The Prisoner

"IamNotaNumberIamaFreeMan!"

Wonderful paranoid Freudian psychedelic sixties cult classic TV show written by and starring PatrickMcGoohan. The hero appears to be a secret agent who resigns abruptly from the secret service. He seems to be kidnapped to an isolated community called "The Village" whose inhabitants have numbers instead of names. So throughout the series the hero is known only as "Number 6". A series of inquisitors, each called Number 2, attempt to get Number 6 to explain why he resigned. Number 6 refuses to cooperate, demanding to know who is running The Village and doing everything he can to escape from it.

Okay, so what does the last episode mean?

It doesn't mean anything - you're fooling yourself. Persons attempting to find a plot in this narrative should seek immediate attention from a mental health care professional. Please observe all safety precautions.

A particularly interesting explanation of the last episode is the "Meyer Fall Out Theory," available at http://www.gigacorp.net/prisoner/fallout.html.

Too patchy. And it ignores McGoohan's insistence that the final episode was conceived right along with the rest of the series. So it's not a separate thing to explain, it's part of the whole that needs explaining.

To me ThePrisoner describes the enlightenment of a 20th century man. Leaving school - "resigning" - he expects his life to become a vacation. Instead he finds himself trapped by his fears, moving from job to job - boss to boss - girl to girl - his world a kaleidoscope of political fights, logistic intrigues, meaningless conversations with an endlessly rotating cast of professional colleagues. ThePrisoner rebels by never accepting the assigned role - his number.

The butler - the image of human service - will obey #2 until death. He is #2's secret vulnerability because #2 is the corresponding image of authority. As degree-absolute plays out #2 embodies #6's fear of his father, then of his teacher, his military commander, the bosses who direct his professional life - while #6 rides his spy-car in circles. #6 cannot become the free man until he makes #2 into ThePrisoner - ending #2's authority, thereby killing him. #2 is slain in the same sense that Buddhists slay Buddha in the road. #6 is taken as #1, his own free man, and the man's man - the butler - immediately recognizes 6's selfless authority.

Once free, 6 examines the authoritarian trappings of society - the president, the parties and religions represented by the black/white masks. The "I! I! I!" that drowns out #6's final speech is his realization that authority enslaves its own office too. To be free of it, he needs only to stop using it.

This resurrects #2. No longer the fearsome image of authority, the man resurrected isn't #6's boss, but a laughing rebel, the cavalier power of the free man. Likewise #48, singing his happy song about death and resurrection, is #6's redounding youth. After all we've been told #6 is 48 years old. So here's a newly free and still virile fellow that everyone calls "48" - which he thinks a great joke.

Finally God (#1) is unmasked as Darwin's gibbering ape, the biological cause of all human vanity. Then the ape is unmasked as a further reflection of #6, then again unmasked as the God of physics. No fearsome biblical authority, #6 merely presses a button to jettison this inanimate God into space.

Finally 6 returns home to his apartment in his London and his England, with his Big Ben chiming merrily - how many strokes? ThePrisoner is where he wants to be - home with his butler serving - and home from home he can then move freely. So he drives off in his kar leaving the butler to keep house for him. The door closes automatically because, per Baba Ram Dass, if you think you're free there's no escape. Fin. --PeterMerel.

Some prefer TheAvengers? and Emma Peel. Less enervating.

Leo McKern, last and best Number 2, died on 23 July 2002. Degree Absolute!

Probably one of TvShowsWorthWatching?.

Those with US IPs can now (2009) watch the whole original series for free at http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/ .

Strangely, the car he drove was a SEVEN