Joshua Tyler | renew
Television was just beginning to try big ideas in the 1960s. Twilight Zone Progress is very strong. External limit Has reached a new level, Star Trek Taking away a world that no one has ever been to.
But no one has any idea than Patrick McGoohan.
Fresh spy hot Dangerous peopleMcGoohan is a true British star. So when British ITV brought him blanche to make his dream show, he offered a comprehensive curveball: a psychedelic, dystopian counter-espionage series, no one has a name, the beach is horrible, and escape is impossible.
The program is called prisoner. It is a genius, or a nerve breakdown in television broadcasts. Maybe it’s both.
Why the prisoner fails
On the surface, prisoner It’s simple: A secret agent resigns, is kidnapped, wakes up in a strange resort-like prison, and spends each episode trying to escape or figure out who runs the place.
His name?
Sixth place.
What are their answers to every question he asked?
“You are the sixth place.”
His weekly response?
“I’m not a number, I’m a free person!”
But reality prisoner No one is free. Not the sixth place, not the one who controls him, definitely not the actors and staff performing.
Patrick McGoohan, the star and creator of the prisoner
Patrick McGoohan played sixth, but he was more than just a star on the show.
He is prisonerco-creators, executive producers, directors, and sometimes, writers.
McGoohan has a goal: to use his spy performances as a platform for war on consistency, surveillance and increasingly control of modern society.
However, the goal of paying him for a show is very different.
Patrick McGoohan Dangerous peoplethe Internet wants more, maybe there is only one strange person.
McGoohan gave them Kafka in Technicolor.
From the beginning, prisoner Whether it’s on the screen or off the power struggle.
The prisoner’s plot is a debate
TV network wants 26 episodes. Mai Guhan said that this story only takes 7.
In theory, Patrick and the network were compromised on 17, but every episode that produced after the seventh was a wild, crazy roller coaster, which was tone-whipped, which was almost certainly no accident.
One plot has psychological control and assassination.
Next there is an evil butler duel with the cowboy.
At some point, the sixth time went to work.
Later, he switched his body with another actor.
At some point, there are six boxes on a man on the beach until someone plays “Popular Weasel”.
prisoner Dare to audiences give up on performances and change channels.
All these weirdnesses have no ending.
Episode 17, titled “Fall Out,” ends the show by breaking the entire audience.
After 16 episodes of questions and mysteries, it provides no answers. There is no real closure. Imagine how you feel afterward Lost The ending, multiply it by ten.
Patrick McGoohan hides after prisoner finale
Rather than giving the audience what they want, prisoner Ending with the trial of the psychedelic court, a man wearing a monkey mask and possibly the final twist of the metaphor…or perhaps totally meaningless.
Fans are so confused and angry that Patrick McGoohan is short Hide.
That’s not a joke. He literally fled the country and hid for several days.
Imagine Lost It was over and Damon Lindelof had to move to a bunker in Canada. We let that guy go Wai Too easy.
Patrick McGoohan doesn’t want to explain anything. once. He never told the actors what the performance meant. He never told the network what the ending meant. He hardly even told himself. He believes that giving the answer is a betrayal.
but prisonerThe audience did not wrap a riddle for the riddle wearing a pitching cap. They want Cold War Age spy drama. What they get is a hostage crisis starring an angry metaphysical philosopher.
There is a new second place every week. Sometimes charming. Sometimes it’s scary. Sometimes it’s Leo McKern, but the show is real Big bad guy,First? The main villain behind everything?
You only saw him once. In the ending.
The real first
Spoiler: He is He himself number six.
Get it? He has always been his own jailer.
Mai Guhan believes that this is profound.
In the context of the plot, this simply doesn’t make sense.
even though prisoner There is any point that the audience will not be able to decipher it, as ITV randomly airs the show in different regions.
Some viewers saw the ending in front of the pilot.
Others completely missed the plot.
In the United States, CBS has only 16 episodes of 17 episodes.
It’s like watching Established The scrolls scrambled.
The end of the prisoner
After the finale aired, McGoohan left the UK permanently. He moved to California, started working with Peter Falk, and worked on the plot of Columbo.
McGoohan directed and wrote plots of many iconic detective performances. He’s still four Columbus Two of them won the Emmy Awards.
The collaboration between McGoohan and Falk is so iconic that there is even a new book about their work, called Immerse in the destructive elements: Peter Falk and Patrick McGoohan.
But Patrick has never been involved in things like wildness and ambitiousness prisoner,,,,, again.
When it was broadcast in 1967 prisoner Attracted moderate ratings, but without a sensational buzz. It ends with chaos, frustration and cancellations. To be fair, Patrick McGoohan probably never intended to do it in the second season.
The prisoner failed, but eventually succeeded
It wasn’t until decades later, after DVD, review and conspiracy blogging prisoner Finally hailed as a masterpiece of countercultural television.
Since then, it continues to influence other creatives. If you’ve seen both prisoner and the above Lostyou may notice some very direct inspiration.
Performance Double Peaks,,,,, lay off,,,,, Black Mirror And movies matrix and Established Everyone owe it prisoner There is also gratitude.
Even though crazy, prisoner Now, most people see it as brilliant and groundbreaking.
This is especially true in the first seven episodes of the show. Patrick McGoohan really wants to make the only seven episodes.
These seven episodes are a must-see for fans of this type, but if we want to choose prisonerThe best effort is the fifth of the show, titled “Schizophrenia.”
At this point in the series, the sixth place was trapped in the village for a while. The two men who appeared and disappeared failed to extract any information from him.
so, Latest Second place is by far the most devilish and complex plan: convince him that it is someone else.
A complex brainwashing activity began, and the work of the rural master raised his identity on the sixth question. They told him his twelve numbers and even brought a dungeon, replacing him with sixth place.
This episode is a fierce mind game with lots to say about the fragility of self-image and psychological manipulation tools.
This is true in every plot prisoner Production. They all tried to say something. Even crazy and terrible. Especially crazy and terrible.
Some people do better than others, but McGoohan has a lot of things in his mind, he uses prisoner Say it all.
Whether the audience wants it.
in the end, prisoner It is a battle between a visionary man and his audience.
The visionary wins.
Then he ran away.
