2-1-15 Arrival

Fuck it then. Y'know - it's too cold for me to go anywhere, and it's too cold for anyone to come and see me today - so... I'm just gonna get drunk and watch the Prisoner all day.  Here's how that is going.

- I love the full introduction - I am certain that there are millions of those card-dispensing arm robots all over the place - it's a major industry of some town you kind of know about but will never visit - Probably in Indiana.

no phones or police station make the Village seem pretty fucking ideal.  I wonder if someone knows what font they use everywhere.

#6 doesn't know his number yet, poor old #6.

Well, golf-cart driver - it's pretty cosmopolitan, sure - but I bet you know you'll never meet anyone that's black.

Anyhow - the Be-Seeing-You salute and the Credits - those are great hints, I hope they come to something later in the show!  Hint - they do not, they are both abandoned eventually.

Also the shopkeeper seems to speak Polari!  I think it is.

A larger map of the village with a hex grid...  Oh man, useful.

Be-Seeing-You is the perfect salute for the surveilance age.  I will use it more often.

Now you know what your number is you #6 you.  Go to the green dome.

Good thing there's a bald dwarf for no reason.  Who else will show you to the uncomfortable chair that rises out of the floor pointlessly.

I couldn't resist that either #2.

Psychic breakfast is kinda unpalatable though.  You can't eat premonition breakfasts.

The umbrella & antique novelty bike are kind of overdone in the 60's BBC - I wonder what was going on with the props departments.  I like that McGoohan figured out how to do something legitimately suprising with all of this stuff.

One does like to know everything #2.

Hey, #6 is invited to my birthday party!  3-19 is close enough, be a pisces with me #6!

Oh man, espouse your libertarian ideology all over everyone #6.  You're your own man, sure you are.  What's funny is that dude is a gov't employee with rebellious hostility for the state - it's always been huh?

It's sensible that they have these helicopter shots to show the place off in ep1 - but it's pretty fucking weird how muddy and brown the resort is.  English vacation doesn't seem very relaxing at all.  It seems dirty.

I feel like these top-hat guys are supposed to be distinct from the stripe shirt & stripe cape crowd - but I don't know if this is ever demonstrated or explored.  Sunny days and particolored umbrellas only make sense wihen the announcer tells you that there'll be rain later.

OH!  Everyone stop & don't moove - a terrifying balloon is going to mess up a guy while roaring hideously!

That's a good first appearance of a badguy in your messed up spy commune.

"That Would Be Telling!"

Charming.

Questions really are a burden to others - I ask them all the time - it's my deflection that simultanously instigates dominance struggles.

Tinker Toys can't have been so novel to appear somehow technological can they have?

What are you doing here hot maid?  Waiting to get yelled at?!

I wonder if it'd be straight up crazy to get your house to look like #6's house?  All these low-hanigng lamps tho - I'd be pretty grouchy.

This camera work is...

but yeah!  listen to your cans, listening to cans is great.

Nice work making me hate that music though, nice work.  Oh!  Hi hot maid.  Wanna get yelled at some more?  Brooding approaches...

Gaze directly into my forehead hot maid.  A still tongue makes a happy life!  But a shitty kisser.

That sailor hat tho.

#6 DO NOT PLAY.

The dentist mirror & teeter-totter chairs - along with the star charts?  It's a planetarium?

This dude in the pink coveralls is me.  he's gonna fix the radio after an angry maniac smashed it to bits senselessly.

Ah!  So the gardener is the same guy as the repairman?  Is this going to be addressed later?  I think.  No.  But that mean balloon is relentless & makes a humming noise.

You can't trust the bust of Tycho brahe!  Science busts.  They're definitely out to get you.

Do you think you could talk just using your lower lip?  Like, how much could you say?  Do you think you could do it for a day?

It's sort of tragic to see how much the DHS has borrowed or lifted from this 60's TV show.  Orange alert! I hope that a mean balloon is added to our national arsenal though.

Jerry Sienfeld is in this hospital.  Who aaarree these people?  With the druggings and the security balloons?

I will have more liquor  now.

This Doctor looks like Mr. Drysdale (from the bank).  I bet a show about Jed Clampet at The Village would rule.  I bet it would be the best thing ever.

Jerry! No!  Jumped out of the castle.  But, at least #6 has hid headshots.  And finally his cool jacket.  I will pledge permanent friendship to anyone who can get me a jacket with the ribbon edging.  Man I love that jacket.

The New #2!  I didn't realize it was in the first eposide.  Good work laying that out right there.

Jack Lord is hte new #2.  ugly jack lord.

For the slowpokes in the audience it's revealed for sure he's #6.  I like that he says he's a person instead.  I'm a person.  I am somebody...

Meanwhile hte march/parade has the same unappealing effect of all parades!  You're not a person at all, you're a spectator!  Or a participant, one or the other, there are no poeple #6.  You're kidding yourself.  And ret-hat lady is no-one you should talk to.  Jesus with this lady.  Don't talk to her. Christ, I think she's made of razor blades and dead cats.  Snappy cape tho.

She does a good job of not liking t be asked questions though.  That's...  Well it's okay acting at least, but christ she's awful.

Well upsetting looking ladies in the brown vacationland makes some kind of sense anyhow.

Except, you know what's weird is that #6 is barely interested in The Village at all, he's all aobut getting out - this daffy nonsense - he's got no patience for here.  You'd think he'd want to know more but no.  He's single minded about leaving.  This is how it is when you have to leave a party or a bar - you will not say goodbye, saying goodbye is for weaklings!  Leave immediately.  Makes perfect sense.  I also need a helicopter.

Smugly piloting a helicopter is the only item on #6's CV.  If you can smugly pilot a helicopter what the fuck else do you need to say for yourself?

Meantime the new #2 is going to prove that he controls all helicopters?  What a devious move there!  But really, it's sort of stupid that that's his best move.  "You will return to the brown beach!  You have no say.  Go in the mud again!"

Jerry Sienfeld is not dead.  He's a jackass bank manager now?

The Chimes of Big Ben

Every time I look at #6's lotus it makes my knees hurt.  Tiniest car ever then?  All popeyed in your resignation speech?  If I were a spy I feel like my last day of work would involve a lot more punching.  You know how you make these dares with yourself about what you'll do on your last day at work?

I would not work at a place where they had the possibility of key-hold-druggings either.

Yes!  Best #2.  So falstafian.

By hook or by crook.  They will.

I can't remember if he ever meets the voice of the village - the squakbox lady.

Oh dang!  Art projects?

I have to say - I want to also make putitng on my dressing gown appear to be an act of defiance.  More personal defiance, that's what I'll do.

Does anything happen with this admiral?  What navy is he even in?  What hat is that?  Soviet?  His moustache is pretty british though.  I guess it's supposed to be ambiguous - also now he is a general?

Oh, new hot lady, here to recuperate.  It's relaxing on the mud beach.

tea-service dwarf never fails to be a visual foil.  Good work.  This #2 is so fukkin great.  He's all jovial menace - that's basically impossible to pull off and he's got it all over the place - eat that scenery up.

#8 sounds familiar, I think #8 is always #2's confederate?  Maybe lieutenant?

