THE INNOCENT: Joan O'Brien plays Chris Brinel, an "ordinary housewife" kidnapped by THRUSH so she can be brainwashed into manipulating her genius space engineer husband for the organization. That's rather convoluted. She complains that her husband has no ambition and she's thinking of leaving him, at least until Solo tells her a (completely fabricated) story about his grandfather fulfilling very ordinary ambitions, which are as valuable as grander schemes. She's mostly trying to escape, swings a mean knife, and follows Solo's lead until she returns to the States. O'Brien had a short career as a singer and actress (1953-1965, though mostly from '58), at her height, playing opposite Jerry Lewis, Elvis, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. A year before taking this role, she was voted "most likely to wed Robert Vaughn", which is pretty crazy. What's the story there?
REVIEW: Carroll O'Connor! Pretty cool to see such a big star take on a villain role in the series, running a Manchurian Candidate "school" on a tropical island (the "Green Opal" of the title). He's the best thing about the episode - Brach, a millionaire obsessed with alternative medicine and astrology - and the scheme is certainly worthy, but I'm afraid the rest of the episode is a little clunky. It DOES have more "a day at UNCLE headquarters" than we've ever had, which I do find interesting, but it's also padding and time that would have better served to fill in some plot holes. We see more of Heather, the current voice of Channel D, Waverly's secretary admonishes Solo about his mission reports, and UNCLE uses a costumier to give Solo his undercover look. Illya is only seen in these sequences, batting at a samurai piñata that seems very dangerous (yet silly). I'm not sure the writers have a handle on him yet - is he simply a man who is interested in everything and develops strange "hobbies"? Waverly himself isn't in the episode, which I am not complaining about, though everyone seems to use his office as a hang-out. I get that it's a standing set, but this is ridiculous. Nevertheless, I thought these sequences were fun. Oh! And they're finally calling the organization UNCLE without the periods. That really bugged me, for some reason.
This Affair is certainly not Solo's strongest showing. He quickly abandons his cover as a nerdy secretary, but Brach had not only rumbled him, but actually LURED him so THRUSH could have a conditioned UNCLE agent under their thumb. He karate chops a goon whose machine gun fire narrowly misses the Innocent. He basically just stands there as a powerful henchman punches him in the face. He has an okay "towel fight" with his shirt, but it's really the guard cheetahs who win the fight. His gun has been disabled so that he shoots impotently when his bluff is called. And he zaps himself on an electric fence. It's not until the climax that he does anything competently, dodging that fence and then throwing the henchman into it. But even then, the bad guy is actually defeated by his astrologer who apparently used her feminine wiles on the attending surgeon to get out of conditioning. She pushes his wheelchair into the shark-infested lagoon and that's that. There's an awkward sequence where Solo calls on her to break her conditioning, but he says it to the wrong person... it's a mess.
Along with Madame Karda's ultimate turn, we have to deal with Tenley's breakdown, which had me wondering who he was, initially (Solo is always bringing in strays), and if he was an agent, as later reported, why did Brach not just use him instead of wasting him to turn Solo into an inside man? The same could be said of Chris Brinel's kidnapping - why not kidnap and condition her husband directly? And what of the corrupt cops on the island? Are they conditioned? Brach implies he controls EVERYONE on the island, and they act "spaced out", though, of course, no one else does. Because if not, why not? And if so, why do they also require bribes? I can't blame the script for everything, however. The insert shot of a hand turning off the fence is extremely hokey, for example, and having "Indians" played by white boys will never not be cringe.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "Thrush is an organization that believes the world should have a two-party system: The masters and the slaves." (Solo)
BONDED: Brach's silent, Asian henchman Chuke (Fuji) is similar to Goldfinger's Oddjob, on a surface level. Fuji also had roles in Mission: Impossible, I Spy and Get Smart. Carroll O'Connor was also a guest star on Mission: Impossible. Linda Ho, UNCLE girl Wanda, was in I Spy, and Milton Selzer (Dr. ) had a recurring character (Parker) in Get Smart and played several roles in M:I.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: A waste of a good guest star and premise, it's hard to shake the feeling that this script came in short and the production was unable to fully recover.
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