The six-hour-long miniseries The Prisoner began tonight with two episodes back to back, a trend which will continue both tomorrow and Tuesday, with the show ending Tuesday night. There was mystery aplenty in the first two hours of the series, and I can only guess that the mystery will continue to deepen with each passing night.
A man wakes up in a desert, with fractured memories running through his mind of himself in his apartment. Disoriented, he stands up and begins running around, unsure of where he is or where he should go. Suddenly, he hears gunshots and barking dogs. As he climbs over a ridge, he sees figures standing on a clifftop, shooting at an old man who is fleeing below them, stumbling down rocks and dunes. He falls, and sees our hero. He calls to him for help, and our nameless hero obliges, picking up the man and carrying him to a cave. As he waits for the old man to regain consciousness, he takes a peek outside and finds that the land all around him is barren. It’s all one big desert, as far around as he can see.
The old man finally wakes up, and tells him to visit someone named 554. When our hero has no idea what he’s talking about, the old man realizes that he isn’t from here, and calls him a “bloody miracle.” After uttering “Be seeing you,” he dies abruptly.
Our nameless protagonist buries the old man and begins wandering around once more, eventually stumbling on a perfect line of suburban houses, which he soon sees are part of a larger neighborhood. He flags down a passing taxi (which looks like it’s from the 1950’s) and wants a ride to the railroad. When the taxi driver isn’t sure what he means by railroad or train, he tells him that he just wants to leave. The taxi driver laughs him off, telling him that he’s in the Village. There is nowhere else. The man then jumps out of the moving taxi, much to the driver’s chagrin.
The man continues, eventually stopping at a dance club. He catches a woman’s eye, and he nears her. He expresses to her his confusion, though she’s not sure what he’s confused about. He begins hearing the dogs once more, and he leaves once he sees the shadows of the men on the wall — though the woman he has met sees nothing.
Upon fleeing, he once again boards the taxi. The driver seems to think nothing of his earlier behavior, and then begins complaining about the long hours, which give him no time to see his family, including his daughter, “my 832.” The man is confused by what the driver has called his daughter, but realizes the correlation between the name and what the old man told him, and asks to be taken to see 554. The taxi driver seems to know the location, and they take off.
He discovers that 554 works at a diner just across the street from her home (which is conveniently labeled 554) and he sits down at the table. 554, a waitress, comes to take his order, though the menu consists only of “wraps,” or burritos. The man doesn’t understand why this is, and she doesn’t understand why the menu would have anything other than wraps. He orders a coffee, then tells her that he has a message for her from 93, the old man: that he got away. 554 tells him that 93 was just a drunk who came to the restaurant. The man hears the dogs again, and 554 seems to hear them too. She tells him to escape through the back. He does so, climbing some stairs and breaking out of a window. As he stands on the roof under the window, he sees the shadow of a man holding a suit approach him. The shadow appears to be tossing a grenade in the air. Our protagonist, suddenly dizzy, falls off the roof, passing out.
In a mix of red vision, he sees the face of who we know is 2, telling him that he is 6. He then wakes up in a hosppital bed. Doctor 313 approaches, and he realizes that she is the same woman he met in the dance club earlier. As he sits in the hospital, he sees a vision of 93 being rolled away in a gurney, asking our hero for help. 313 tells our hero, who from this point on will be referred to as 6, that he is a free man, and that they will take him home.
However, after taking some pills, he instead goes to meet 2, the man in the suit whom we saw earlier tossing the grenade. He recognizes 2, but 2 does not seem surprised by this. Instead, he asks 6 why he was in the mountains. 6 replies that he was lost, but then asks 2 why he continues to call him 6. 2 claims that 6 is his name, and this is backed up by corresponding ID in his pocket which he does not remember having there. 2 then asks 6 where 93 is. 6 insists that there is a New York, but 2 assures him there is no such place, and that it’s only the Village.
6 takes a bus back home, to his apartment labeled 6. He enters, and sees a soap opera playing on the television. The soap opera is interrupted by an announcement which tells everyone that the escaped visitor has been identified as 93, who was mentally unstable.
6 ventures out of his home and walks to a map store, where he asks for the biggest map the store has. Upon unfolding the map (which was folded up to appear very tiny), 6 realizes that it’s only of the village. When the shopkeeper calls him 6, he reacts with shock, but the man tells him that “everybody knows everybody” in the Village. As 6 leaves in terror, the shopkeeper waves him off and tells him “Be seeing you.”
As 6 exits the shop, he runs into 313, who tells her that he intends to leave the village and go home. She tells him he won’t get far. During their conversation, he looks up and sees two majestic, glittering towers high above the Village. He then decides to steal a taxi (from the taxi driver we met earlier) and drive into the desert. Once out far enough, he climbs a mountain, once again seeing nothing but desert all around him.
