"The Green Opal Affair" (ep. 1/6)

I never saw this one until CBN aired it in the mid-'80s.  It's not the best ep of Season One by any means, but it deserves a tip of the James Bondian hat for capturing that weird flavor of the Fleming books set in the tropics like "Live and Let Die" and "Doctor No."  It also, with the sizzle-death of Chuke, anticipated Bond's execution of Oddjob in the film version of "Goldfinger" -- which didn't premiere in the U.S. until several months after this MfU story ran.

Carroll O'Connor startles the heck out of me whenever I see him play something other than Archie Bunker.  Despite that classically trained voice -- he studied in Ireland and at Juilliard -- I always, unfairly, expect him to break out in the Brooklynese of ol' Archie.  His Walter Brach, with his habits of pinching pennies and saving string, reminds me of the oddball industrialists that Ellery Queen was always dealing with in the mystery novels.  However, Walter baby, I gotta point out that the word "intractable" means exactly the opposite!  You’d want to render Solo "tractable"!

Nice detail at HQ, when the young Section II guy is firing his pistol; we hear the spent shells hitting the floor.  Though you have to wonder what damage those slugs were doing to the ceiling, and/or to the room above; and if HQ's walls are truly sheathed in steel, then we should have seen the bullets ricocheting.

I give Solo and Illya full marks for researching their target before diving into an investigation . . . and Heather is not just a console operator/coffee fetcher here.  She has good contributions to make, and the Enforcement guys listen to her.

Undercover Solo again, this time as a prissy male secretary.  And Illya seems quite amused by it all.

The business of the innocent, the housewife, seems kind of hauled in from left field.  Yes, it gets explained as being part of Brach's plot, and rather ingeniously, i.e., rather than kidnapping and reprogramming the scientist husband, they plan to reprogram *her* to act as a spur to his ambition.  However, Brach's security is lousy if she manages to go wandering all over the island.  Or was it that they let her free so Solo would find her?  I wasn’t sure.

Solo’s use of his shirt to keep Chuke away, flicking it at him like a wet towel in a locker room, is clever – and it *would* be a deterrent.  (“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye --!”)  Nice touch, that his T-shirt is darker, still wet, at that point, but lighter and drier when they get up to Brach’s house.

Just when did Brach or any of his confederates have a chance to jigger Solo's U.N.C.L.E. Special so that it wouldn't fire?  He has it with him all along, both in disguise and then tucked into the small of his back as he prowls the island.  True, they knew who he was despite his disguise.  Could someone have picked his holster, so to speak, tinkered with the gun, and replaced it?  Hard to believe.

Good observation by Solo, when he guesses that Mrs. Stallmacher has not had the tractability treatment.  When Brach mentions that everyone on the island has been treated, the doctor can't help glancing at Mrs. S., and Solo notices.  (By the way, is it just me, or does she have a little of that Tina Louise-as-Ginger Grant look about her?)

Personally I liked the story (cut by CBN?) that Solo tells the housewife about his grandfather the small-town lawyer.  (Remember Jimmy Stewart in "Anatomy of a Murder"?)  Too bad he was making it up. . . . 

Great Line:

Solo:  "Thrush is an organization that believes in the two-party system . . . the masters and the slaves."