(Episode 6 – “A, B and C” & Episode 7 – “The General”)
I fully stand by my assessment of the episode “The Chimes of Big Ben” being the episode where The Prisoner Blew the Hatch. Since then, the show’s continued to get better. What I especially admire about The Prisoner is that it doesn’t try to be something it’s not. There’s no secondary or even tertiary plots thrown in to confuse or bore the hell out of us. No romances, no parallel character plots to follow. It’s just about Number Six and how he’s trying to get the heck out of The Village, while the Guardians try to extract information out of him.
“A, B and C” was an oddly placed episode in that the Number Two was not introduced as “the new Number Two” during the opening sequence. Rather, it was in the next episode, “The General,” where he identified himself as such. I would have thought this was due to the way the episodes originally aired on TV, but not so. Just something else to confuse the hell out of Number Six and us, the viewers.
I mentioned before that Lost clearly borrowed aspects of this show, and I found another subtle one during “A, B and C” with the presence of hidden doors throughout The Village, obscured by trees and brush. These doors all lead to the behind-the-scenes rooms where the villagers are interrogated, drugged, brainwashed and just plain fucked around with. Sounds pretty similar to the Lost stations, doesn’t it?
When we see what Number Six is dreaming in “A, B and C,” we’re seeing things displayed from a third-person perspective rather than through Number Six’s eyes. I would have expected to see what he could see, though it’s more likely that this was just a production decision and not meant to be overthought.
For the first time, I believe, we see the same Number Two for two episodes in a row, and Six pretty much embarrasses him both times. This must have been pretty confusing on TV when the episodes did not air consecutively, and thus showed the same Number Two return only after another one or two Number Twos were introduced (I’m not sure how many yet, since I haven’t seen those episodes yet).
I mentioned The General in a post about famous computers on TV, and admittedly I added it just because I saw mention of it elsewhere, more than once. What I didn’t understand about what Six asks The General is why he didn’t throw it a question like “who is Number One?” or “where is The Village located?” Instead he decides to take the opportunity to attempt to destroy the computer with the unanswerable question: “Why?” Perhaps he did this because the computer’s answer would never be readily handed over to him, should it have spit something out. It’s also likely that he just did it for the betterment of his fellow Villagers, as he’d had enough of its brainwashing shenanigans.
Lastly, Number Six at one point says, “Those who hide are afraid.” A direct reference to the ever-hidden Number One, perhaps?
Past posts: Episode 1, Episodes 2 & 3, Episodes 4 & 5
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Jun 22, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