Oh, this lady with the preposterous haircut - she's Russian, eastern-bloc?  German?  #6 seems pretty thoroughly habituated now.  I think..  There are different commentors who've advocated different viewing sequences - I'm not that cool, but I don't think this is much of an episode 2 - except - well #6 is recapitulating his own 1st day for this lady - so that's not a terrible bookend  - still, maybe not second episode tuff.

The fact that this lady was once pretty enough for TV and that her outfit was on prime time tells you everything you need to know about your grandma's fashions.

You'd think #6 as a spy in the cold war would be able to distinguish between Estonian and Russian...  Then again - she has a russian name - and the whole system of ethnic relocation & mixing under the soviets?  Do you think they were so sophisticated to know about these things in the BBC?  mabye!

Goddammed the new #2 is great - this guy is the best.  A perfect new order!  I like his hope.  It's a good hope, that the future would be the village.  Cold War!  Well, the cold war.  I grew up with it so it makes the most sense for me - It's one of those things you couldn't explain to someone younger.  How do you say - "I thought the world would end and used fantasies about that to prevent me from caring deeply about the circumstances of my own life" to someone?

Oh this lady...  She really does remind me of my gramma - same makeup and bathing suit.  Oh!  ow the balloon has babies?  It defeats you no matter how great you are at swimming.  Fuck you greg louphelps you are ballooned.

The hospital is this castle.  I feel like I see a castle like that in life-  I guess at the weird old graveyard down the street.  Everytime I experience things that are really european I get so happy that I'm not from europe.

Electric floors are pretty cruel.  I knew a guy - he had an ossiliscope-  (however you spell it) it was part of his stage show.  He married the lady I went to the prom with, and I think, cheated on her with HurricaneLaura?  I might be talking out my ass.  I don't know.

Time for more booze.

Abstract art!  #6 makes his own tools.  I gotta say - this is the inspiriing aspect of #6 - the primitive autodidact-  caveman cunning.  Stone axe.  he made a stone axe & this Estonian lady knows how to swim away from the village.  He's a caveman in the best members only jacket!  Race your lotus and eat grubs!  The prop treefall is ludicrous though - it's like there's a lord of the rings component to this whole scene.

I have to say:  this boat is absurd.  I mean - I get that they have ot make a boat of a kind that's somewhat visually boat-like for TV - but I also know how to make a dugout canoe with a stone axe - because of...  It's pretty weird that I know how to do that, but I do.  His boaty-boat that he improbably made out of a chopped down prop tree is just preposterous.

Oh boy, magic trick hands and an awkward discussion of sides, weird reminisces of West Germany...  I wonder if htis lady is real & true - The Village is near Poland?

This general was an admiral last episode right?  I feel certain he was.

It means what it is.  I like that McGoohan throws in his acutal manifesto in making The Prisoner right here.  It means what it is.  Human aspirations - Knowledge & escape...  Okay #6.  I believe you.

Dang...

#38 should get a prize - weaving is hard as fuck.  Textle arts require such a supreme concentration - I'm always impressed & forever pleased by good weavers.  #6 knows what I'm talking about.  That's some dilligence.

Now here, he flirts with some kind of shatnerian deliery - I mean, it's absolutley superior, but still.  I would like to use these work units, to, 'BUY', the work of #38.  AGREED!?"

Geez lady, it's good that you know how to get bronze medals in swimming - if you're sailing the North Sea in that boat.

Really, why don't they have any suspicions about the mean old balloon?  And they don't call on the mean balloon to get them?

Oh, it only comes out during orange alerts.  I get it - well, there must be a big sporting event happinging!  Orange alert.  Seriously - it gives me flashbacks to 2004.  Orange alert!  Beware of everyone, all are enemies.

Cripes.  I can't even imagine how preposterous all this fake russian is.  I know legitimately 10 russian words and these accnts are making me feel embarassed.

I'm pretty sure that during the cold war though - a guy couldn't ship a big crate full of people from Poland to London without a lot of customs forms.

Is that the same watch he used to smugly pilot the helicopter last episode?

It's weird watching this dude have a romantic comedy with my grandmother while escaping The Village.  This airplane/boffin montagemeans fuckall to me.  She calls him bigben  like it's one word-  people get all particular about what means what - big-ben the clock, the tower...  When I went to london I noticed the statue of Abraham Lincoln - How fucking cool is that?  I took in a lot of sights in London, but they straight up have a statue of Abe Lincoln by parliament.

Oh dang. surviving in those crates was a taxing affair - he's spent and my russian gramma is leaving.  These doors look like an 80's dentist office.

Oh Fuck - don't talk to this dude.  He...  he's got a picture of Nelson on the Nile on his wall?  With like?  What?  legal books?  Don't talk to this guy. Lithuania.

Okay - it's a lot of information but this guy he's talking to is just too comically television british for me to care.  I hate him so.

Old boy.  Old boy.  You know, FordmaddoxFraud calls you that and you feel postive, good about yourself, this guy though.

Well I envy his desk anyhow.

Do you think McGoohan cast these bit players with little actors so you too would feel a special desire to crush them all like tiny weaklings?  i like it - effective camera work.

This big reveal involving timekeeping & traffic noise is kind of a let down though.  It's probably a satisfactory letdown - but maybe it's the pacing of the episode that makes it seem more comical than evocative.  Probably they should have made this two episodes - pacing it that way would have made it seem cliffhanger-ey anyhow.

So #8 reports on #2.  That's the actual big reveal here.

I'm kinda drunk now.

A.B. and C.

Part of me thinks that making the brass band/marching band a compoent of the sinister themes prevailing in the show is the most inspired element.  Another part of me can't stop thinking about the typeface.  A final part of me - the main part of me, can't get enough of #6's face when he wakes up. DEEERP.

I gotta say, I'd do well in The Village.

This #2 has a whole furious, antagonized burtonesque quality that is all the same reminiscent of Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Isand.

She says take your macs and boots off - meaning macintoshes?  There's something adorable about archaic usage & my ability to discern it.  When watching old TV shows you can establish how handsome you are - irrespecive of how little pants you are wearing while drunk in the afternoon.

But!

3 doses is the absolute limit. How superhuman is #6?  I definitley think we're experiencing checkov's syringe.  He'll definitely take 4 doses.

But we'll encounter 3 people and 3 doses - Three Things to bind them, three things to mind them - I will feed him 3 hams!  Three hams will fill him, three hams will thrill him...

Oh dang!  What kind of tie is that?  #6 is going to have weird drinks with his pedarast acquaintance.  "Only success matters"  If you're the Worst.  Christ that guy is the terrible.  Also, they are smoking indoors while drinking.  I miss those days.

And...  Fuck, do you guys have to whisper at each other?  Powdered wig coat check guys and whispering weirdos - I got an actual chill enduring that.  Gross.


French cars & spy music.  Why didn't you punch that guy before he kidnapped you?  Back at the party when you were whispering at each other like creeps?  Dang, again, Dang.

I should mention that that urban legend you've heard - where you put the shitty vodka through the britta filter?  It's actually true- a factual true thing.  GO CRAZY with your $7 bottle of vodka.

Aha!  You done got drugged son!

You're the new #14!  This lady knows what's up though!  Damn.  "your nonsense bores me" is absolutley the best rebuke ever - I feel like this is the best deflection from unwanted attention.  "Your Nonsense Bores Me."  There's definitely some nonsense that I'm into - but yours is bullshit.

What's even going on with #6's hair?  Like  does he just not wash it?  Europe?

