In PRESTIGE PREHISTORY, Pop Heist critic Sean T. Collins takes a look at classic TV shows that paved the way for the New Golden Age of Television — challenging, self-contained series from writers and filmmakers determined to push the medium forward by telling stories their own way.
The Prisoner Episode 13 (airdate order) / Episode 14 (AVC order)*
"Living in Harmony"
Original Airdate: Dec. 29, 1967
Writer: David Tomblin
Director: David Tomblin
Cast: Patrick McGoohan, David Bauer, Alexis Kanner, Valerie French
*NOTE: The Prisoner's proper running order is a matter of dispute; Pop Heist is using the AV Club order for the show
Throughout The Prisoner's many strange visits to the Village, the title sequence has remained comfortingly familiar. With its sound of thunder and spy-thriller soundtrack, the wordless depiction of Number Six's resignation and abduction is a blast to watch, culminating with him rising from his forced slumber, looking out his front window, and seeing the Village for the first time. (And the episode title, too, which must be helpful for him.) Just like that, anyone tuning in for the first time knows the backstory.
Then comes the call-and-response voiceover face-off between Number Six and each episode's Number Two. This part of the opening sequence sets up the show's big mysteries in a handful of koanlike questions and mantralike answers. The ominous sight of Rover, the reveal of the new Number Two, Six raging at the sky while yelling "I am not a number, I am a free man!", Two's mocking laughter … it puts today's "abstract substances coalesce and morph into various familiar things from the show you're watching" trend to shame; that's for sure. All told, those three minutes are one of The Prisoner's greatest achievements.
Naturally, they went and binned it. This is The Prisoner we're talking about — a show that breaks every mold it can get its hands on, including its own. Even the credits are fair game.
All of this is a long way to say that when this episode opens with a cowboy on horseback in the Wild West instead of a secret agent in a sports car in London, I cheered "Hot damn!" These magnificent bastards did it again!
The magnificent bastard largely responsible this time around is writer-director-producer David Tomblin. A collaborator of Patrick McGoohan's on his previous spy show, Danger Man, Tomblin partnered with McGoohan and Danger Man story editor George Markstein to form the production company behind The Prisoner. In the years to come, Tomblin would become an enormously successful first assistant director, working as AD or second unit director on (deep breath) Barry Lyndon, The Omen, Never Say Never Again, Gandhi, Out of Africa, Empire of the Sun, the first two Superman movies, the first three Indiana Jones movies, the second and third Star Wars movies, and Braveheart, among others. It's fascinating that such a key player in some of the biggest genre films in Hollywood history also has this strange British dystopian artifact on his resume.
But there's barely any science fiction present in "Living in Harmony" — at least none that we're aware of until the very end. Instead, it's a Wild West story with a hanging judge, a brash young gunslinger, a beautiful barmaid, and an ex-lawman whose unbreakable will to resign from the badge is exceeded only by his zeal to protect the defenseless. You can guess who that is.
(There's also one very regrettable Mexican character, portrayed in brownface and serving as a stereotype straight out of central casting. It's ugly and unfortunate; given that the episode is meant to evoke the tone and style of popular Westerns as much as possible, this kind of thing was all but inevitable. Hey, we avoided any broken-English indigenous caricatures, at least.)
McGoohan stars as a man with no name (eat your heart out, Clint), and no number this time either. He's just a former sheriff who resigned, turning in his badge and gun without explanation; as always, his reasons are his own. But before he can go off to knock on heaven's door or whatever, he's waylaid by a band of outlaws, who beat him senseless. This gives rise to one of the funniest images in the show's history: the episode title, "Living in Harmony," superimposed over McGoohan getting the crap kicked out of him.
The nameless cowboy awakens in a mysterious town called Harmony (yes, the title's a play on words), which he soon finds is so well guarded by goons that it's impossible to leave. Before long he meets the other players in this clear parable of life in the Village. In lieu of Number Two, there's the Judge (David Bauer), the kind of grinning, balding bad-guy boss of a small town you've seen everywhere from Gene Hackman in Unforgiven to Ben Gazzara in Road House. The role of hotheaded underling normally occupied by some low-numbered minion is instead taken on by the Kid (a remarkable Alexis Kanner) — mute, top-hatted, red-headed, sharp-shooting, and thoroughly insane.
The object of the Kid's desire, and the woman with whom the man with no name enters into an alliance, is Kathy (Valerie French). This truly stunning saloon girl comes to our hero for help when her brother is wrongfully hanged by the Judge in in the man's place to placate the villagers, who've grown enraged at his unmutuality, to borrow a term.
The hanging scene employs the dramatic cuts from shot to shot and scene to scene that the show has often used to mask graphic, disturbing violence. But the editing and imagery are so stark and severe that the brutality comes through all the same. Watching one of the Judge's minion's whack the horse on which the hanged man sits, then watching Kathy scream in agony with her face framed in a tight close-up, tells you what you need to know.
This is the kind of stuff the episode traffics in throughout. For some reason — and maybe it's the suicide of Number 73 at the start of "Hammer Into Anvil" casting a long, dark shadow — the violence and threats of violence in this episode feel more real, and more unpleasant, than ever before on this show.
And in the war between the Judge, who wants the nameless ex-lawman to strap up once more on Harmony's behalf, and the prisoner, who wants nothing more to do with law enforcement in this or any town, the casualties mount quickly. Kathy's brother is wrongfully hanged. A villager who tries to form an anti-Judge alliance with the nameless man is murdered and left in our hero's chair as a warning.
