Now I can see why the critics disliked The Prisoner. As a whole, the miniseries is pretty bad, but individually the parts aren't that bad. There are some very complex themes that I would like to do more investigation of, but the story is so hard to follow, I think it would be too much of a hassle.
It's so confusing and byzantine that you can't just focus on one thing at a time. Elements and characters are introduced at the blink of an eye, and just taken away at the same rate. I couldn't understand the significance of the doppelgänger, or even how it got there. I couldn't understand 1112 and why we should care about him. I couldn't understand what most of the things have to do with anything.
The essential plot point is that Two's comatose wife is the source of the Village. It's all in her head, but when she dies, she needs a replacement. That's where Six and 313 come in. They're the new Two and dreaming wife that create the Village. Interesting, but it would have been better if the rest of the miniseries went in this direction from the beginning instead of wasting time going around one random thing to another.
Television is made for watching one time, but Bill Gallagher made it so that only the most astute viewer would be able to truly appreciate what he made. The average viewer would have only a notion of what was going on, and certainly would not grasp the full extent of the Village and the interactions of the characters. There is simply too much emphasis on weird storytelling using awkward (innovative?) techniques that leave much to be desired.
Score: 8.6/10
Total Score: 8.0/10
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
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