"The Odd Man Affair" (ep. 1/29)

Here we are at the end of the first season, which has given us some of the 1960s' best hours of TV.  It seems odd to us now, but the season doesn't end with a cliffhanger (that tradition, I think, began with the "Who Shot J.R." storyline on "Dallas" in the 1980s).  Instead we finish with a spy story from the writer of "Deadly Games" and "Mad, Mad Tea Party," featuring one of the most interesting Innocents -- at least in part because he's not really innocent.

We open with an exciting sequence on the plane.  (Strange, but of the last five episodes, four have featured Illya on his own in the opener.)  The sequence gives us a glimpse of a vanished time when you didn't hate flying, because it was comfortable and pleasant.  When Raymond shoots the flight captain and the passenger screams, that should be enough for Illya to spring up; but he doesn't move until Raymond has seized the stewardess.  And oddly, the explosion blasts only outward and not into the passenger compartment . . . but this sets up the delightful shock of Illya nearly being sucked into space.

Mr. Zed, who seems to be into nuclear explosion porn, is played by Ronald Long, whom I recall from one of Stan Freberg's live Sunsweet prune commercials of this time period.  ("They're still rather badly wrinkled, you know." "Today the Pits -- Tomorrow, the Wrinkles!  Sunsweet Marches On!")

This is one story that could have used a few more scenes.  Albert Sully's apartment, with its stacks of newspapers and its TV with rabbit ears, perfectly suggests the dull lonely life of its occupant, as played by Tony winner Martin Balsam.  Yet I still wish we'd had a scene in Waverly's car on the way to Sully's, in which Waverly fills Solo and Illya in on Sully's background.  We gather, eventually, that he'd done assassin work for the OSS, and had been a Command field agent before his Inactive Files desk job.  But the summing-up given us at the end by Solo and Illya ("Men like Sully are only really alive," etc.) comes so late that Sully's determination to continue as Raymond seems strangely quixotic until we get that explanation.

The story also foreshadows today's world of terrorism.  Of course there were fascist and Communist terror organizations then; see "The Day of the Jackal."  And Waverly mentions that Raymond's group (far-righters, I suppose, if they were so opposed to alliance with the "far left"?) used plastic explosive "very successfully in their campaign to bring down the government of France."  Does this mean they were successful in spreading terror, or successful in toppling the ruling clique in France?

Yeah, I Had to Look It Up Dept:. Sully's book, "La Chartreuse de Parme" ("The Charterhouse of Parma") is an 1839 novel by Stendhal.  There's an in-joke with it: According to Wikipedia, the novel's early section is largely focused on the young hero's quixotic effort to join Napoleon when he returns to France in 1815.

Doesn't cat's cradle seem an odd game for two grown men to play?  Why not cards?

Clever of Sully to realize that Solo stuck him with a homing pin . . . and cleverer of Illya to put in a backup.  But why would it take fifteen minutes for Solo and Illya to explain to the customs agent?  A flash of the ID cards and a quick explanation should have done it in less than five.  And isn't "nine-seven degrees" slightly south of east, not west?

Why, too, does Mr. Wye (note how manfully I'm resisting making puns here) give Sully-as-Raymond the pointer to the nightclub, which will lead him to the meeting?  If he thinks the fellow with the blue button is Raymond, the last thing Zed would want Wye to do is steer him to the meeting!  Of course, Raymond was supposed to be dead, so Wye must have assumed this was someone else (though, oddly, Ecks recognizes "Raymond").  And how does Miss Watson know who Wye is?  Does she still skirt the fringes of extremist groups in between compiling quarterly accounting reports?

Illya seems very concerned for Solo when Wye shoots him on the bus.

Illya in trench coat and glasses prefigures Michael Caine as Harry Palmer in "The Ipcress File" and other films.

Verdict: Less a story about Solo and Illya's mission and more about the Innocent, Albert Sully, it's a fast-moving spy tale, the black-and-white photography echoing 1940s films.  (But why the title? Could Albert be considered to be an "odd" man?)

Memorable lines:
Illya: "When Raymond was getting on the plane, I took the precaution of removing his wallet."
Solo: "In other words, you picked his pocket."
Illya: "If you prefer such a bourgeois description of an act of pure presence of mind."

Solo: "Don't play Uriah Heep, Sully.  It really doesn't become you."

Illya: "I have a hunch someone packed a peck of pickled peppers in our bag."

Illya (as Sully pops the homing pin into the customs agent's jacket):  "It's like playing the game of Pin the Tail to the Donkey."
Solo (wryly): "Donkeys."

Solo (to Illya): "You are a sly Russian.  Someday when you grow up you should make someone a marvelous secret agent."

Illya (at the Soho nightclub): "Remarkable, the number of people who find it necessary to protect their eyes in such a dimly-lit room."