at the last minute—that's one of the things that makes it work so well, because it's an unmediated outpouring of the Unconscious, with all of the themes & metaphors exploding onscreen, completely dispensing with the expected cliches & "proper" endings in favor of leaving the viewers puzzled, dazzled, wondering, thinking, feeling in depth.
As the creators said, this isn't a James Bond type of story, with everything resolved neatly & tidily—it's an intensely personal expression of McGoohan's psyche, & outlook with Kakfa, Beckett, Orwell, Huxley, Theater of the Absurd, Surrealism & so much more all thrown into the mix. And I'm thankful that they went that route. Nothing since has matched it.
Just my reaction, of course.