Why The Prisoner Failed | GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT

Written by Joshua Tyler Published One before the second

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The TV had just started experimenting with big ideas in the 1960s. The twilight area It was strong. External borders It was hitting the next level, and Star Trek He used to take the world where no one had gone before.

But no one had a more idea than Patrick McGuhan.

Fresh off spy RiskMcGoohan was the UK star. So when Britain ITV gave him Blanche to display his dreams, he handed over a full curve ball: an anti -spy series, no one has a name, the beach is terrifying, and escaping is impossible.

The offer was called Prisoner. It is either genius or a televised nervous breakdown. Maybe both of them.

Why the prisoner failed

on the surface, Prisoner Simple: the secret agent resigns, kidnapped, and wakes up in a strange prison that resembles the resort called the village, then each episode spends an attempt to escape or discover those who run the place.

His name?

Six number.

Their answer to every question he asks?
“You are six.”

His weekly response?
“I am not a number, I am a free man!”

But the truth Prisoner Is this no one was free. It is not the sixth number, not the people who control it, and certainly not the team and the crew that offers the offer.

Patrick McGuhan, star and Creator of the prisoner

Patrick McGuhan played sixth, but he was not the star of the show.

He was PrisonerParticipant author, executive producer, director, sometimes, writer.

McGoohan had one goal: Use its espionage offer as a platform to wage a war on matching, monitoring and modern society.

However, the network that drives him to offer the offer had very different goals.

Patrick McGuhan was a hot chain of success championship RiskThe network wanted more, perhaps just a little stranger.

McGoohan Kafka gave them in Technicolor.

From the beginning, Prisoner It was a power struggle, whether on the screen or outside.

The prisoners’ episodes were a discussion

The television network wanted 26 episodes. McGuhan said the story needs only 7.

In theory, Patrick and the network were at risk in 17, but each episode was produced after the seventh is a group of wild color, and this is certainly no accident.

One episode has control over reason and assassination.

The next has an evil Bater and the motivation of cowboy.

At one point, the number of six for positions is run.

Later, they switch the bodies with a different actor.

At one point, six boxes on the beach until someone plays, “Pop goes Ibn Ars.”

Prisoner Her fans dared to give up the show and change the channel.

And all this strangeness was not next to the end.

Entitled “Fall Out”, Episode 17 ended the show by breaking the entire audience.

After 16 episodes of questions and puzzles, no answers were provided. No real closure. Imagine how I felt yet lost The final, and hit it with ten.

Patrick McGuhan went to hide after the prisoner’s conclusion

Instead of giving the audience what you want, Prisoner The matter ended on the trial of a narcotic court hall, a man in a monkey mask, and a final development may be a metaphor … or may be complete humidity.

The fans were confused and angry, to the point that Patrick McGuhan is short He went to hiding.

This is not a joke. Literally escaped from the country and hid for a few days.

to imagine lost End, and Damon Lindelof was on the move to a hideout in Canada. We left this man outside Way Very easy.

Patrick McGuhan did not want to explain anything. never. He never told her what the offer means. The network never told the meaning of the end. He barely said to himself. I thought that giving answers was betrayal.

but PrisonerThe viewers were not caught a puzzle wrapped in a puzzle wearing the ramia hat. They wanted drama spying the era of the Cold War. What they obtained was an existential hostage crisis from the angry metaphysical philosopher.

Every week, there was a new number. Sometimes charming. Sometimes terrifying. Sometimes Leo Mickerne was in bad wig. But the real exhibition Big badNumber one? The main villain behind everything?

You see it only once. in the end.

The real number

The spoiler: it is Six Six number.

Get it? He was a prisoner all the time.

McChahan thought it was deep.

It was not logical at all in the context of the plot.

even if Prisoner It was logical, that the audience was unable to decipher it because ITV broadcast the show outside the arrangement, at random times, in different regions.

Some viewers saw the end before the pilot.

Others were completely absent.

In the United States, only CBS 16 broadcasts of 17 episodes.

It was like watching beginning With rollers defended.

End of the prisoner

After broadcasting the end, McGohan left the UK forever. He moved to California and started working with Peter Falk, and cooperated in Colombo episodes.

McGOOHAN exit and many books from the distinctive display episodes. He also starred in a guest against Falk in four Colombo Episodes with two of those who won the Emmy awards.

The cooperation between McGoohan and Falk was so creative that there is even a new book on their work called together In the devastating element: Peter Falk and Patrick McGuhan in Colombo Land.

But Patrick has never participated in anything brutal and ambitious Prisonerand once again.

When it was broadcast in 1967, Prisoner Drew modest classifications, but there is no great ton. It ended with confusion, frustration, and the second canceled season. In the second season, which, in a class, Patrick McGuhan may not intend to do anyway.

The prisoner failed, but he succeeded in the end

This was only decades – after digital video tablets, retrospective effect, and plot blogs – that Prisoner Finally, it was welcomed as a coal for counter -TV.

He has since gone to influence other designs. If you have seen both of them Prisoner And intelligence above lostI may have noticed some very direct inspiration.

Like offers The peak twinand to cutand Black mirror As well as films like Matrix and beginning Every debtor Prisoner Debt also.

For every madness, Prisoner It is now seen as wonderful and pioneer.

This is especially true for the first seven episodes of the show. The only seven episodes Patrick McGuhan really wanted to make it.

All seven episodes must be seen for lovers of this type, but if we choose PrisonerThe best effort, it’s the fifth to show, entitled “The Schizoid Man”.

By this stage of the series, the sixth number in the village was held for a period of time. The different number who appeared and disappeared, to extract any information from it.

So, Delay The second number hatches the most demonic and complicated plan so far: Convincing the sixth number is another person.

A complex campaign to wash the brain begins, as the village masters work to make the sixth number wonder about his identity. They tell him that he is twelve, and even bring a duplicate to replace six.

This episode is an intense mental game with a lot to say about the fragility of the self -image and psychological manipulation tools.

This is true in each episode Prisoner Produced. They are all trying to say something. Even that crazy terrible. Especially those crazy terrible.

Some do better than others, but McGhuhan was a lot in mind, and he used Prisoner To say all of this.

Whether the audience wants it or not.

in the end, Prisoner It was a battle between insight and his fans.

The insight won.

Then he escaped.

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