THE INNOCENT: Sue Ane Langdon plays Elsa Barnman, the bubbly and non-too-concerned wife of a vanished librarian, who loves her bird more than anything, and likes to feed the men in her life. Once kidnapped herself so she can rejoin her husband, she quickly agrees to help Solo carry off his plans, even if she doesn't really understand what's going on. When lying, she becomes comically theatrical (but the guards eat it up), and is absolutely fearless in the face of a gun, coquettishly taking one out of Captain Shark's hand as she pressures him into a dance. She seems delighted to be thought of as attractive, which isn't a huge stretch given her cerebral, inattentive spouse. Though Langdon would score a second banana role in an Elvis film two years hence (in Frankie and Johnny) and the part of Aunt Esther in UHF near the end of her career, she was mostly a television guest star from the 60s through the 80s. Her chops for comedy are evident, but it means Elsa is largely a cartoon who doesn't react humanly to the episode's stakes.
REVIEW: This one is a lot of fun and could have benefitted from a longer format - there's a lot going on, but it leaves some elements a bit underdeveloped. Just so long as we don't give more time to Waverly, one of the lamest spy bosses in superspy fiction history (so the guys just drink brandy in his office while he's not there? He tells his agents it's not for him to tell them what to do? Anyway... spare me from his slowly-delivered mission assignments). Or, for that matter, whatever comic bit they were trying to do with Elsa's cooking (did I miss something? Why does no one but Illya want to eat?). These were the only drains on an otherwise strong episode, unless you count some uneven accents, but that's what happens when you tell an international story with a TV budget in California.
The story focuses on Captain Shark, played by Robert Culp, an actually sympathetic "villain", a kind of Captain Nemo who wants to rebuild society after the nuclear war to come, and is collecting people with exotic skills from his reconfigured WWII-era naval vessel - piracy, kidnapping... but no killing! Culp plays him as a calm, collected man who was radicalized by the first atom bomb tests. Deep Cold War stuff. History will show he missed the mark by at least 60 years (nuclear war still pending) and he's probably naive to think his smallish group of survivors could last long if the superpowers dropped the big ones. His scheme is perhaps over-complicated (we need our heroes to figure things out from disparate clues), but it's pretty clever. What we needed is a better sense of how all his targets so easily accepted their new situation, or perhaps what would have happened to someone who didn't. Ultimately, Shark is brought low and chooses to go down with his scuttled ship, unwilling to leave his dream, or as Solo calls it, his nightmare. Yes, world affairs teeter on the edge of a precipice, but the Man from UNCLE sees more hope in working at making things better rather than resignedly moving to Plan B.
Illya gets more to do in this episode as the format starts to solidify. Initially, still babysitting duty, but he's soon chasing one of Shark's men, only failing because of his charge's slapstick "help", knocking several doors in his head. He eventually captures the man by posing as a taxi driver, a fun car trap. When he and Solo try to infiltrate the ship, he's right there with his partner, hanging on to flotsam to pose as shipwreck survivors (they nearly don't make it as the fog rolls in). Solo gets good bits too, including a weird and memorable torture scene, and his idea to scuttle the ship so the willing kidnapees agree to go home. His use of a cigarette case communicator is hopefully exemplary of a move towards more spy gadgets on the show. Third on the hero list is Elsa Barnman, our "innocent" (see above), who is way too perky for what's happening, but gets some humor out of her relationship to a caged bird, and delivers a strong speech about all the conditioned survivors simply running away from their lives. It's a role that could have used more gravitas, but she's not unpleasant to watch, the ditzy thing. Oh, and the first scene features a pre-Trek James Doohan as an officer on the first ship attacked.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "There is no safe harbor. The only safety lies in the agreements between people." (Solo)
BONDED: There are some similarities between this plot and that of The Spy Who Loved Me (the 1977 film, not the novel), with the underwater base of Atlantis acting as an ark, though the villain wants to blow up the world himself. This will be mirrored in the orbital utopia of Moonraker (again, the film), and the mountain lair of Dr. Noah in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Bond spoof, "Our Man Bashir". Robert Culp is a heel for all occasions (Columbo mysteries, mostly it sometimes seemed), but has never played a Bond villain (he starred in a movie called Spectre, but not that Spectre), but was one of the leads in the I Spy television series (1965-1968), hot off the heels of this particular appearance.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: Despite some weak comedy, there's an intriguing mystery and some very nice dialogue. It largely wins me over by humanizing its antagonist.
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