The Kid is the episode's most troubling creation. There's an unpleasant sexual tinge to his sadism — and his masochism, as when he meekly submits to being slapped in the face by the Judge for allowing the man with no name to escape from his jail cell. His piercing gaze and over-expressive face feel out of place, almost mime-like, and his silences allow you to fill in the blanks his motivations and desires with your brain's disturbing dregs.
He's also a cold-blooded killer. He provokes a duel with some poor old drunk and shoots the man just to prove he can. The nameless man, who by now has accepted the Judge's badge — though not his gun — in order to keep the law off Kathy's back, can do nothing, since the victim technically drew first.
But his worst and most disturbing conduct is reserved for Kathy. "The Kid's real fond of Kathy," the Judge purrs at the prisoner, explaining the situation. "But he does tend to get … over-affectionate." It would be trivially easy to protect her, though, the Judge explains. All he has to do is pick up the gun and come to work for the Judge. All he has to do is live in Harmony.
In a protracted, almost slasher-movie death scene, the Kid traps Kathy in the saloon after closing. When she refuses his advances and slaps him, a trickle of blood runs down from his lip, a single tear from his eye. He makes a hideous face as he attacks her, strangling her to death on the staircase. We see him lift himself up off of her body, his eyes hazy, breathing heavy with exhaustion that comes across as postcoital. The implication that he raped Kathy while murdering her is unmistakable, even without the Judge's ominous warning.
He doesn't live long enough to regret it. After finding Kathy dead and burying her in a starkly lit graveside scene, the man with no name takes up the gun at last. In an old-school showdown in the street outside the jailhouse, he outdraws on the Kid and cuts him down.
A final battle against the Judge and his goons ensues. The prisoner nearly kills his way out of it, shooting gunman after gunman before the Judge gets the drop on him and blows him away …
… And he wakes up as Number Six, in his familiar Village clothes, with headphones on his ears, on the dirt floor of a fake Western set. He finds cardboard-cutout standees of the way the Judge and the Kid were when he last saw them — the Judge with his gun drawn, the Kid lying dead and supine in the town square. Before long, Six can hear the Village's marching band fading in and out, then see the familiar little Village park with its colorfully costumed Villagers milling about.
When he bursts in on Number Two's office beneath the green dome, he finds not only the real-world incarnation of the Judge, but also the Kid, aka Number Eight, and, of course, Kathy, aka Number 22. It was all another mind-control scheme, of course, orchestrated by the stylish young scientist, Number Eight, with a skeptical Number Two in charge. Using drugs, audio, and the Western set, they created the cowboy scenario in Number Six's mind in much the same way that they brought his consciousness back to a party at an old friend's house in "A. B. and C." The plan was to push him into one kill-or-be-killed situation after another, forcing him to both face death and deal death to others as he hadn't done since (presumably) his forsworn secret agent days, in an attempt to break his will.
Eight blames Two for their failure, saying he brought on the crisis point of the Western narrative too early, accelerating their subject's reawakening. A defensive Two sardonically observes that Number 22, who, like many women agents of the Village, has grown attached to her quarry — and Number Eight, who's just weird — seem to have gotten at least as embroiled in the narrative as Six himself.
He doesn't know the half of it. In one of the series' saddest and most fascinating endings, Number 22 wanders into the empty Western set, right to the saloon where "she" worked. Then she collapses against the staircase, exactly where "she" was murdered. Does she recall what being killed feels like? Do Kathy's affection for Six and her fear and loathing of Eight carry over from the false world to the real one?
This moment leaves the "Western alternate universe where the superheroes are all cowboys" vibe behind. Suddenly it takes on the eerie melancholy of something like Vertigo or Mulholland Drive, in which the cruelty of the world drives a beautiful, vulnerable woman into a fatal identity crisis.
That's where the Kid comes back into play. Almost immediately shedding his snide Englishness, Number Eight devolves into a mad-dog killer, sneaking up on Number 22 by hiding under the stairs. Hearing the screams of their struggle, Six intervenes, decking Eight, but not in time to save 22. "I wish it had been real," she says before dying.
By now irretrievably insane, Eight delivers himself a Gollum-like form of justice. Speaking with an American accent, he calls Number Two "Judge" and flings himself off the saloon balcony, breaking his neck. Six exits the saloon, leaving Two alone with the bodies of his underlings.
What a grim business! It feels almost as if Tomblin and McGoohan recognized what a fundamentally goofy idea this whole Sheriff Six business is and decided to make the bloodiest, creepiest episode they could to balance the ledger. They're aided immeasurably in this by Kanner's without-a-net performance as the Kid/Number Eight. For some reason, Kanner's name is singled out and highlighted by a white rectangle in the opening credits; it's a first for the show, and if the point was just to say "No, really, pay attention to this guy, you can't tear your eyes away from him," then it's well deserved.
(A side note: Kanner escaped Nazi-occupied France as a boy alongside his Jewish family, who fled to Canada. The Prisoner was closer to the liberation of the camps than we are, currently, to 9/11, and there's never any shortage of reminders in the cast's biographies.)
It's important to note that though Sheriff Six is repeatedly surrounded, overwhelmed, beaten, and even tied up and dragged by horses, the Judge doesn't want him to suffer violence — not really anyway. He wants him to inflict violence. Though he does at least ask why he resigned as sheriff in his previous job, the Judge is far more fixated on convincing the man with no name to wear a gun again. He doesn't want a prisoner; he wants a participant. Fascists want nothing more than to make you, and everything else in the world, as ugly as they are.