That's right #2 the boss phone is ringing!  You clownin.

The new sailor maid isn't a hot stranger, just a lady who probably is into you i fyou wink at her a little. #6 is too busy sleeping on the floor to try her out though.

Oh fuck this lady.  What is this accent  Belgian?  Swiss?  She's kinda french and also not.  Play the tapes back, let's see.

Now I have to wonder how much this show had to do with the idea of the french maid as a sexual object. No sailor hat though this time.  The sailor hat makes that look work.

Subject B is bascially all the ladies I am interested in being friends with.  Rich gregarious lady with no jealousy?  Yes please.

Except, that's not subject B at all - I have had drinks.  Subject B is some kind of B-grade vamp lady - I'm talking about the lady who's party they're at.  Christ.  Subject B.  I mean - she's got the worst haricut, er outfit is questionable in the best circumstances - but I look at her big shark lips and I bet she's amazing to make out with.

I bet if you make out with PJ Harvey things change for you - like in a serious way - mutations and so on, I bet you grow a second row of teeth and develop a taste for centipedes.

Meantime this mousey blonde lady has not enough scientific enthusiasm.

Should we have some more Champagne?  The answer is always yes.

#6 will help you, he won't use conditioner, but he will straight up help you.

Christ, back to pedarast guy?   60's style stage fight him #6!  Whammo!  Holy nonsensical spy thriller batman!

Awww shit, you done got drugged again #6.

Too bad your nonsense bores this lady.

Better pursue her through the very obvious sound stage.

Seriously though - the music cues make these scenes.  I love the threnody here.

Meantime #6 has got shit figured out.  I love that he's spying on people & figuring shit out in his rubber soled loafers.  How's your kick-flip #6?

So does changing the music to a benign melody help us feel like he can't get caught?  They don't guard their secret science experiments meant to deprogram spies in The Village - worth knowing.   Though they really should have shelled out for the extra shift.

So I have no idea about this guy who is shoveling the steps outside.  I think he lives across the hall and is named Davis - but I think it very peculiar when someone is named a surname and also - he wears a fur coat & is shoveling the front steps poorly.  That's where my thoughts go when I am bored of watching #6 rifle through secret unguarded science experiments.  Seriously the guy's name is Davis.  That's weird right?

Ohh I... I hoped he'd make it to bed this time but no.  Passed out on the floor again.  Who's subject C?  Probably someone important.  I bet it's the hostess.  #6 meanwhile is all control, all mastery over the drugged dream party.  Dreamy!  Party!   Plus the super-mod music - it's perfect.  This reminds me that Dark Side of the Moon was at the top of the charts longer than any other album.

#6 is the last sane man.  He's into old ladies and is sane.

I feel like that earring was worth more than an old key though.

And I as right!  Subject C is the middle aged post-ingenue.  Also there is a conga line.  That is a solid party.  If you have been to a party and there was not a conga line  -you were at a shitty party.

Facts.

Here's where #6 gets it over one everyone, I like that - when the #2 is not sufficient to the task he is defeated by #6 symbolically - but only after he is administered an excessive dose of the drug (who was right?  I was right.).   Subject D?  I bet it's gonna be the current #2.  I bet it is!

In the weird abandoned warehouse inside the church.  Which is also a dickensian street scene.  Use all the BBC's props!  All of them!

Masked caped men are important.

Jesus Davis.  Fucking Davis - i know all about the steps, you can fake your way through shoveling but I know you do a shitty job,  You do a shitty job also your name is Davis.

And...  Who is subject D?  It is #2!  I was right and #6 prevails.  He suceeded and the drug failed.

Oh!  but the coda is a whole successful magic trick, nicely done!  This is great.  This is a great show.

Free For All

That font tho.  I want to build an adventure based on that font.  The Players will face wierd druggings all the time &...  Realistically I think The Prisoner has profoundly affected my creativity.

This #2 just seems pointlessly indolent.  Way to give up before you start new #2!  Meantime #6 puts on his jacket as an act of defiance.  He's defiant, that's his move.

Seriously, why give this guy the umbrella and decorative scarf - this guy is no match for #6.  I don't care how much French he speaks.

Aha, but now I see it.  You can run for the office of #2.  The current #2 has a very Herbert Hoover quality - like he accidentally got elected by a complacent crowd - he's doomed.  It's preposterous that any #2 be so defeated from the outset, and yet, this guy seems like he's exactly the incompetent joke who draws widespread institutional support.  Whether this show is actually that subversive though remains to be seen.  #6 meanwhile looks exceptionally #6-ish.  Cynically amused & brashly, competently hostile - that's the lean & hungry look of a man in society no?  Exemplary.

Oh damn - it's that Ayn Rand shit now - where the community & the society is the enemy of the person.  Blah, blah.  I like again, that #6 is a civil servant who hates representations of society.  Hilarious.

Anyhow this #2 knows he's useless so he pits all of society against #6.  This is a good show!  #6 ain't having it though - h'es a person!  He won't be part of any club that would include him.  Meantime the sailor hat cabdriver lady is?  Is that Polari again?  I dig the clockwork orange precourser here.  Meantime this ingenue is by far the most endearing of the ladies of this show so far.  She smiles like she might actually be happy.

Misquotes & soundbites?  I guess this is the satirical episode?  I suppose given the libertarian ethos that governs the show the idea of elections would have a whole dystopian element.

Meanwhile - his misrepresnted speech attracts the attention of the mean balloon!  It hates his ideas.

This is the memetic youth campaign of fhe next successful president - the bland unseeing hateful balloon hates his ideas (which were established entirely by an adoring press).  Shit.  I'm now waiting for #6 to ask for Hope & Change.

Here he explains how participating in democracy makes you inhuman.  Well.  I can't say that the show is concieved as a libertarian screed, I don't know that - But I can tell you - there's a comical through line of that - the Man in conflict with Society.

Meantime - there's this nice guy.  In the Milgrim experiments they showed that people would be much more likely to shock guys to deaht pointlessly if a smiling, nodding man was in the room with them.  This guy in the basement of The Village is exactly the smiling nodding man from the Milgrim experiments.

At least they're asking new questions.  Why run for office?  I like the background graphic too - it's like a cross between a contemporary brain monitoring app and a sesame street skit.

Of course this particular graphic has the power to turn #6 into a pasty deluded chump - he's all hypnotized & useless.  McGoohan must have done all of the drugs though - because I don't think I've ever seen anyone pretend to be high so persuasively.  Shit, I can totally see him ignoring me while he talks about the band he likes and might be in.

And back to this episode's ingenue.  Really, there are a lot fo things I don't like about this episode - but DANG I like that lady.  Look at the ribbon she put on her sailor hat!  She's snappy as fuck, and just the right face.  The be-seeing-you salute, multilingual!  #6 what are you doing!  You should ask her out on a date to the muddy brown beach instead of stealing her gofl-cart!  Don't you want to kiss her by the glowing eyed bust of tycho brahe?  I do!  Maybe you can get mashed by a mean balloon robot with her!

But you know, steal a boat if that's what steals your boat.  Meanwhile - I think that's the wilhem scream. 

Lower lip talker releases the Kra...  mean Balloon.  #6!  Why not just be president!?  This episode has problems.  I think because the female lead of the week is so delightful - it makes it hard to understand why #6 wouldn't just try to be president of the village witha a snappy mail order wife.

