"The General"
It had some swell action sequences and a cool concept, but sometimes I think the appeal of The Matrix can be boiled down to one simple line: "I know kung-fu." Finding out that everything you've ever seen or heard or felt is a lie would be lousy, but if it came with the benefit of being able to instantly download any skill set or knowledge into your brain, well, I for one would welcome our cybernetic overlords. Because there is a lot of information and training out there that I'll never have the time to get around to, and sticking a plug into my skull for a thirty second head rush seems like a far more sensible solution than taking a class.
The time problem is only half the reason, of course; it's the half that lets you pretend the commitments of the world are what prevent you from getting your pilot's license or honing your ability to kick strangers in the face. Really, though, the discipline is what stops us. Learning requires you to pay attention, to focus in—to not just witness your situation but actively participate in it. And that's tough stuff right there. If you're still in school, you may not know this yet, but once you stop taking classes and doing homework, the habit goes away fast. Which is why so many conversations between young adults revolve around the potentiality of grad school, but not the actuality of it.
Once again, though, the Village has the perfect solution. Like the The Matrix, the revolutionary new process of Speed Learning gives you a chance to get six months worth of facts into your head in a bare 15 seconds. The facts are delivered via television, so there's no skull-port required, and it's all overseen by a kindly, wise Professor. The Professor puts together the lesson plans, and gives them to the General, who processes them into a hypnotic suggestion. Just stand in the right place with your eyes open, and all the work is done for you; you can list off dates, names, and developments by rote. But just having information doesn't make one wise, and the fact that all the Professor's students give the same answers, in the exact same phrasing, means that they haven't really learned anything. Given the way even 6 responds to questions automatically, it also means that whoever runs the Village can use the technique to create their own army of living zombies, if they are so inclined. (I'm betting they are.)
"The General" is the first episode in the series where Number 2 (Colin Gordon, who'll serve in the role for both of this week's episodes) is bent on a scheme that has nothing to do with breaking 6. This is an important step, as it gives us a greater sense of our villains' goals. Their obsession with 6 isn't their only reason for existing, and while we've seen glimpses of the organization beyond what we regularly deal with, 2's plotting with the General and Speed Learning means that the Village is a threat to humanity at large, and not just one grumpy ex-government employee. But while that adds to the series' mythology, I'm always a little let down by the discovery. The episode is solid, with the usual enjoyably surreal touches (I especially dig the black top-hats and sunglasses, and "Junior's Toy Bank" approach to security passes), but there's something a little too Saturday morning cartoon show going on here.
The Village is more interesting to me the less we understand its methods, and the more nebulous its goals appear. Using a Bond villain style scheme (or something dreamed up by those nuts at Hydra) isn't particularly realistic, but seeing it in practice is frustratingly mundane. 6's attempts to defeat the General from the inside lack the fury and personal investment that usually drives him. Obviously he has some connection to what's happening, as he's suffering as much as any of the locals, but there's more satisfaction when he's being threatened directly. After all, it's The Prisoner, not The Evil Group Who Are Really Obsessed With This One Dude, But Still Keep A Hand In On The Side.
Gordon plays 2 with the chummy, officious tone established for the role in the first episode. He's convincing, with an undertone of pissy frustration that suggests a bureaucrat as proud of a project as he is determined to make sure no one else messes with it, but it's not until "A., B., and C." that he really gets a chance to make his mark in the part. More interesting is John Castle as 12, 2's main subordinate who, for reasons we're never really sure of, objects to the Speed Learning process and works with 6 to knock the whole thing off the rails. Castle, who's probably best known as Prince Geoffrey from the Peter O'Toole/Katherine Hepburn Lion In Winter, brings a surliness to 12 (another multiple of 6!) that, while nowhere near as dedicated as McGoohan's sullen fury, at least puts the two on common ground. Oddly, there's more tension between them than between 6 and any of his female co-stars—it's not sexual, exactly (although one could make the argument), but it is as though for once when dealing with a possible co-conspirator, 6 is actually fully engaged.
I can't decide if I'm happy or disappointed by the end of the episode, which manages to kill off the Professor and 12 in one fell stroke. On the one hand, it's something of a narrative cheat, that old status-quo elastic that stretches but never breaks, but on the other, 6's battle really has to be fought alone. Any compatriots he might find must fail him, or betray him, in the end, because this isn't a series about a man who leads a revolution. It's about a man who becomes a revolution, and even that will be up for question by the finale.
What I object to isn't the end result of things but the convenience in how that end is delivered. We're in Star Trek country here, with 6 managing to destroy The General—which is, gasp, a computer—by feeding "WHY" into its, ahem, question slot. Like Kirk administering a good dose of paradox to some power mad Apple II/e, it's not really a metaphor that goes anyplace interesting. Patrick McGoohan was a brilliant actor and extremely sharp storyteller but he was also, let's face, a grump. The finale of "General" has that grumpiness in full swing, railing against progress in a way that, to modern eyes, seems dated and a little silly. One of the major themes of the show is how it develops faster than it can be responsibly used, but here the point is just a hair too reductive.
Instead, what I take away from "General" are moments, like 6's quick (although impressively detailed and colored) sketch of the Professor's wife in a General's uniform; or the room full of sheeted busts in the Professor's house, one of which bears 6's own resemblance; or the wax dummy of the Professor that 6 smashes across the face, destroying it. Unlike the best episodes, I'm not convinced these moments add up to anything (although there's probably a connection between that dummy and the way the Village needs the Professor to be the face of Speed Learning, but not the soul of it, and how the "courses" turn students into blindly regurgitating puppets), but they make the trip worth taking. And there's something heartfelt in them, as well. The poor Professor's Wife—and it's worth noting how she and her husband don't have numbers, but instead job titles that might as well be numbers—doesn't really have much of a hand in anything that happens, but she still loses her husband. Having 6 bring the news, in a dialog-free coda that serves as "General"'s final scene, is emotional in a way the show rarely gets.