AMC's The Prisoner: Schizoid/Checkmate

Alright! The six-episode miniseries came to an end, and in doing so, distanced itself even further from the original series.

I'll tell you what I thought... and of course, spoilers aplenty if you read on.

While the fifth episode, "Schizoid" plays into the same themes as it's 60s counterpart, "The Schizoid Man", it has become clear that our new Six is just not as strong as McGoohan's Six. His grip on reality and ego are much more tenuous, and if we weren't aware of that from previous episodes, it is made very clear in this episode.

Another welcome surprise in "Schizoid" was the amount of fun that Number 2 seemed to be having in seeking his own death. He had alluded in the past to the fact that he may also be a prisoner in The Village, that perhaps his wife was the one who was really in control. Two suggests that perhaps death is the way out, but maybe it's also just another attempt to defeat Six.

As the series progressed we were given more and more looks at what led up to Six's arrival in The Village via flashback, but in this appropriately named episode, we see that perhaps these aren't entirely flashbacks, and that some of what is happening in "the real world" is happening simultaneously.

I was very glad that the shimmering towers were explained and that they were not a 9/11 reference. I managed to steer clear of any "spoilery" material before I saw these episodes, but I did get the sense that people thought that this series might be a World Trade Center allegory of some sort, and I thought that would be rather unfortunate. Gladly, that was not the case.

In "Checkmate", the series comes to a conclusion. I never really felt that Six was going to win, which is a complete 180 from the original series, where I never had any doubt that McGoohan's Six was going to prevail. Even as he was being tricked, drugged, hypnotized, mind-swapped, and captured, there was never much of a feeling that maybe this time he'll give up. Where as in the AMC series I always got the impression that in the end, Two would prevail.

But what exactly did Two succeed in doing? At the end, he convinces Six to stay in The Village, to control it from within (and without?) with his newly drugged girlfriend 313. Two (or Curtis, as we learn is his name) regains his wife in reality, a biochemist who discovered/invented The Village, a layer of the psyche that can be tapped into in some way to "help" people, to cleanse them of violent and antisocial behavior at the cost, perhaps, of their individuality.

And Six, confident and foolhardy, thinks that he can create a better, working Village, so that he can save its residents and 313. It's a strange end, and is actually a tactic that Two never really used against Six in the original version, if i can recall correctly. Was McGoohan's Six ever asked to sacrifice the lives of everyone in The Village while simultaneously having his vanity and righteousness exploited? I don't recall.

However, the 60s Six prized his individuality over everything. He did not consider other Villagers very often, and it seems unlikely that he would have aborted an attempt to escape even if it meant hurting another person. In AMC's version, this is obviously not the case, because even after Six learns that he himself had earmarked individuals with anger issues for membership in The Village, he is still willing to participate in the project as long as it means that those within the Village are safe.

Plenty of unanswered questions, which is always a little annoying even if it is right. After all, what would The Prisoner be without a conclusion that keeps you thinking?

My main curiosity is this: if The Village is a machination of some sort, are the essences of the people residing within this machination "real" in any way? It harkens to many other stories that play with the idea of reality, such as The Matrix, Philip K. Dick's Ubik, and... well, gee, any story that involves virtual reality.

All in all, an interesting, if slightly depressing, end. I really enjoyed this series. I could definitely have watched a full season of this, but am still glad that it didn't get stretched out and left to rot without a proper ending, as so many science fiction shows do.

That's it! Thanks go to AMC for putting something like this out there.