Seriously though - this episodes got some neat camera tricks, and it's got a vaguely benign villain & a charming ingenue - I feel like it would be the episode to keep the show going, but that the ideas here are poorly developed.  Was it run intially during an election?  If this episode showed in October of an election year, it would make some kind of goddammed sense - it would have that perfunctory topicality that you expect out of TV - otherwise...  I'd say they were at the bottom of their budget and hired for a #2 some guy they found playing Juliet's father in some community theater.

Or else McGoohan vastly misjugede his own appeal and decided to cast some dunce as his political opposition in the democracy episode.

WHY IS EVRYTHING SUPPOSED TO BE NON ALCOHOIC!  Who would even drink non-alcoholic gin??

I serioulsy want to kiss a girl in a particolor cape & sailor hat who wants to cheerfully serve me NA gin.

In the village I would swap work units for toilet wine all day long.

Oh!  Now there's this part with the wicker chair gypsies and their stagecraft still?  Okay - the current #2 makes some sense here!  He's a good foil as a drunk huh!  Okay - drunk #2 is persuasive.  I'd vote for drunk #2.

Also, I straight up did not see the inevitable betrayal there!  I had no sense of it at all and was outwitted by TV, this is the type of shit that you can expect when you are drunk.

But except?  #6 won the election and is #2 now?  I'm straight up stymied  I blame flited vodka.

But fucking christ #6!  You won and now that lady wants to be your adorable sidekick!  You've won it up old sonl  Play old timey video games with her!

Remote control chairs!  All the wireless phones you could want?  And this lady who is suddenly extra canny & villainous..  Okay, I've misjudged?  I've made bad decisions.  She is a bad lady and you got SLAPPED.  You loose at winning #6!  I was wrong too.

Anyhow there's a naked crew of secret chiefs and 60's stage fighting.  I don't even know about the pentultimate scene here?

Except that the #2 was all along the adorable lady!  I admit to falling for everything in this episode.  I can't explain to you at all what it's purpose was however.  I guess that you lose by trying and that there is a particular type of lady who will cause me troulbe in life.

Schizoid Man

I am fucking faded.  I wonder how long I can keep this up?  I will try for all the episodes but...  I'm pretty drunk already.  you wanna come over and help me through?  Come over.

This dude gets gassed in his house and sees the dumb buildings of his neighborhood swirl around.  I've been teargassed a bunch of times because I am from America and the city - and teargassing makes you tear up and feel bad about being outside.  I wonder what gasses they use on #6.

It's the psychic cards from ghostbusters!

This broad is not to be trusted - because of how she is a lady in The Village.  Also she wants to take your picture - she's now obviosly sinister no matter how adorable.  Play a game with her #6, make yourself at home.  Just play along and be amused?  I guess he's over getting away or obtaining dominance.  Maybe this is his mature phase?  Where he agrees and plays along with all the villagers.

Meantime the new #2 is.... What? The private school disciplinarian?  Again there's a useless #2 and he's messing around with light switches?  Man...  Fuck this guy, I hope #6 socks him in th emouth.  This guy is insufferable just from the start.  I hope the actor's father beat him, I hope that the actor came from an abusive home-  that is how much contempt I have for his portrayal of a character in this show.

Meanwhile - they are giving #6 shocks to change his chirality (I'll never be so drunk that I don't know smart-guy words) and they dyed his hair and gave him a cop moustache?  He will be confued about his identity!  He will think he is #12 now!  Or...  Probably he won't.  I prophesy that he will be resilient against their attempts at manipulation and make them feel like failures.

Earlier there was a black guy in the episode.  It's remarkable so there's my remark.  A black guy.

Be right handed as fuck #6 don't let them fuck with you, also punch this #2 Right.  Now.

Alright, I can tell this episode is trying too hard and is setting some tone that means little to me on this viewing.  I can tell you that I am in a weird & not great state today and here's the story there because it's...

So My move is that I have a small crowd of ladies that are gracious enough to sleep with me and I do have an amount of periodic fucking and that I had it in my mind that I'd be up to having a sequential array of ladies come by over the weekend so that I could have an amount of sex that would cause you, another person who is not me feel some amount of shame about yourself and your rapidly ageing corpus and its failure to engage in proper amounts of vivaciousness.  Not that attaining the envy of others is my move - but that it is the secret benchmark of my actual wishes...

So the one black guy is a magic n-word from Haiti.  Meantime camera tricks for the #6/#12 mixup.  Not great!  I have to tell you McGoohan.

But yeah - I had a variety of action lined up because you should and instead it was too cold.  Now, instead of lazy, fleshy makeouts in the fading midafternoon light wiht a variety of nubiles I have to listen to a dude with a surname for a name shovel the walk while I watch a show aobut a mean balloon.  Not that I don't like this show, understnad, just that - the fullest expression of existence is to comment upon it through the pantomime of procreation carried out for selfish gratification in place of its actual purpose.  You see, that there is a distinct and lovely scent that is left upon one's comforter by the presence of a lady - a pure experience that propogates through tie via scents and memories and the multifarious infusions that a person inflicts upon a place.  That there is the sensual surrender to scent and touch and sweat on a cold day in a wamr bed, that there is a long afternoon of complacent carress, a heated bundle, a center of clement eroticism bounded by brazen light and cruel winter that can be had between people, shy of surrender and frightful of solitude.  Such an organization of limbs and lips and flesh is possilbe, and yet, the cruel winter conspires - and so, i drink in demeaning solutide & watch antiquated TV under the influence of drink.  This is today.

Anyhow - do you think McGoohan wanted to shoot an episode where he plays his own doulbe becasue he could get paid twice?  I feel like a knowledge of actors' unions & their rules would powerfully inform one's understanding & expectations of the shows that they watch.  Anyhow!  Which #6 is #6!  It's tricky!  An private school #2 is pretty tweaked about it!  you'd best report to him first thing!

But who is who and whom is whom?  That's right - you are experiencing the dative case!  And yet...  I really do feel that this episode is based on giving the main actor a double role and playing camera tricks - for the purpose of paying the actor double, or for not paying another actor.  Whatever - I am dubiout about this episode - No Matter that #6 just got out a magnifying glass to do some detecting.  Well, flashback to his conditioning - I wonder if the acceptance of these ideas were prevalant back when.  I once trained myself to write my signature with both hands - because I knew that the samurai trained to write with their left hands - their right hands being meant for killing, the left then for art - I learned about that and trained myself - but here you've got #6 being made left handed by some pavlovian shocks - I wonder if audiences of the time thought themselves so fragile that they could go, at any time, and become agents of the enemy.

I wonder if it's so but that'd be peculiar anyhow - Certainly worth thinking on, but at the very least worth saying:  The Cold War - what a time huh?

What kind of person would even ask the comb-over-dwarf for a backrub?  If you want a comb-over-dwarf to rub your back you need to take a long look at yourself!

Oh crap he's playing against himself now, camera trickery & acting vituousity...  I say BAH.  Honestly, I really like this show, I hope that this is the weakest episode because it's pretty weak - I'm unimpressed by it.  I don't care about this episode except that it demonstrates the psychological endurance of #6 - which isn't shabby, but which also kind of leaves the episode kind of irrelevant.  I don't know - would you call it overwrought?  Maybe that's it.

