Re: The Prisoner: "Arrival" and "Harmony" 11/15/09 - Grading & Discuss
Jim Caveziel is obviously playing much more of an accessible Everyman character, and isn't intended to be the same person as McGoohan's rather inaccessible superspy guy.
This is one of the problems I had with it. I hate it when they compromise genre shows by making them "accessible" to the common people. When I see things like Number Six shooting hoops in his apartment, I just roll my eyes.
After having seen
Harmony, my viewpoint that
this Six is an improvement over the original is now solidified, and it has nothing to do with basketball.
For me, the best drama is drama where something HUGE is at stake for the protagonist. The huger, the better. And to be huge, the thing at stake must be of vital importance to the protagonist, something he can not live without, the thing that would be the worst thing anyone could take away.
From what I recall of the original
Prisoner, McGoohan's Six was never really in danger of anything too bad. He was simply being held captive, but so what? His soul and his sanity were never threatened. He was far too much the big, tough, macho superspy to be threatened by being held captive. He could have spent his entire life in the Village, fighting each Number Two, until he died of old age. Maybe not the ideal situation for him, but he would never have been utterly annihilated as a person.
Caveziel's Six
can be annihilated as a person. He is extremely vulnerable, maybe moreso even than a normal person. He's not a strong guy or even an average guy - he's a mess! The giveaway was him telling the girl he picked up that "nobody" is capable of real human relationships. Well, clearly he isn't. He's been far too messed up by working for Big Brother, Inc. to be much better than a zombie - and that was before he got to the Village.
He doesn't need just to escape from the Village - he was pretty badly off in NYC, too. But now he's even worse off than he was there. He almost capitulates
in the second episode! Can you imagine McGoohan doing that? He seems willing to accept his new family, and his new prison, just because they are being
nice to him. He is seriously considering the idea that he is, in fact, insane, and the Statue of Liberty is nothing more than a delusion. My God, this guy is in terrible shape. He's in no condition to go up against a savvy Machiavellian like Number Two.
Which is why this is great drama. Number Two vs. McGoohan's Six was Ali vs. Frazier. Number Two vs. Caveziel's Six is Ali vs. Gumby. So if you want a sports-like spectacle of a macho contest of wills, you won't like this. But I don't watch drama for sports. I watch it for drama. And it will take some very fancy writing to pull off an underdog story in which Gumby Beats Ali (by whatever definition of victory applies.)
Of course it's possible that Gumby Beats Ali is a story that is beyond the skill of these writers to pull off. But it's a very gutsy goal, much tougher than Frazier Beats Ali, and for that alone I can respect their audacity. And since there are just four episodes to go, I don't have to invest a lot of time waiting to see if they can do what they've set out to do.
I'm just amazed to see something this ambitious on TV at all. Most shows are content to be far more slothful and mindless. It's exhilirating just seeing TV writers who have some fucking ambition for a change, regardless of whether they succeed or fail!
