"The King of Diamonds Affair" (ep. 2/25)

Actor's actor Ricardo Montalban passed away in January of 2009.  We remember him now chiefly as "Khan" in the second "Star Trek" film; but he was also that rarity in his time, the successful ethnic actor who never Anglicized his name.  "King" delivers one of his flamboyant (but never over the top) performances, plus neat direction (Joseph Sargent) that makes this feel a bit like "See Paris and Die" from Season One.

We open in a teashop in Soho, where an aspiring actress bites into a diamond in her Pogue's Pudding.  (Three or four hundred pounds is a small fortune? Well, maybe to the patrons of the teashop. Thirty or forty thousand would be more up my alley.)  Next Solo and Illya pop out of a presumably rented Jaguar (?) (and a left-drive model at that).  Illya's interrogation technique seems to involve moving, unsmiling, right into his victim's personal space, doesn't it?  But why are the Family after Solo and Illya?  The news about the diamonds is already out; killing them won't put the genie back in the bottle.  It would make more sense to silence the actress!

We've seen Waverly in video conference with his agents before, but this scene, while working in the exposition about the diamonds, gives us an important point about the Command.  As Waverly says, chasing diamond smugglers is not their business -- but the stability of the world economy is.  Note the silent byplay between Solo and Illya, as the local staff lady shifts her attentions between them.

Montalban's Rafael Delgado, thief extraordinaire, dominates this episode.  His casual assumption that he'll go right back to caper-pulling as soon as he gets out of prison, his amusement at stringing Solo and Illya along, his vanity and tendency to refer to himself in the third person, all make him a colorful antagonist/antihero, like Dan O'Herlihy's Rudolph back in "Fiddlesticks."   In contrast, Larry D. Mann's Blodgett, the true villain, is rather dull, as is Victoria the Innocent.

Then we get real business, with our guys in coveralls and caps pulling a daring daylight reconnaissance at the Peacock establishment.  I find it a little hard to swallow (okay, a lot) that Peacock's wouldn't own the foundation beneath their vault and have security men or systems there . . . but we'll go with it, just as we do with the villain's plan in Doyle's "Red-Headed League."

The Family -- or at least Blodgett and Knox -- speak in lower-class English accents, but they seem to be Italian.   Certainly Blodgett rattles off some Italian insults (porco: "pig"?).   (Speaking of languages, the language in Rio is not Spanish, as used in Acts III and IV. It's Portuguese.)

At first I wondered why Blodgett and Delgado take Solo and Victoria along to Brazil.  On their arrival, it becomes clear:  They don't know!  Blodgett shoots Freddie, his mole within Pogue's, before Freddie could tell them he'd loaded the two into one of the crates.   But why wouldn't Delgado & Co. hear Solo chatting with Victoria and reporting to Waverly? Better if the crate had been in a separate compartment.

Hard to believe that one of The Family didn't notice Illya clinging to the side of the building sooner, or that they failed to dispatch him permanently.  Better if he could have scurried up and gotten away by springing from roof to roof.   (It is funny, though, to see his hands alone emerge from the drift of newspapers to answer his communicator.)  And while the Rio office scene is both well-done (for its glimpse of the multi-ethnic staff) and puzzling (fans? Doesn't the Rio office have A/C?), what purpose does Illya's cold serve?   I kept expecting him to be hiding, only to have a violent sneeze give him away.

It's true, we're never told how Delgado spirited the uncut diamonds away from Blodgett.  But the hint that he will tell them later, and then his death before he can finish the tale, work well enough.

At the end, the script both giveth and taketh away.  The presence of Waverly, sporting a crisp Panama, comes as a charming surprise.  But we needed a better fadeout line than Solo's "Huh!"

Verdict: Despite some flaws (a little hard to kill all the Family members with three cannon shots, don't you think? And Blodgett's demise is too cartoon-like), this non-Thrush story is well-paced, with plot complications released bit by bit.  But then, I'm fond of stories which involve U.N.C.L.E. because of a criminal's mistake, as here, or an accident, as in "Finny Foot."

Memorable lines:
Illya (to Solo, as they creep through the tunnels beneath Peacock's):  "If you must get us lost, could you do it a bit faster?"