The General

Hopefully Episode 6 will be rad enough to distract me from caring about how much sex the winter is cheating me out of.  Not that any kind of decent person would consider this kind o fthing while discussing their marathon drunken viewing of old-timey TV shows.

This Program is about 20 years older than I am - when I think of the shows that were around when I was 20 I find myself at a loss for a real analogue - something timeless & wonderfull.  I hear they're remaking Twin Peaks - maybe that's a solid & vibrant reality, who knows!

Ugh.  Okay this #2 is a retread - he laughs like he's getting paid minimum wage to laugh.  This is the laughter of a preadolescent fry cook.

This is the Mr. Howell looking #2 - he's reedy with metal glasses which seem kind of contemporary, but which were probably kind of peculiar in the 60's.

#6 is all popeyed and the least interested in learning.

Nothin is impossible in this place.  You'd like to learn the General's one minute history wouldn't you?  Three year course in 3 minutes.  I have a couple of history degrees even and I'm curious about what you'd learn in a 3 year program.  That's really intense, y'know if it weren't a secrewt spy version of facts intended to brainwash you into submission.

Meantime #6 is about to give a punching to the stripe-shirted beardo who wants to boss him.  I hope.  I mean...  Come on!  Punch him up #6!  If this chump makes it through unscathed I'll be harmed, in my psyche.

Fine, don't beat that guy up.  I'll get over it while looking at the Professor.  WHAT IN THE FUCK - you'd think you could imagine a person like the professor, you could put your thoughts together, a mental image could be cobbled together of a guy in a velvet dressing gown, the whitest, most caucasian blue-eyed infidel with a knowledge of Napoleon - and yet, you'd not be able to think of a man like the professor - who's appearance is so idiosyncratic & mystifying.  I'm straight up mystified by the Professor's looks.  Also, I cannot emphasize enough how encouraged I am by references to Cavour in television.  Mid 19th century european realpolitik is discussed as mysterious spy trivia!  What a hsow.  I was right to enjoy it.

Meanwhile, he buried a radio on the beach that he found on the beach because it made a bunch of noise...  At least beat up this Roddy McDowell Jr. for all of us #6.  Beat up everyone.

Of course he's a dirtbag rat, of course he's a useless multiple of 6 and therefore sinsiter.  I wonder what it would have been like to wait between episodes - waiting all week to see what would happen next.  You know, compared to american TV it's pretty magical - compared to say Bewitched or whatever - shit seems to stick between episodes here.  Not always of course-  but #6's victories eem like real victories, like they accomplish something for hi.

You know how in film there are never mirrors?  Except, y'know, when everything is about there being a mirror - but there aren't mirrors in #6's house - obviously it interferes with filmmaking - it's the trick in film that makes you inevitably concious of watching a film.  I think of this because I'm having to run to the bathroom a lot while I watch this because of how I'm drunk now.

My preference is a bathroom where there is a mirror behind the toilet  - some people have such a toilet & I have to straight up wonder.  Wonder what is up with those people?  I mean - it's neat to look at your dick while you hold it and pee - nobody thinks that's not neat.  Nobody I want to talk to anyhow.  But there it is - it seems pretty ostenatious as a conciet in your home though.  In a place you visit, sure, but if that was your day to day?  Fo rmy part - I have the medicine cabinet door - I don't really use the medicine cabinet mirror because it only really offers me a view of my stomach - but I like to grasp the door and hold it while I pee & in an angled way I can look at my dick while I pee - which is, after all, the dream of all creatures, since the advent of peeing.

Meantime - the General is some kind of replicant, there are busts, #2 is defensive, this inconsequential & mannish lady are all over the episode & the carving of #6 is haunting.  I don't know - I like this episode a lot!  But I got spoiled - #2 from early on was just so great - the current #2 doesn't offer a real menace.  He seems like he's a competent administrator - but he's more of a boss than a challenge.

People go on about being the boss of this or that - but do you have a boss?  Do you think about your boss - 'utmost competence' or do you think 'a person who was here before me.'?

Okay - I was WRONG.  Now they're doing this whole tophat sunglasses morning jacket thing - they're Rocky Horroring the fuck out of things and I'm suddenly really intimidated by #2 et. al.  THis is aweesome.  The history transmission is a mind-control pilot program intended to test the principle of mind revision by teaching innocuous subjects.  of course, #6 is spyish as fuck in infiltrating.  Where'd he even get his own fitted jacket?

Maybe this is one of those priveleges that regular size people get to have.  Meantime - is that a throne?  There's a throne in this episode & a whole discussion of The General.  The General is absolutely going to be some kind of machine or robot.  I bet it's going to be a reel-to-reel tape drive.

Film really lost a lot when computers moved to the integrated circuit.  There's something decidedly sinister about a reel-to-reel computer that a desktop PC can't recapture.

Fuck him up #6!  Kill the projectionist!

The Village uses a proprietary recording media it would seem - a Nail?  Some kind of a pin or nail?  I guess it makes sense in the days preceding 3.5" disks and so on - you'd want some kind of potable media to represent information in your movie - but shit, a nail?

Then again there are spiralling nonsensical antennae & lights - there's no representation of technology that doesn't integrate extraneous moving parts in this whole episode, or any other.

Oh Snap!  Micofilm!  The most sinister of storage media.

I was right about the reel-to-reel computer though.  Evil incarnate no?  Also, a callback to how evil Napoleon was.  I guess that in the 60's there were enough WWII vets around that you wouldn't just throw around Hitler references huh?  Napoleon!  My favorite of the Euro-AntiChrists.

What question will #6 pose to the evil computer eh?  What with all it's sophisticated OCR & microfilm printing.  Silly that they just let him do it.  I'm guessing "what is love" or the like is #6's winning question.

Meanwhile he gets into a baton fight with some South Korean riot police.  Why?  Why?  W.H.Y.?

You'd think the computer would just return some kind of invaid operator error, but no, it explodes.  I wish computers exploded more often - it would make my job so much more exciting.  I'm going to ask Livejournal Why?  Why Livejournal?

Hopefully there will be an explosion in Russia now.

Many Happy Returns

I just realized that the super bowl is happening now.  Oh well!

#6 wakes up and looks at his watch like you wake up and look at your phone.  Seriously - life in The Village seems totally relaxing & pleasant.  Nothing but weird mind-games to overcome every so often - a new boss to undermine whenever you feel like it and wake up whenever you want.  Soothing.  I want to live in The Village.  If that's not clear yet, I am saying it now.

Except there was that black cat-  that part kind of sucks.  I bet you wouldn't get in trouble for kicking it into the muddy ocean though.  Not in The Village

So this is the Vanilla Sky episode where The Village is totally abandoned.  Nice.  I like that #6 is kind of curious about it rather than just straight running away.  He wants to know for once & heads right to #2's office under the green dome.

Whaaa?  Okay - so building a pontoon boat to escape is kind of inspried & also crazy.  I guess he really thinks it's in the balkans still?  Based on his experience from the Chimes of Big Ben.  Smart that he takes pictures of the palce & so on - who would believe you right #6?

Lost at sea all alone...  I think they spent the budget on filming at sea & so couldn't afford all the extras or a costar.  He's got some survival chops at least - magnetizing the needle & whatnot.  Shaving in the seawater is kind of delightful too.  Plus the ersatz logbook.  I like that there hasn't been a word said so far.  Is this going to be the silent film episode?

