I feel unqualified to write about AMC’s recent miniseries/remake The Prisoner, now that I’ve finally watched it the whole opus on DVD.

And I’m surprised that I feel so very unqualified.  It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the 1967 original, starring Patrick McGoohan.  Good God, I wrote an agonizingly-geeky essay on the perfect Prisoner episode order, which you can read here.  I’ve seen those episodes dozens of times.  Scrutinized them endlessly.  Applied the ideas and philosophies espoused in the original series to everyday life, almost unconsciously, since I was a teenager.  Hell, I even wrote a piece of fan fiction published by the now-defunct Prisoner fan club Once Upon a Time.  I know my Prisoner.

But the chief deficit in my appreciation for the new miniseries is that I have never watched a single episode of Lost.

I just never cared.  Gilligan’s Island meets the X-Files, I thought, and I gave it a pass when it first premiered; then, when I heard it was terrific, I just never caught up with it.  (I’ve never watched The Wire, either.  I have a long To-Do List when it comes to modern television.)  I stood by the sidelines while people got tired of it, and waited still when they got excited about it again.  It will be off the air soon, and I’ll still be doing other things, namely catching up on some of the great books I haven’t yet read or some of the great movies I haven’t yet watched – maybe, someday, I’ll catch up with Lost.  Until then, I can safely say I’ve watched its rip-off. 

Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner concerned an ex-spy (McGoohan) confined against his will to a green and sunny seaside resort known only as The Village, where everyone has been assigned a number (he is No.6); across its seventeen episodes he struggles to escape, and fights off attempts from his warden, No. 2, to break his will.  He’s hounded by a giant white orb named Rover; he battles against his own doppelganger; he uncovers one plot after another while hatching some of his own; and ultimately he comes to a psychedelic showdown with his captors, set to tunes like ”All You Need is Love” and “Dry Bones.”  It was a counter-culture classic, many things to many people: an action show, a conspiracy thriller, a psychological mindbender, a political satire, even experimental theater with traces of Beckett and Ionesco.  It was, in a word, indescribable.  I finished watching the new Prisoner, written by Bill Gallagher and starring James Caviezel and Ian McKellan, some days ago, but it was only today, reading an online review, that the remake finally snapped into focus.  Of course.  It’s Lost.  That’s all it is.  Why fret about it?  It’s just Lost.

But you haven’t seen Lost.  I know.  That’s why I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until another online reviewer told me it was so.  And I was illuminated.  Certainly, I detected throughout the series cliches of the modern “serious” genre drama, a little Battlestar Galactica, a little HBO this or Showtime that.  Patton Oswalt has argued that we are in a new golden age of television, and I don’t necessarily disagree with him, although I think that you can still trace how one program has influenced the next, and the cliches have begun to emerge.  I love Parks & Recreation, for example, but every time lovely Aubrey Plaza sneaks a glance at the camera I think of how Officey it is, and even The Office (Carrell) took it from The Office (Gervais).  How many one-hour dramas have you watched which end on a musical montage?  I believe this dates back to the excellent Homicide, which made regular use of it.  Bill Gallagher’s The Prisoner bears not the mark of McGoohan but of all the hit one-hour-drama TV shows of the last couple years – I am sure most prominently of Lost, but I will leave it to that other guy, and to you, to confirm for me.  So what’s withered and gone?  The compelling, enigmatic, and engaging qualities of the original; the stew of philosophy, witty dialogue, Big Ideas, and good storytelling sense.  Quite simply, the impact.  A few hours after Bill Gallagher’s Prisoner was done, and I was done with it: done thinking about it, done worrying over it, just done and quit.

So I apologize but I really am underqualified to write about the new Prisoner, because I have never seen Lost, but I can note the following 6  impressions:

1) Just because Ian McKellan is in it does not mean that it’s good.  Further, just because Ian McKellan can act very well does not mean that he’s doing so whenever you’re looking at him.  And speaking of No.2, I don’t care about his family, not his drugged wife nor his closeted child.  I don’t care.  These feel like additions made after a writing workshop.  (”You know what?  I need to care more about No.2.  What does No.2 care about?  Does he have a family?  Now that would be interesting.”)  I miss the mute dwarf manservant.  That didn’t feel workshopped to me; it felt inspired.  I mean, you remember him, don’t you?  That’s the point.

2) In this new version, everyone in The Village has never heard of the outside world.  These Villagers believe that all life begins and ends in The Village.  This is laboriously explained: they even think every invention, and all philosophical thought, originated by someone living in The Village.  Precious time is wasted reiterating this, which is unintentionally funny; but it actually deeply betrays McGoohan’s vision: one of the central points of the original is that the Villagers theoretically could but don’t want to escape.  They–or most of them, anyway–are complacent.  McGoohan’s show was a call for consciousness, a call for waking.  In Gallagher’s version, you can’t blame the Villagers because apparently they’re not aware there’s anything beyond the Village.  Further, it reduces the scenario from a striking, wide-reaching metaphor to an overused science fiction cliche: it feels like yet another story about an isolated city/lost civilization and nothing more.  Yes, there is more, as episode 6 reveals in its big “twist,” which I’ll gripe about last.

