THE INNOCENT: Maggie Pierce plays Pearl Rolfe, a (probably graduate) student at Hunter College working on a theology paper and sits in the wrong seat at the THRUSH church, gets kidnapped, and must be rescued by Solo. She's clumsy, but cute, and quick to spot Solo as not one of the faithful. At the end, she steals a kiss off him. Pierce had a television career in the 1960s, culminating in the role of Jerry Van Dike's wife no My Mother the Car.
REVIEW: THRUSH is kidnapping/recruiting physicists and engineers from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and while their revival church front is rather weird - does Brother Love and his monk-like Brothers With Similar Names also travel to Communist countries with this stuff? - I like how the episode gets us into the story. The next physicist to be nabbed has a fatal heart attack on the plane to New York, and Illya intercepts her belongings (gosh, don't stop someone being rushed to the hospital midway), including a ticket to the Brother Love show. So what if Solo takes her seat, and further what if the episode's Innocent is already sitting in it by mistake and gets kidnapped instead? It doesn't entirely pass inspection even if we accept that Love doesn't know what the professor looks like - Miss Johnson, who accompanies Solo, should have taken the seat and not let a male agent go flirt with Pearl, and does Pearl look old enough to be a renowned scientist with a heart condition? Still, it's an intriguing game between secret agents.
Green Acres' Eddie Albert plays Brother Love (Eleanor Audley is also in the episode, she'll play his mother on that sitcom) and he's a nasty cult leader with plans to build a rocket and... well, the implication is that THRUSH will build an untouchable base in orbit or on the Moon. Religion and the space race, bit of a mixed metaphor, and they perhaps don't do enough with it. If he had been independent of THRUSH - which he perhaps was in an earlier version of the script - it might have made sense for him to create a new society up there. He's surrounded himself with loyal monks plus Magda, a femme fatale who poses as a reporter, but, of course, helps kidnap Solo (who plays the role of the physicist's assistant, since she's off the board). His men NEED to be dressed as hooded monks, because it allows our heroes to dress up and hide in plain sight until he can be blown up by his own bomb.
The episode is pretty pacey, and does a good job of putting our agents in jeopardy just when you think they have the upper hand. Plenty of spy gear. Brother Love has a magnetic grenade that takes Illya out, and a water gun that shoots chloroform. Illya has a tricorder of sorts, and Solo plastique explosives hidden in the heels of his shoes. Miss Johnson has a lot more to do in this episode than in previous ones, but is mostly sidelined, rolling her eyes at Solo wanting to approach the girl. She acts jealous, but it's more like a comment on his lack of professionalism. And yet, the seduction angle is part of the superspy genre, and Johnson is the Moneyponey.
Quick complaint about the stock footage used in this episode. You can't put a NEW YORK CITY title card over a shot of an airport if the shot also includes the Washington Monument in the background. And I've seen that shot of the helicopter explosion, except it's going the wrong way (flip it in editing) and it's obviously a plane. Small nits to pick, but pick them I did,
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: " I want you to go out to that party tomorrow afternoon, and do something you do rather well: Create a fuss." (Waverly to Solo)
"It's a pretty expensive party, I'd say." "Suddenly I feel very Russian." "That's just your proletarian blood." "There's no difference between those people and me." "Depends whether you're speaking physically, financially or psychologically." What makes you so superior? You don't rate yourself with Dun and Bradstreet." "Yes, but I have that elegant air of decadence." (Illya and Solo)
"Keep moving. Act nervous and restless." "Who has to act?" (Solo and Pearl)
"Take care of yourself, all right?" "Why should I? You do it much better." (Solo and Pearl)
BONDED: Shades of Moonraker. Interestingly, Leigh Chapman who played Miss Johnson half a dozen times also worked as a television writer, and would (soon) pen an episode of Mission: Impossible.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A meat and potatoes episode. It's got a lot of cool ingredients, but the recipe feels a little random.
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