(1967; director: Patrick McGoohan under the name Joseph Serf)
This dark-hearted episode pulls off a trick that few TV shows or movies ever manage to do with a straight face. The Prisoner as a whole is like that, but this installment really goes for the gold.
Here’s what it does: Through the sheer power of its otherworldliness, “Many Happy Returns” absorbs you in a scenario that makes no rational sense.
I’m not talking about mere “suspension of disbelief”. That’s the agreement between you and the creators that you’ll buy into the idea of, say, Batman for the sake of the ride.
No, I’m talking about a story that lays some HUGE whoppers on ya. A story that depends on telling you that 2 + 2 = 8. A story that makes leaps in logic that would make Edward D. Wood Jr. say “Wait, hold up, you can’t do that.”
In lesser works, overpaid writers and directors will try to sneak some bullshit past you, but you–yes, you–spot it because you’re not as dumb as they hope you are. At best, you laugh at it. At worst, you feel cheated.
When it’s effective though, it’s like you got slipped some good acid and you really don’t care anymore about how time and space and gravity work.
The Prisoner does that to you.
As in every episode, it begins with Patrick McGoohan waking up. Like in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, he always seems to rise from “uneasy dreams”. Unlike in Kafka, our lead character hasn’t transformed (not usually, at least), but the world around him has–and seemingly for the sole purpose of breaking him down psychologically so that he’ll answer the question that he’s spent seven episodes so far refusing to even offer a hint about: Why did he quit his British secret agent job?
Here, McGoohan wakes to a Village that’s entirely deserted. Usually, there are people everywhere, but on this day they’re all gone. The streets are post-apocalyptic in their emptiness. McGoohan is the only living person on Earth, as far as he can tell.
Also, the plumbing doesn’t work and neither does the radio, TV or telephone.
There’s not one spoken word in the whole first fifteen minutes as McGoohan surveys the landscape, executes a plan–builds a raft, makes a compass, collects supplies–and succeeds. He escapes far out on the ocean. For real. He gets away without resistance. Only the strange sight of a cat next to a mysteriously broken bowl (an image that will come back later) suggests that anything is wrong. It has nothing to do with the plot. It’s just a weird crack in the glass.
What follows feels like an epic movie condensed to under an hour.
McGoohan lives on his makeshift raft for WEEKS and it looks like he might die on that thing until he runs into looting gunrunners in a boat, which leads to an adventure–biff bang pow!–that’s a major pain in the ass for him, but it also gets him closer to shore. There, he’s thrown around like a rag doll between settings and languages. He has no idea where he is until he somehow stumbles home to jolly olde London.
Ragged and in torn clothes, he goes to his old flat–the place from which he was originally abducted–where Mrs. Butterworth, a friendly widow, lives and also drives his old car(!). She lets him in, feeds him and hears him out. In their lively conversation, McGoohan lets slip that his birthday is tomorrow and she remarks that she may bake him a cake. What a sweetheart!
She even loans the car to our hero so he can go back to his old agency and tell his story and blow the lid off of The Village. So that’s what he does, but there’s a problem.
They don’t believe him. They’re jerks about it actually, but their suspicions aren’t off-base. His story sounds insane. Also, these dudes are secret agents. They have to be careful. McGoohan could be a turncoat.
The last ten minutes rush through the final act in which the agency confirms McGoohan’s story. They talk to Mrs. Butterworth and retrace his steps back to the point where he reached continental land again. Using McGoohan’s own handwritten record of his travels, they mathematically figure out the location of The Village, which is an island off the coat of Morocco.
They start to believe him, but not so much that they’re going to use a lot of manpower to investigate so they send a simple two-man fighter jet to the suspected location. Only McGoohan and a pilot whom we’ve never met before are inside. Once McGoohan spots the familiar landmarks of The Village, he’s quickly jettisoned from the plane and parachutes down. He lands on the beach confidently. “We’ve finally got you, you bastards”, his stride says,
What happens next stings quick and hard.
The moment that McGoohan opens the door to his “home” in The Village, the plumbing and electricity start working again. The black cat is also still there next to the broken bowl, as if no time has passed. As if this was all just a dream.
Also, Mrs. Butterworth is there. In her hands is that birthday cake that she proposed earlier back in London. Also, she also wears a “No. 2” pin, the Mark of the Beast, the mark of The Village’s second-in-command.
The closing scene is quick and doesn’t explain itself. It trusts the audience to understand what’s going on.
This episode’s adventure was McGoohan’s perverse birthday present.
The Village gave him exactly what he wanted, which was to escape and go back home.
Only it didn’t work out. The Village surely manipulated matters on their own, but they also depended on McGoohan’s tenacity.
As the jet plane takes off toward The Village, one of McGoohan’s agency colleagues comments that he’s “an old, old friend who never gives up.” It sounds like a compliment, but that very aspect of his personality is what leads him right back to where he started.
He can’t just run away from The Village. No, McGoohan doesn’t give up. He needs to crack this case–and they know that about him. They know everything about him. That’s how they were able to lead him on.
No, it doesn’t make rational sense. The Village’s plan depends on a lot of things going exactly right for them. It depends on McGoohan not dying while lost at sea. It depends on him making it home purely on his wits. It depends on the agency boys being standoff-ish. It depends on Mrs. Butterworth being one charming old bitch.
Why do we buy it?
Part of this is because The Village is already mysterious. The Prisoner appeals to the side of us that wants to believe in conspiracy theories. Grand, nefarious plans executed just under our noses. We don’t know anything about The Village so they’re capable of anything.
The other part is because… this episode’s punchline is just too delicious.
Who wants to ruin THAT with a bunch of silly logic and reason?