As he passes out in the desert from either heat or exhaustion, he has a flashback to his time before the Village. He’s sitting in a cafe, and a woman approaches him, asking to borrow his phone, claiming her’s was stolen — well, she lost it. The two chat as she dials the number, but then she leaves without returning his phone. He chases after her, and invites her to his apartment, though she appears reluctant — she’s already got plans.
313, having driven after him in the desert, finds him and takes him back to the Village in her convertible. He wakes up, and she tells him he was talking to himself in his sleep. He tells her that it was rude of her to eavesdrop, but then tell sher he was remembering meeting the woman, though he is unsure of whether she returned with him to his apartment or not.
Meanwhile, at his hope, 2 unlocks a rather plain medicine cabinet filled with vials of pills of various colors. Selecting several, he creates a breakfast tray, with the pills over to the side.
147, the taxi driver, meanwhile, gets a letter. His wife opens it, telling him that they’ve been summoned to an appointment with 2. While they’re unsure why, they also find instructions at the bottom of the letter, which they find slightly odd.
Though 313 tried to convince 6 that believing there was an outside world was simply part of his condition, 6 returned to the city and went straight to 93’s apartment, searching through his things. While he originally only finds bottles, he soon finds one with a rolled-up paper in one. As he takes out the paper, the door opens, and 2, followed by his son 11-12, steps in, noting the strangeness that 6 denied knowing who 93 was but still went to 93’s apartment. 6 instead demands to be let “out,” but 2 replies that there is no “out,” there is only “in.” 2 tells 6 to open his mind, but 6 says that they’ll only take his mind away. “We might,” replies 2. “But we’ll always give it back.” After 2 leaves, 6 opens the rolled up piece of paper to find a drawing of a very familiar landmark.
147 and his wife arrive at 2’s home. After waiting for a long time, they are met by 2, who gives them medals for service to the village, telling them that they should keep the medals with them at all times. After they thank him, he abruptly asks them if they brought the cake. They indicate that they did, and he tells them to simply leave it.
An announcement is made personally by 2 over the city loudspeakers, which tells them that they discovered 93’s body. 6 returns to the cafe, and convinces 554 to come with him to his apartment. 554 tells 6 that 93 said they were prisoners in the village, and shows 6 her drawing of the Statue of Liberty, which she claims to have dreamed. She tells 6 that she thinks there are others who have dreams like that as well.
2 takes pills to his comatose wife, dropping them into her mouth. She shows some awareness, at least with her eyes. 11-12, their son, walks in, asking 2 why 6 doesn’t think that the Village is all there is. 2 simply replies that for people like 6, all there is is just not enough.
6 visits the cemetery, and is met there by 313. He tells her to lay down beside her, and look up at the stars. The stars are proof that there is more that exists than just the Village. He then begins to list of famous people, from Karl Marx to Groucho Marx. 313 is unfamiliar with any of them, and she does not know that Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and the telephone. 313 tells 6 to instead talk about the woman he met earlier.
He does, and has a flashback. The woman tells him her name is Lucy, and she eventually agrees to come back with him to his apartment after some minor flirting.
He suddenly awakens in his apartment, and hears a passing funeral for 93. Exiting his apartment, he controns 2, who angrily tells him off. He returns to the cafe, where 147 offers him a ride a little too eagerly. 6 declines, instead entering the cafe. Upon exiting, he begins hearing transmissions from Brooklyn breaking through the ambient music playing on the portable radios nearby. Suddenly, the cafe behind him explodes, knocking him out.
A series of clips follow, including one strange one of 554 addressing the camera, saying, “I put a pillow on his face and snuffed him out like a candle. Now he’s dead.” We’re led to believe that 6 did not see this, or if he did, he didn’t remember it upon waking.
He wakes up among debris from the explosion, and runs to 554’s side. She tells him that 93 told her to “follow the towers,” referring to the crystaline towers he’d seen earlier. As 554 begins to succumb to her wounds, 6 is pushed away by medics, who take her back to the hospital. 313 tries to save her, but 554 dies. 6 chases after 313 and asks her what happened, and 313 tearfully replies that sometimes events like this just happen, though they don’t happen very often.
6 runs to 2’s house and begins yelling at him from behind the gate. However, 2 sits calmly in his dining room, and though he can hear 6’s cries, he just ravenously eats the cake that 147 gave him, gluttonously eating slice after slice after slice, gleefully grinning.
Giving up, 6 decides to heed 93’s advice and run to the towers. He makes it to the desert, but as he approaches a cliff near the towers, a large white ball rises above him, and slowly falls over him, pushing him down against the ground and into blackness.
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