He looks actually handsome in diffuse gray light, not at all blotchy or morbidly pompus - a british thing perhaps?  Is he naturally selected for a particular lattitude?  Anyhow, if these motherfuckers want to be pirates to you you'd better fuck them up hardcore-  that's what to do #6.

Village Style canned goods - and still not a word said.  This is a cool episode.

Now I have a machine gun.  Ho Ho Ho.

Also may as well cook up a bomb in their kitchen.  Fuck these guys.  I had a professor.  A polish guy - he'd been at the Nurenberg Trials in some kind of perfunctory official capacity - worked at the CIA after that.  He said:  "Zhe Piradte Isz Zse Enimee ofv All Mankint!"  I like that still, that's stuck with me.  The pirates talk but in some fake-ass jibjab that's probalby supposed to be polish.  #6 is silent but deadly.  I'm thinking...

The title is many happy returns.  I'm getting the notion that he'll end up back in the Village (obviously, since there are like 10 more episodes) - but that it'll be even crazy-mysterious that he does so - like The Village can fuck with magnets & so on.

Poor #6.  When you are merciful to your enemies you invite revenge.  This is the sorrowfiul burde of the virtuous man.  I sympathize here as his captives escape to fight again.  They should have taken their beatings the first time and just trusted #6 to take them someplace nice.

Oh dang - swim away!  Hypothermia probably won't get you if you wear a nice enough turtleneck #6!

White cliffs eh?  I don't ive in a place with a lot of cliffs - that's an oversight on my part no doubt - a personal moral failing.  Though - aha!

You should definitely talk to this nitwit with a flesh colored dog!  That's a good first line to come in with 20 minutes in  "Where is this."  Meanwhile the nitwit appears to be some kind of gypsy.  Horse, caravan & everything.  Whatever, I'm american we don't have gypsies.  Anyhow, they don't have horses & wagons.

Pirates & gypsies though - that's very adventurous - many trappings of adventure.  And he's all wise to avoiding the police.  Good for him.  "institutional authority is the enemy!"  It'd be pretty gross if #6 was saved by cops.

Meantime - he's in the moving van from 101 dalmations?

Fine.  I guess that's a type of truck from the UK?  And he jumps out in the middle of a city that's probably london?  I know my tirumphal arches pretty good, and I've been to london, I don't know the one there though.  I guess he's going back to his house?  It's the DangerMouse letterbox and...  Another maid in a uniform?  What The Heck?

This is a good episode.  Here comes his lotus again!  Driven by some pants wearing lady - I think she was in the AB or C episode?  Yes!  It's the same lady, she's aged & sassy.  Once I dated a lady in her 50's.  She lacked confidence - but was excedingly self concious.  She was worried all the time about if she was pretty enough or cool enough or what have you - this lady seems definitely like some fantasy older-lady cool-girl.  You don't find super with-it ladies past middle age who are just flirty and gregarious without being super scared.  Meantime - #6 is about to have a birthday?

Are they setting the stage here?  With the recording of time's passage?

My boy can crush a sammitch or ten.  I like him  Eat the food like a madman, that's what you know about a dude who came through a bad situation with pirates & gypsies - he's hungry for sandwitches.  Anyhow, racecar old lady's pants do her no favors.  You'd think she'd put together a better look -  given how she's got a fake tiger skin rug, you'd think she had a sense of pants.

Hilariously, she's Mrs. Butterworth - Do UK people have Mrs. BUtterworth?  Do they even have maple syrup?

Shit!  She's giving him her fucking lotus?  My dude is smooth but who is that smooth?

Okay - well this is...  Weird no?  I like this.  This is a good fucking show - here they're having him come back to home - & Is that the 3rd or 4th #2?  THey're debriefing him back at the spy agency?  He's gone back & is revealing all - he's back & telling it all.  You know he's gotta go back, there are episodes to spare, but this is straight up DARING to have the whole thing seem to have ended- or anyway to have resolved.

So The Village is in the Azores?  You can tell that shit has been resolved & calculated down in an official capacity because this is the 60's and there has not been a woman in any of these scenes.  There is a jet fighter, but no lady to speak of.  Men & technology are the basis of reason & accomplishment - you should know that you dumb ladies.  Don't even imagine you could share a scene with a bunch of lumpy dull looking men.  They have shit to consider.

And then there's the betrayal by the dick jet pilot/pirate?  Naturally!  It's checkov's guy-  if you see a guy, he will be used.  This black cat seems like he's not going to shoot anyone though.

So where do you suppose all the villagers are during these scenes?  While it's abandoned?  Do you think they just are at home hiding?  Maybe they've been taken away?  Mrs. Butterworth is in on it, naturally, and...  Well I called it all  - still, this is an impressive episode.  You don't see shit like this - cool & novel reversals.

Dance of the Dead

I feel like the clerk at any given store would not notice if you flashed them an ID that had X's marked over it.  Just saying - it's for the best that shredding technology has caught up with paper making techniques.

Drowsy #6 is so dopey, he's a miracle of a man.

Lady #2 - she'll get it done no?  I trust her, she's crusty-seeming  When she laughs it's like there are a dozen cats fighting each other for a ball of yarn.  Hilarious to some

Of course these weird functionaries are responsible for matters in the meantime - no use showing a lady doing things.  That'd be too silly for this preposterous show about a secret mind-control village.

Funnily enough  I have these same electrondes -  I bought them to make my ECT hat.  I made an ECT hat.  I also made a differnt kind of hat-  the one that is supposed to help you learn.  Whatever, I electrocute my head for a variety of reasons.  It's 2015 and I can electrocute my own head if I feel like it.  Also, I WILL drill that hole through it - it won't even barely hurt.

You should have a sexy elizabethan lady to bring you breakfast.  You and me and everyone - it's especially important that she be smug and enchanting.

Meantime this worried looking andorgyne must go - answers are a prison for oneself!  She knows.  So much - her cape tells a story that is colored in by her worried eyes.  I am reminded that no one with blue eyes has a soul.  Nor can they grow one.

That effing cat again.  #6 do you not know that a black cat will bring doom?  meantime, elizabethan servant girl is commanding my heart so that I am thrilled to go to sleep with the hope that she will be in my dreams.  Also.  I don't believe TVs work that way.

Now an old lady sailor-maid.  She too will be seeing you.  This episode probably falls earlier in a more canonical sequence.

Also - There is a bust of Chester A Arthur under the green dome.  #6 is all fitful and agitated, but this is a pretty chill episoe overall.  You'd think he'd calm down a bit, what with the gypsy/pirate/jet-fighter events of the day before.  Y'know - say what you want about mid-air betrayals & unceremonious returns to the village - if you got to go in a jet fighter on your birthday - that would probably be pretty awesome.

The fucking mean balloon - it's a miracle of filmmaking that they are able to cause it to exude menace & danger.  It's a balloon & yet, I fear it, you fear it - it's right to fear it.

Anyhow there's a dead guy on the beach, that's regular.

May as well go through his pockets right #6?  It's a dead guy right?  It's okay to rob him.

Joyless carnival is the order now.  Better celebrate in a purely frowny-face perfunctory way!  That's the right thing to do.  Meantime the elizabethan girl is a sailor maid now!  What's up McGoohan!  I like her face like crazy but you can tell that she'd be pretty sour if you kissed her and weren't also rich.  She don't give a fuck about class struggle.

