THE INNOCENT: Julie Sommars as Mimi Doolittle, an awkward girl working her way through Europe, and on a fateful night, subbing in for a magician's sick assistant, and not quite ready for the skimpy costume. Next thing you know, secret agents are shooting at each other and her boss is killed, so she goes back to New York, where her mom keeps asking about boys. UNCLE will use her as bait for THRUSH and teach her how to be sexy. Sommars guest starred on a lot of shows you remember from the 60s and 70s - Bonanza, Flipper, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, Get Smart (as the similarly named Mimsi), The Invaders, McMillan & Wife, Fantasy Island, and more besides - and first appeared to me as the female lead in Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (my first drive-in experience). Her best-known and most-acclaimed role would be her last, playing Assistant District Attorney Julie March on Matlock. This episode of The Man From UNCLE is her first of two.
REVIEW: By rights, I should love this episode. It's got duelling agents, plenty of superspy elements, and a game of diversions and counter-diversions. Oh, and Vincent Price as the main villain, his Victor Marton (and his horrendous French accent) replacing Cesar Romero's recurring foil Victor Gervais when he proved unavailable, trading barbs with an ambitious primary villainess who wants the win all to herself. The dialogue is a mixed bag (the heroes going "oops" twice is weak sauce, and the chapter titles are dumb), but there are a lot of crackers. Yeah, I should love this. Instead, it made me frown a lot.
Part of it is UNCLE's descent into bonkers sci-fi. After the "Ultimate Computer", we have a mind-reading machine invented by a stage magician who has agreed to give it to UNCLE at a loss to his business (it can't be replicated?!) and has nothing to do with mentalism. He even shows the machine in his act, which should mean it's just a prop and shouldn't work, but it does (and so MUST be destroyed at the end, because it's a game breaker). I was hoping this would ALL be a ploy to capture Victor, or rumble an entire THRUSH enclave - a magic "trick"! - but no, it's all real, and a step too far outside the real world. There's a certain frisson at the magician reading Marton's mind and seeing his own murder there, but the premise still doesn't make sense.
And then there's Waverly (especially slurry in this episode) who suddenly becomes a cold bastard, putting a target on the Innocent's back to lure the villains her way while the machine makes its way to Canada with Cantrell, a Solo-like agent strangely palling around with Illya in France. Illya has to protect her, so fine. Where the story loses me is when Waverly decides to send Solo to get her, but without giving him any mission details. Then come some extremely contrived situations where Solo is practically disavowed, and no real reason why he couldn't be told at least the basics (sans machine). It's not like he hasn't resisted interrogation techniques before, and even if THRUSH now has a powerful truth serum, 1) not knowing what he's doing means he's more easily caught, and 2) Illya, who knows everything, is caught anyway. So it's a lot of Solo not being able to enter the office (while Victor later traipses in and is allowed inside), getting oblique messages from his contacts as he goes, getting arrested for grabbing the girl's luggage and falling prey to an ambush. None of this needed to happen to keep plausible deniability. It's like a Mission: Impossible first draft.
Vincent Price is really the one to watch, here, since our heroes are unusually antagonistic to one another (they even accidentally punch each other). He's smooth as silk, very charming, and essentially there to steal American THRUSH's Lucia Belmont (Patrician Medina), who is ALMOST a feminist villain, but falls short of that because she's always wrong and may well end up in a remote THRUSH outpost's kitchen (as the sexist Marton predicts). She's got a cold and seems hopped up on too much medicine. It's kind of a drunk performance. She's got some great kit - her HQ is a funeral parlour, she has a guy spying on UNCLE under a fire hydrant in front of the dry cleaner's, and travels inside a cistern truck that can jam radio transmissions - but is ultimately killed by a sneeze after taking Victor's plastique explosive handkerchief (which UNCLE confiscated and GAVE BACK?!) along with the MacGuffin. Once she has it, we know it has to end this way. Also in the "not-quite-feminist" category is Mimi, whom the boys use to distract a guard, but first have to #noconsent kiss to unlock her inexperienced feminine wiles. The guard runs in when his personal flirt is sexually assaulted by Solo in the cell, more frowning from yours truly.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "My instinctive dislike for that young man is growing into a sincere and honest hatred." (Victor Marton on Illya)
"Napoleon, Waterloo is upon you." (a policeman to Solo)
"Save your breath, handsome. You've still got a lot of gasping to do." (Lucia Belmont)
"I guess I'm just not the enticing type." "You're a woman. Haven't you had your basic training?" (Mimi and Illya)
BONDED: No specifics, but the race for a MacGuffin is typical of Bond films, and Marton could have been a Bond villain. Indeed, Vincent Price played a scientist in the Dr. No vein in 1965's Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which overtly parodied that film and Goldfinger.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: Though it's got some cool superspy elements AND Vincent Price, I can't get behind how CONTRIVED this episode is.
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