3) I like Brian Wilson’s SMILE album too, but maybe it wasn’t such a clever choice to include one song from the album in almost every episode.  Especially when the songs are applied in such a random and downright amateurish manner.  The songs don’t offer any alternate meaning, for the most part: they just queue up, like someone accidentally tripped on the CD player.  (Although I did like the use of “Heroes & Villains.”)   

4) James Caviezel is no Patrick McGoohan.  I know, that’s unfair, but part of what makes McGoohan’s Prisoner such addictive viewing is McGoohan himself.  His performances are electric; he is a joy to watch.  The most I can say about Caviezel is that he remains inscrutable and unpredictable throughout, but it strikes one as an inconsistent performance (and weak writing) rather than a commitment to maintaining the enigmatic quality of McGoohan’s No.6.  Further, you simply do not crave to see more of him, and you don’t care about his plight.  For the show, this is crippling.

5) No one ever tries to break No.6.  The plots that they do hatch are not apparently intended to break No.6 (no one is interested in why he resigned)…I’m not sure what the plots are intended to accomplish, actually.  One plot (in an episode, “Darling,” which is the only one I actually kinda sorta enjoyed) seems mainly intended to get No.6 laid, which doesn’t seem so evil.

6) Nobody needed a concrete explanation for what The Village is.  Nobody.  The explanation, which is the climax to the series, longs to be thought-provoking, but isn’t.  In fact, it is such an insipid attempt to blow your mind that the exact opposite happens: the idea vanishes from your mind almost minutes after you’ve been exposed to it.  A dud.  Do you want to know why?  It’s because it’s a last-minute attempt to introduce a loaded concept which the series as a whole has very little interest in exploring.  Therefore, once you learn it, you are not compelled to reassess everything you’ve seen.  You make a disgusted, rather phlegmy noise and then turn off the TV.  Nobody likes a lame twist ending (ask M. Night Shyamalan – or did he write this show under a pseudonym?).  And speaking of quasi-profound pretentiousness, this series’ remake of the brilliant “Schizoid Man” somehow managed to completely botch an unbotchable concept. 

Oh, you know, I can’t limit myself to only six criticisms, but I must.  I’m starting to get angry again, and this show isn’t worth the anger.   

Maybe I’ll bump Lost up in my Netflix queue instead.

Shout! Factory continued its impressive run with the bad-movie-riffing Mystery Science Theater 3000 license yesterday with the release of MST3K Vol. XVII, concurrent with the announcement of the episodes to be included in Vol. XVIII (a box set to come). Initially the license was held by Rhino, who have been unjustly demonized by MST3K fans – hey, at least they were getting episodes of this classic TV series back into circulation on DVD, years after the show had been cancelled – but not long after a major snafu on Rhino’s part, in which they released Joel Hodgson-era episode Godzilla vs. Megalon without actually having the proper rights, the much-loved Shout! Factory picked up the franchise and, in the last year or so, have been doing a better job of targeting and securing episodes high on every fan’s must-have list. I rather dislike the cover art, which emphasizes the roman-numeral of the box over any other kind of graphic; the volume numbers seem almost meaningless at this point, since so many of Rhino’s earlier volumes have gone out of print and are available only at extravagant prices on eBay (particularly that Godzilla one). They’d be better served using one of the wonderful poster inserts, individualized for each episode, which comes with every box. But what’s most important is that this show, which once urged fans to “keep circulating the tapes,” is actively getting archived in digital disc format despite the many movie-licensing woes which will afflict any label attempting to put this series back out. Volume XVII includes the series’ landmark first episode on the Comedy Channel, The Crawling Eye, as well as another Joel-era episode, The Beatniks, and two from the Mike Nelson/Sci-Fi Channel years, The Blood Waters of Dr. Z and The Final Sacrifice. This latter film, shot in the woods of southern Alberta, with a budget and acting level serviceable only for a home video made by high schoolers, is ambitious beyond its means to a downright lovable extreme. I watched it last night and noticed an audio defect occurring twice in the first half of the program – a loud burst of static lasting about a second – which has been confirmed by other MSTies. A Toyota-level recall is probably not necessary for this minor flaw, although it’s a shame it comes in one of the show’s very best episodes. Nevertheless, Shout! Factory has come through with this set, even going so far as to track down Zap Rowdower himself, Bruce Mitchell, for an interview in which he laments that the ending credits swap his name with the actor playing pubescent Troy McGregor. Perhaps the makers of The Final Sacrifice should have recalled their film instead, but we bad movie lovers should thank great Manos in Heaven that they did not.