THE INNOCENT: Jocelyn Lane as Lisa Donato, an art student whose family was robbed of a million-dollar painting during the War, and who unsuccessfully approached the Re-Collectors for help. UNCLE would prove more helpful in that regard. She poses as Illya's fiancée, himself posing as a rich playboy, to attract the group's attention again and keeps a cool head throughout. When she sees her painting again at the end, she smiles and tears up; you can actually believe she's an art lover. Lane is perhaps the most beautiful Innocent we've yet seen, a mod 60s beauty who started out, like her sister, as a model in the UK. She was then known as Jackie Lane, and is therefore responsible for a lot of credits confusion with the later Doctor Who companion of that name. She has many international movie credits, and her look during the 60s was perfect for the various American spy shows - she was also on The Girl from UNCLE and Get Smart). Like many UNCLE guest stars, she was in an Elvis movie as well (Tickle Me). In the early 70s, she married Spanish royalty and left the business.
REVIEW: It's not always about THRUSH, although I'd like to see the Venn diagram on former Nazis and today's THRUSH leadership. No worries, the bad guys in this one also shop at THRUSH surplus, as evidenced by the assassin Valetti's cane-gun, and the Re-Collectors are going move for move with UNCLE in terms of false identities and convoluted schemes. Indeed, the big twist - and it's possible to see it coming - is that the Nazi hunters are really those Nazis' former partners, bumping off the competition and grabbing their share of the treasure. They also play "fake cops" in Rome, and one of them plays the wife of another, while actually being another's lover. It's a wonder they can keep things straight. And of course, Solo will play a rich collector to lure them in, and Illya will play the rich fiancé of the luscious Innocent of the Week. At that rate, you almost expect the artworks to be forgeries.
They may not be THRUSH, but they're superspies anyway. They watch Solo through a two-way mirror, while Illya listens in on Solo's bugged signet ring. They use slick assassins and truth serum. And like THRUSH, their agents are quirky to a fault. The interrogations where they keep trying to ply Solo with wine or cognac, and he keeps refusing feels like a bit orphaned from another draft of the script where it was better established that it might be poisoned or spiked with truth serum. The head Re-Collector, Demos, has a big speech about how we plebs devalue art by looking at it, and so it must be kept exclusive to his elite. He threatens Solo with a blunderbuss, but dare not shoot lest he hit a painting. His lover Genevieve tries to convince Solo she's been turned by her "husband's" death, but he sees through it (it's happened often enough that he's expecting it, which is cool), and she throws herself on Demos's body when she thinks he's dead. She seems the brains of the operation, the first to rumble Solo and making moves he doesn't expect. These guys are just weird enough to be memorable.
And it's a good episode for the heroes, too. Illya has a dynamic fight with Valetti where the killer ends up on the wrong side of his cane, and Solo knocks Vic Tayback's fake cop into the arms of a Roman housewife. They successfully hide from the villains in a tree, and though the house's geography is a little confused, use a pincer movement to get at the Nazis in their vault using a dumb waiter and a rope, severally. They consistently have each other's back, even if Waverly is still intent on getting Solo killed.
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "We hunt, we find, we kill." (Valetti)
"I'm quite allergic to needles." (Solo)
"When Solo gets into trouble, that's when he starts getting results." (Waverly)
"I want the man who killed my husband." "There is nothing more sterile than vengeance, Signora Fiamma." "Sterility is all that is left for me now." (Genevieve and Solo)
"A great painting dies a little, step by step, with every uninformed glance that falls upon it. Did you know that? If it is great, it has life. And if it has life, it can die." (Demos)
BONDED: Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), in The World Is Not Enough, uses a similar cane-gun.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: An interesting mystery with non-THRUSH villains.
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