Delgado (furiously, to Blodgett): "You miserable bungler.  You think you can get along without Delgado!  You can't even lick a postage stamp without falling on your face!"

Senhor Rafini:  "I wish I were twenty years younger.   I'd be tempted to go along with you [on the raid up the Amazon]."
Illya (sniffling):  "If I were twenty years older, I'd be more than tempted to stay."

Victoria:  "I'm only sorry [the late] Mr. Delgado can't be here with us."
Solo:  "Well, if I were in charge, I'd double the guard at the Pearly Gates."
Illya (darkly):  "Where he's taken up residence, I don't think they have that kind of architecture."

"The King of Knaves Affair" (ep. 1/13)

This, the sixth episode filmed, has never been one of my favorites, and despite the details of U.N.C.L.E. and its international flavor revealed here, is the first aired episode which is less than stellar.  The direction is always competent, and Vaughn and McCallum turn in good performances.  But when the most significant thing about an episode is that the image of Solo used in the first season title sequence is taken from it, that's not good.

Jan Merlin's Angel Galley reminds me of actor Nick Adams of "The Rebel" fame.  He appears first as a rather charming, slimy character, and cements his "psychopath" label, as Illya calls him, by knifing the industrialist.  And the Corvette convertible is a nice character touch.  Unfortunately, this characterization vanishes later.  When we see him in uniform in the cell with Solo, he's frantically studying for an exam, as if he's worried about flunking algebra and getting grounded.  How does a knife-wielding racketeer suddenly turn into Dobie Gillis?

Illya's being boyish again, with his face propped on his fists in the briefing scene.  His watch looks like it's on one of those rugged NATO nylon straps.

Why does Solo order *separate* jet flights for Illya and himself to Rome?

Many folks have mentioned that the sign inside the Rome Del Floria's reads, in Italian, the same as the one in New York: "Honesty Is the Best Policy."  If anyone knows Italian well, chime in -- is the Rome sign in good idiomatic Italian? Does the outside sign read "Sartoria"?  And is the Italian that Solo rattles off so easily the real thing?

Guest stars: Arlene Martel was fresh from appearing in the Harlan Ellison-scripted "Demon with the Glass Hand" on "Outer Limits," and would turn up three years hence as the infamous T'Pring on "Star Trek."  Tania (or Tanya) Lemani, who plays Venetia, and appears as the belly dancer later, made a small career out of such roles.  She played an exotic dancer in "Wolf in the Fold" on Trek, and also on an "It Takes a Thief" episode.

We see the hypnotic indoctrination process in more detail here, as Solo and Illya are programmed with their detailed cover identities.  Solo, at least, gets to use some of that comprehensive knowledge of arms later,

but Illya's carefully layered cover goes for naught.  In fact he has little to do here in any scene, except for his silent battle with the thug on the balcony outside Solo's room.

I have trouble with Solo's white pajamas.  Not with the fact that they're white, or that he wears pajamas at all.  But buttoned to the neck as if awaiting a tie?

I don't swallow the idea that Miss Ernestine would take a gun along and aim it at Solo as part of tracking Angel down.  If she had been revealed later as a criminal partner of Angel's, sure, but not as she's written.  I also have trouble believing that Passad, in the midst of recovering his kingdom, would lower himself to work as the bouncer, or even maitre d', at a nightclub, even one where his contacts hang out.  One imagines he might get a charge out of *disguising himself* and collecting information useful to his cause -- but he appears at the club under his own name.

Mr. Vaughn just wasn't one of those guys who can wear hats or caps, though we’ll see him do better later.  Whenever we see him with a chapeau, for instance the French Foreign Legion-style one here, it makes him look odd.

Where the script really suffers, I think, is during the exposition scenes when Passad is rattling off his regal plans to the kidnapped Solo. It wasn't often that U.N.C.L.E. was guilty of talkiness in scenes to the point of slowing them down; sometimes we didn't get enough dialog to fully explain what was going on. (In "Dove," for example, one line of dialogue would have made it clear how U.N.C.L.E. expected to retrieve Thrush agents' names from a photo.)  Here, though, we have too much talk.

Verdict: Not one of the greats.

Great Line:
Solo (taking Ernestine's little gun away from her):  "The safety catch is on.  It limits the range of the weapon considerably."