THE INNOCENT: Marta Kristen plays Felicia Lavimore, the sassy (gets all the best lines) daughter of a missing scientist and fiancée of one of the Committee men who pressganged him into helping them. She doesn't know what's going on, so is very motivated to tag along with Solo once a rescue is mounted. To me, she's styled like Yeoman Colt in her Away Team jacket in the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", but Kristen would soon be cast in a DIFFERENT sci-fi franchise, as June Robinson in Lost in Space.
REVIEW: Before getting into the plot, I really want to talk about UNCLE, its Men, and its Women. Illya's despondency here is very interesting. We see him on the coast of the USSR, in a Soviet uniform, inspecting a missile carrying an agrarian plague, which is unusual enough. But then he's back in New York trying to convince Solo that all the components involved are American, and that another attack on Russian agriculture will spark WWIII. It really shows UNCLE as an international organization fairly disconnected from any particular government (in a way that's fantastical) and not loyal to the U.S. despite appearances. Illya is still a Soviet national, not an immigrant or defector. I also find it very interesting that Solo drops a reference to Eaton's, a Canadian store chain, which should be a tell (he's undercover as a Kansan), but speaks to original plans to make him Canadian. I say he still is, and only mistaken for an American whenever that's contradicted. Maybe it makes this conversation between the agents less uncomfortable, and Waverly, actually American, is nowhere to be seen. Love the giant globe used as a map, here. It's ridiculously large and a waste of space, but then UNCLE also apparently has an ichthyology department, so wasting space is par for the course. It's too bad that Illya disappears after this - recalled to the USSR to deal with tensions there - but it gives Heather of Channel D some time to shine. She Manchurians a cover identity into Solo (more on this later) and later takes calls from him. Channel D is very funny to me, as Heather either bathes under a sun lamp (hey, it's an underground bunker), knits and... has her dog with her?! I really think we should have seen more of her over the years, but her appearances are relatively few.
The plot du jour gives Robert Vaughn the opportunity to do something different, and he gives his cover identity - Muller - a folksy accent and a more ebullient personality. He's a spoiled and none-too-smart Big Agro baron who inveigles himself into the bad guys' schemes on the Californian coast by bringing back one of their scientists who bubbled out of the water. It's the first of many outrageous coincidences in the episode, that this guy would have an accident with explosive "hydro" (the lips say "freon", but that's apparently a trademarked product) right in Solo's path. I feel bad for the drowning man, because Solo puts him on his front for a long boogie board swim, face first in water (the other way would mean Solo's own face would have been in an even more embarrassing position), and then the bad guys do away with him anyway. Solo plays the rube to his rescuer Gabe and then to Dr. Lavimore's daughter. Even drugged, he won't give up the game. I do wish they'd done a better job with this. When he invites himself on a pretty sinister "night fishing" excursion and is drugged in a "baited hook" accident, there's a dreamy sequence with the bad guys lurking over him, but "Muller" never says anything, nor is he asked anything. When he is later taken to the "mental centrifuge" that separates the fact from the fiction, I thought the brainwashing would be justified, but he never makes it there. It's an interesting notion, though.
Despite their plan already having been used on the show (in The Shark Affair), the villains are a pretty interesting lot, very casual in their attitudes (though Solo can out-casual anyone). Among their number is Hogan's Heroes' John Banner as a jolly, loose-lipped scientist, and Henry Jones as the main bad guy Lockridge, who explains that they want to create a world that's run on logic and unsentimentality. Even when he and Solo get trapped in the first aid room (which is apparently a death sentence according to their rules, so even the leader can't "make a mistake" without deadly consequences - not sure there's much LOGIC there), he takes the unemotional route. At least until Solo preys on his ego and makes him cry out for help lest he miss the culmination of his plan. Gabe, a true cultist, runs to help him against "Committee" orders, Lockridge is saved from asphyxiation but proves ungrateful, and we blow up the base and the above oil rig with Chekhov's "hydro", the end. So much for the Committee's unemotional values. It's unfortunate that Felicia, even after imposing herself on the raid, doesn't do anything once there. Reunited with her father, she just stands around while the action happens. But though I'm not a huge fan of that fourth act, the show at least has the decency to make the escapees' rowboat not survive the giant explosion behind them, and they wash up on shore where dumb characters are waiting to end the episode on a comedy beat. All things considered, I'd rather have had some mention of how Gabe would be punished, or a call back to Channel D or Illya.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "Oh, exactly three days. Gee, that's a relief. I thought it was going to be a rush job." (Solo, in what I think might be a Russian pun.)
"Promise me that after we're married you won't wear that silly cap anymore. I wouldn't want you to get anemia of the brain." (Felicia)
"Small world, ain't it?" "Yes, practically microscopic." (Solo and Felicia)
"He's having a heck of a time getting buried, ain't he?" (Solo, on the man he'd fished out of the water)
BONDED: The Spy Who Loved Me also involves a villain who hopes to destroy the world so he can rise from his underwater base to rule a new world.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: It's fine even if the story is a little obvious. The UNCLE stuff is more interesting than the A-plot.
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