THE INNOCENT: Joanna Moore plays Fran Parsons, one of these flighty, silly types who go along with whatever's happening (not my favorite kind of Innocent, I'll admit). While trying on clothes she could never afford at a fashion house, she inadvertently gets handcuffed to the THRUSH agent our guys are taking to D.C. and mostly has a grand old time travelling with them. She's into astrology, so all of this seems reasonable to her. Moore was a Southern beauty queen who fell into acting, with career highlights including a small role in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, playing opposite Elvis Presley in Follow That Dream, and being a love interest for Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. In the 70s, she had troubles with substance abuse, but also saw her daughter, one Tatum O'Neal, become the youngest person to ever win a competitive Oscar (for Paper Moon). Her character Fran's contention that weird/bad stuff always happens to her (as the stars dictate) is strangely mirrored in her life, which includes almost permanently losing her hearing (saved by an operation in the early 60s), and losing three fingers in a car accident. She died from lung cancer in 1997.
REVIEW: The big twist in this one is that though Solo and Illya are told they'll be ferrying the real Egon Stryker (#3 at THRUSH) to D.C. to be interrogated by the CIA - using public transport, no less - while Waverly undertakes to drive a decoy and draw all of the evil org's attention HIMSELF (Waverly in the field?!), it's actually the opposite, and Solo's Stryker is only playing at being a baddie. And, well, yeah, it's obvious from jump. First off, it's an indicated twist for a spy show and would have been disappointing had they not thought of it. Second, the set-up doesn't ring true. We have "Stryker" walking into Waverly's office with a badge at his lapel, and though obnoxious, quite clearly cooperating. There are other clues, such as Frame, a blind THRUSH boss (so probably at least #2), acting or not acting on certain details, but these really mount in the final act to the point where it's almost unreasonable for Solo not to realize. Solo gets caught out by a THRUSH agent, but Stryker prevents him from being killed (I guess Solo couldn't have heard him shout out) and gets himself informed on Waverly's progress, he also makes a sly promise to Fran that he might need a martini at mission's end, too, and once he's in dire straits with THRUSH "doctors", it's obvious he tries to warn that "fool", Solo. So it's not really a surprise when it's revealed, but then, I don't know if it could have been. A bigger surprise is Waverly driving through acid streets and karate chopping an enemy agent upside the neck. Especially given Leo G. Carroll's usually torpid performance.
We haven't seen THRUSH in a while, have we? That only partly explains why Solo suddenly addresses us in the opener to remind us of them. The other reason is that the show had just been moved to Monday nights, so there was cause to cater to new viewers. And indeed, THRUSH puts on a pretty good show. They have a lot of smoke bombs, a water truck that pours acid all over the street, a creepy boss in Frame, the ability to deploy multiple plans of attack and plant cabs and hospital staff all over the place between New York and Washington (they don't have kid agents, though, so the woman on the train who borrowed one to appear harmless gets rumbled), and track a man through his tooth fillings from a plane. They don't win because they do fall for Waverly's ploy, but the faux-Stryker almost gets killed (it would have been interesting if he'd kept appearances up and infiltrated the group at the highest level, though). They also seem to use fancy sci-fi guns, but then so do UNCLE. Did I never notice the UNCLE pistols before or is this a change? Is the new time slot stricter about violence (the ubiquitous THRUSH gas is also pointedly described as non-lethal)? Maybe I missed this before, and this episode merely makes it more obvious.
What lets the episode down is the picaresque nature of the Affair. It's just a bunch of different clashes between agents strung together like Christmas lights. The first act has all the running around in the streets (you'll almost believe this to be the least exotic episode of the series, spending all its time no more than a few blocks from UNCLE HQ), the acid bath, the cabbie assassin (rumbled because his accent doesn't match his ID's surname), and the fashion house (nice to hire an actual French actress to run it, even nicer that Illya's French is better than serviceable). Then we're on a train, with a fake mom, a suitcase spewing gas, and the need to jump off. This is followed by a night in an odd Amish house (the characters are, so as to make calling for help more difficult, but the house isn't in any way dressed to match), and Solo borrows a horse and buggy to get to the next leg. Then, Solo gets tricked by the least believable policeman in television history, but he escapes and even Fran gets in on the action. At least this ends our sound looping ordeal (from the train to this bit, we're on noisy locations and the dialogue is badly dubbed). From the stolen "police car", Solo decides to bring Stryker in with an ambulance, and we have evil orderlies and a close shave to save "Stryker" from the bad guys. Along the way, we're strapped (at time literally) to a silly Innocent who doesn't take anything seriously and gives us double takes that deny us much-needed tension. An innocent who is given a final "jokey" scene where she drinks ginger ale so the two agents don't take advantage of her. Is that what I'm supposed to get from it? It's like one of those unfunny tags on Star Trek where everyone laughs, but you didn't get the joke.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "Just wanted to bring you a little present... a divorce." (Solo, pulling out a file)
"I'm afraid that she knows too much. She's seen too much." "Oh, don't worry about that. I can be very stupid and I have a terrible memory." (Stryker and Fran)
BONDED: Bond films also made use of decoys, in such efforts as You Only Live Twice and Casino Royale. From Russia with Love also includes the spies on a train trope (not that this is the first time for The Man from UNCLE).
REWATCHABILITY - Medium (but just): I can't deny that THRUSH is well used, and there's plenty of action, but I don't find the Innocent engaging and the plotting is rather lazy.
Comments