The miracle of the day is that I cooked dinner and didnt' burn myself up.  I am pretty good at being a drunk, but I'm, in the parlance of our times, drunk as fuck.  Definitely the right chooice for today but still.  I had a warm supper and didn't even hurt myself.

This #2 is pretty much the bossest - she straight up commands guys and doesn't seem to play.  She seems like she's in charge of shit.

Really, you should trust the lady who knows if you're a wicked man.  She sid he was and he straight up is - wicked & she's mad about hearing questions.  Well, questions are a burden to others.  I read that somewhere, it's probably true!

Fucking hell with a life preserver in the soundstage cave #6!  Do you still want to try and escape?  You've been outside and you came rigt back!  Get to the bottom of things, solve the puzzle who cares about gtting out now?

Oh fuck you blonde hat girl, you got told!  Drove right to school by elizabethan hottasss.  Meantime #6 is just desecrating corpses - May As Well!  I'm a li'l surprised he doesn't try and build a pontoon boat out f this dead guy.  Meantime old-stipe shirt is mad about all the necromancy going on - go back into your sound stage cave withered old man!

Western gambler tuxedo & peter pan old lady - there's really no better costume party scenario.  I bet this lady is super good at figure skating.

I like to imagine the earliest versions of The Village - do you htink it goes back to the Napoleonic wars? Before?  I bet the 7 Years War, that's my guess - it's got age-of-enlightenment all over it.

I like everything that's going on in this episode but I don't care at all about Roland Walter Dutton.  If an old lady dressed as peter pan kills Roland Walter Duttn that's fine with me.  Even if it is in a sci-fi movie set with clashing colored wall sconces.

Meantime - #6 is skipping the party to sneak around HQ-  that's smart.  Have you ever gone to a party and gone through the medicine cabinets?  You've got to investigate, that's just how it is - sometimes people have a medicine cabinet with a lock & key - have you seen that?  That is how you know for sure you cna't make out with a lady - if her medicines have to be locked away.

Now Peter Pan lady is in Cpt. Krik's chair!  Awesome & great.  3 judges and references to the Terror!  I love this show I do.  The Terror!   Is there something to the judges here?  Elizabeth I, Bonaparte - or some solider of his era & a roman of some kind - maybe Augustus?  Do you htink it meansa  thing - and Peter pan, an old lady?  Is this a matter of evocative symbolism or just using up the props & costumes that the BBC had on hand?  This is the question that you find yourself asking over and over again.

This 3rd act revelation of 'the rules' seems kind of tacked on  - you cant' tell what's up with The Village - generally, it's supposed to turn on a dime & make you feel uncertain  & confused, sure - but the sudden invocation of 'the rules' is kind of jarring from the audience perspective.  Plus - are they really gonna kill #6?  I feel like no.  Maybe it's jsut a matter of making him feel endangered?  Like making it seem like he'll die is part of the whole story.  Anyhow I am totally in love with old-lady peter pan #2.  I bet she bites you hard when you kiss her, in a way that makes you feel like you will bleed.  Not a sexy kind of toothy bite, but a terrifying endangering bite.  I bet she looks at you with her eyes wide open as she kisses you.  I bet she only has sex with the lights on and laughs while doing math problems for fun.

Surreptitious Ending!  Episode Over! 

Checkmate

Well, this is halfway.  I don't think I'm going to stay up late enough to watch all of these and I'm pretty much falling down drunk now, what with having drunk liter and a half of vodka.  Here's what's great!  I'm super good at typing!  Also spelling.  Give me a gold star.

This is probalby better than the super bowl.  I mean - it is for me!  I don't know about you - maybe that's your jam.  Who even cares!

This is a chess themed episode.  There's always a chess episode.  I hate that.  I have this Shogi board, because I want to play shogi - but no one wants to play it with me!  True story- the guy I did used to play it with left town to be a french-canadian canoe guide!  He left town to move to the upper great lakes and speak only french to people while being bearded.  I liked that guy, but that is what happens when you know someone who is legitimately interesting - they end up moving to The Village.  Someone would play shogi with me in The Village.  It's the highest form of Chess, that's what the too-school-for-cool Go-master told me.  I ain't play go.

Chess episode.  Now it's this lady again.  is it that smae aweful lady from before?  She's a good enough acress that it might be - but look at her excessivley emotive face - she's got all the expressions!  Christ, don't talk to her-  she's terrible.  i hope Bobby Fisher sacrifices her.  her and her stupid hat.  beetle browed dismay is a crummy look no matter what.  But check it out, how mad everone is that he didn't make his move right.

And now the new #2.  This one is my favorite so far.  i don't wanna have terror-based staring-contest makeouts with him like I do with the last one - but I do admire his sideburns in an envious fashion.  I'd go so far as to say: debonaire.

The chess playing bluecoat is pretty much terrible though - you can tell by looking that that guy smells terrible, and you can see how #6 thinks so too - he tries playing like it's fine, but that's a smelly dude - he's defnitely go some kind of 20th century European bathroom regimen - like he showers once a week & only perfumes his clothes instead of washing them.  Grooossss.

Oh this queen is a pointless lady hamster - she's like, partly a capybara who just wants a friend.  You've met this lady before - the harmless wanna-be-around lady, she'll follow around like a noisy dog.

Meanwhile!  The new #2's eye makeup is a godddammed miracle.  This is a man unlike other men.  He takes you to stare at cripples in the hospital and you feel lucky to have his dashing companionship.  YOu watch as he tortures some hapless fatso and feel yourself barely restraining your arousal.  Is he Abraham Lincoln?  A young, moist Abraham Lincoln?  With better hair product?  You don't care, you are lost int he manly creases of his face and the intriguing glimmer of his eyes.  The new #2 is dreamy as hell, he makes htat umbrella look good.

Ugh, and then there's the stoogy Rook, #6 don't throw in with this guy!  You're misunderstandign the nature of chess & other hierarchies!  It's only by their intention that competent people are at the base of the pyramid!  Effective people in a hierarchical structure either have a position of command or of servility - they never find their way into the middle - that's for the marginally competent & loyal.  Don't trust this dope...  He's

Well at least you scorn him - but still, don't be on his side, he's a straight up chump.

also it seems that it's snowed a foot or so in the last few hours.  I guess that's what I missed by by watching a 50 year old TV show while drinking excessively.  'mIssed.'  Seriously fuck the winter.

Oh hell, this lad who's the queen/episode ingenue-  you can tell she went to college for acting shes' fucking into it.  Also insufferable, shes' no good, #6...  Don't.  Just whateveryou do stay off her.  She's too gross & easy, she's shatnerbait.  Kirkfodder.

But instead you get all caught up with this rook chode - jesus #6 - get some fucking sense!  All the people you like are liabiliities up & down.  Why ain't you just punch fuckers till they drug you?  That's the best use of your time in the Village.

What the Fuck with surreptitious vandalism?  This fuckup just snatched a payphone, for real that's your guy #6?  You're just phoning iti in this episode.

This dude looks like a doughy wad of preposterous wishes wrapped in a t-shirt.  Then this lady!  Oh man, they put her in love with #6 and he's not having it, poor lady - she's all well intentioned domestic charms & wishful era-specific feminiity - I bet it's only a minute or two till #6 makes her cry and cry.

