The first two episodes of the new AMC series The Prisoner were televised last night. I expected only one; two episodes were a surprise treat. I will post a review of the first episode today, and the second tomorrow (a change of plan, as I didn’t know that there would be two episodes last night).
Spoiler Alert – this review will reveal sundry details of the episode.
The Prisoner is the story of a man who finds himself in a small, mysterious community called The Village (the definite article is always capitalized). He doesn’t know how he got there, where it is, or who runs it.
As for his own life, only fragmentary memories remain of time spent somewhere else, and he finds that instead of a name, he is now only a number: Number 6. An older man, named Number 2, seems to run The Village, or at least is the most visible authority in the community. The Village has no apparent nationality, so one doesn’t know Number 2’s connection to any country or agency.
There are aspects of the story that are oddly funny, and applicable to life in an eccentric rural town. When Number 6 is surprised that a shopkeeper he’s never met greets him by his new, numerical name, the shopkeeper reassures that there’s nothing odd, as “everybody knows everybody.”
There’s some of that familiarity in small town life, but even more, sometimes the expectation of it. Not knowing someone can be jarring to longtime residents, in a way it would never be to someone in a far larger place, without the presumption of familiarity.
In the episode, Number 6 finds that The Village, though small, is a uniform and planned community. Many of the houses look the same, and he finds one marked 6, intended just for him. (He’s simply expected to move in; no deed required.)
I’m sure that when people think about the small-town Midwest, from places far away, they think about a simple and unplanned life. In urban communities of stifling regulation, a town like Whitewater, Wisconsin must seem like an oasis of simplicity.
We were surely less regulated once, but we’re far more so now. Though we have thousands instead of hundreds of thousands, we’ve still fallen prey and under the sway of community planning.
Only recently, our city’s planning commission – we have one – reviewed a comprehensive plan for the town. The plan is proposed to guide community development for the next twenty years.
What will be useful of it, or from it, by then no one can say. It’s available online, at Comprehensive Plan.
There’s another aspect of life in The Village that Number 6 encounters not long after arrival – the unwillingness of most fellow residents to admit that there might be something outside the town.
Two people Number 6 meets, Numbers 93 and 313, have drawn pictures of things they hazily recall seeing before arriving at The Village. (I won’t say what they draw, except to note that both pictures are landmarks from two great cities.)
Number 6 also finds that those who recall something beyond The Village don’t seem to fare well; they have a reduced life prospects. The Village isn’t a place that favors too many questions, where even one is the beginning of too many.
Is there anything good about The Village? Well, it’s sunny, and everyone seems well dressed.
I doubt, though, that clothes truly make the man.