That's right!  Shout at her, that's the move!  When a lady cries make sure you yell at her to stop crying.  Hahah.  she's shaking hands with you out of love.  I wish i could pretend I hadn't had this exact relationship, but I cant'.  Hopeless sad lady!  She just loves you #6!  Be nice to her!  I bet she's got an okay body under all those shapeless clothes.  She might even have a vague interest in something interesting!  I bet if you talk to her you'll hardly wish you were dead.

Okay.  Now I'm all in on this business where she's in ove with #6 and thinks he loves her back - this is terrible gross cruelty from the higher ups in The Village - this is a good episode - it demonstrates their fascit brutality - playing fast & loose with love & feelings.  Poor helpless lady!  Dicks,

I've worn a tie & jacket to the beach before - that's true.  I think it's a shame that contemporary mens' fashion doesn't invovle neough tie & jacket wearing.  I'm lost without a tie - actually.  All day today and lately I've been a clumsy, falling down mess.  I hit my poor head on every damn thing and slip & fall in the ice & just seem & feel ineffective.  I haven't dressed the part, you understand - it's always a matter of evoking & manifesting a particular innate style & well...  I've been lacking - thats' my own fault.  Meanwhile here's #2 - with his dreamy features - letting me know I've let him down.  I bet he smells like a forest in a thunderstorm, I bet his arms feel like soft iron cables surrounding you.  Y'know, if you're as little as him.  He's probably 5'7".  Dreamy as he is, he's probably woefully small & useless.

Ugh - and look at these ugly character actors...  Don't trust them #6!  They're awful!  I get itchy looking at them!

Oh...  of course dreawmy #2 is into hariy men's Karate.  Of course he is.  That's what you want in a man who you cuddle. And then you have your fatso clown pals tie him up ineffectively.  This is not a plan #6.  you've spent the whole episode making a shitty fake plan!  You could have been doing hairy mens' karate with the new #2 and you decided to plot & scheme with these amorphous shapes stuffed into striped shirts.  Like a dummy.  Don't you know immediately that the people of this boat are from The Village?  You should have!  You did...
Aww Fuck..  You got betrayed by a lumpy mass of shapes that seemed kind of like a dude.  You really do only have yourself to blame #6.

Hammer into Anvil

Maybe just one more.  I think.  That's a lot of vodka & 60's british spy shows.  I am satisfied that I did this instead of something else while the superb owl had its moment.  Relaly - there's probably not a beter thing I could do.  Besices like, laundry, or not binge drinking a liter of vodka.  There's always not alcoholis as a way to go.  I ain't evne care though, it's sunday.

okay the new #2 looks like he's auditioning to be on the Adam West batman show.  If he were he'd be a villain called The newsman, and he'd deliver bad news in a self-satisfied fashion & then Burt Ward would fake-ass punch him and it would say Biffff! In a purple starburst.

Meantime this suicidal lady with a pleasing lower lip #73 - she's alright.  y'know, except that she jumped out the window of the hospital castle when #6 decided to show up there.  I like that he's got a knight rider thing going on in this episode.  Like, he's just a wanderer, a Loner At The Edge Of The Law.  straight up holding his own in a fight against 4 guys.  You know, you can fight one guy, and that's whatever, you can always just throw a guy on the ground until he runs away, and two, you can kind of throw them at each other - you can hit a guy with his friend and they will both be displeased.  But you get to 3 guys - now you've got some rogue factor - you've got some fucker who'll try and jump on your back and choke you out while you hit one of his friends against the other.  So fighting 4 guys at once-  to me, that means that you're extra good at fighting.

#6 is all unkempt about it too - he is a loner at the edge of the law, he wants to...  Wait!  So there's a new shopkeeper after the betrayal of the shopkeeper from the last episode.  that's a nice continuity nod.  I wonder if #6 thought twice about going into the shop - if he's surpirsed at all about there being a new shopkeeper?

Meantime listening to every single copy of the same record is some believable spy shit.  One of the pressings for sure contains the secret informaiton.  For sure.  Take notes.

They say be seeing you and don't do the salute - it saddens me.  Of course the shopkeepr has to tattle.  Is it exhausting being #2?  Listening to everone tattle all day?

Oh!  But check. it. out.  #6 is playing a game - I like taht - he's Running Shit Now.  Roll on to the hospital to check on suicidlal ladies, beat up 4 dudes and go taunt the new #2 - he's in his place now - my man #6 he don't shiv.  You'll see.  Misleading clues is basically the acme of tricky behavior.  People all over the world want to be mysteirous & and confusing but you're faking it and failing right up until you get to the fabrication of misleading clues.  Misleading clues is what mkes you immune from prosecution & laws.  Nice work.

Okay - it's gone to this place where #6 is just pure fucking with the new #2 & that's basically.  Really, if I was in the Village - I would do what #6 does in this episode - it's sublime & perfect.  Just go around asking for nonsense, just acitng like nonsense matters a lot, just constantly refer to it a being related to the efforts of the new #2.  It's magic is what it is & they got this guy to be the #2 of this episode goddam but this guy can't take a joke!  He's got like a quivvering furious David Niven quality - like he's about to swear at his wife.  Damn it's cool.

This is the first episode past the halfway mark & it's a goddamm coup - where it shows #6 running shit, basically taking over the table and making it his.  An you know?  he's barley got a speaking role in this episode.  "something ought to be done about #6"  Best & most real line in th eshow.  Something aught to be done.  But what!

Oh...  Nice camera work - slowly I turn...  This was exaclty the right episode to break the 1/2 way mark.  #6 has got jerked around in every way possible, and now?  Now he is pulling strings he's figured out how to play the game...


Or.


THE GAME.

So I had to, for the first time today rewind the tape to watch some shit twice.  The Challenge game!  What in the goddammed hell!?

faux east asian lute music while they trampoline helmet hottub wrestle each other?  Like I'm not even making any kind of exaggeration when I say that there is a biwa backed trampoline hottub wrestling match.  That is exactly what happens in this episode.


faux east asian lute music while they trampoline helmet hottub wrestle each other?  Like I'm not even making any kind of exaggeration when I say that there is a biwa backed trampoline hottub wrestling match.  That is exactly what happens in this episode.

See I had to repeat that bit because of how it happened and I saw it!  That is the sport of the village.  Also #6 is carrying a cuckoo clock around like he is swiss Flava Flav.

The bomb squad dude now gets to examine how a cuckoo clock works and now you know becaus this shit is educational as hell.  Who even knew?  It's to do with some hand carved bellows apparatus?

All the while #6 is up to some kind of homing pigeon shenanigan with Henry Mancini accompanment.  This is some cartoon pink panther trickery.  #2 looks like he hasn't had a poo in ten years.

Ooh #2 - you've helped me to understand that shaving my head is the right answer to being bald!  Cracking up is not for everyone, but you make it look real.

Now there is bedroom wrestling?:  This is the most choreographed, least believable fight scene scince earlier when there was trampoline hottoub wrestling.

Oh my christ but yessssss.  #6!  you are the effing champ of champs!  Look at how handsome he is as he smugly defeats the new #2 - all sweat & dismay, this has been a remarkable episide.  I remark upon it!


I...

I have to got to bed.  This is most of the way through this crazy show.  The later episodes are way more wacko if memory serves-  I'm sure I'll have cause for a long drunken evening of watching it again pretty soon.

BE SEEING YOU!