"The Galatea Affair" (ep. 3/3)

Watching this one when it was new, we probably forgave ourselves for thinking, after “Dreadful,” that Season Three was off to a bad start.  “Galatea” (interesting that the dialogue references her, but not Pygmalion) has the feel of a Season Two entry, while being the only time Illya was ever partnered for a full episode by a Command agent other than Solo.

Venice (no title card, but what else can it be?) is our setting as Solo, with Illya as his gondolier, spies on Thrush courier Baroness de Chasseur, which my French dictionary says means “Hunter.”  Unfortunately Solo sticks out, not just because of the binoculars, but because he’s alone.  He should have had April Dancer or another female agent along for cover.

“Mister Thirty,” hey?  “30” was the code newspaper reporters used to mark the end of a story, at least in movies on the Late Show.  This suggests that the natty security chief made his reputation ending people’s lives. 

The detail of steel shutters on Waverly’s windows is a good one, in case the complex ever receives a frontal attack.

This, as Bill Koenig has said, is possibly the story which best showcases Noel Harrison’s Mark Slate.  Harrison is nobody’s Olivier, but here he gives Slate a professional, authoritative air, especially at the climax.  That goofy caplike thing he wears in Act III and IV, well, you can toss it on the bonfire you’ve got going with Solo’s Indian Army helmet and other lids.  (Don’t forget to add Mark’s pink Carnaby Street shirt.  Somehow it makes him look unreliable.)

Here we delight as Joan Collins plays Bronx sweetheart Rosy Shlagenheimer, and the Baroness Bibi, and then Bibi playing Rosy playing Bibi!  The casting layers an in-joke on top of that, the obvious one that young Harrison plays Henry Higgins to Rosy’s Eliza -- and it was Noel’s father Rex who created the “My Fair Lady” role.  In a clever reversal from MFL, “Higgins” (Slate) doesn’t think he or Rosy can accomplish the job, while “Col. Pickering” (Waverly) is positive he can.  Despite the title, though, the education of Rosy is only a small part of the story.

Pounding manners and a new accent into Rosy’s skull would take time.  If the opener is one of the quarterly meetings the Baroness undertakes, then the next one wouldn’t be for some three months in the future.  But we have little indication that close to three months passes.  Besides, did Solo spend that entire time in the hospital?  Nice if, at some point, we could have had a reference to his getting back in training after two weeks on antibiotics.

Illya seems out of character here.  True, we see him enthusiastically chowing down in that Hamburg dive.  (I’m not sure I’d want to eat anything prepared that close to a live horse.)  But I don’t think he’d adopt a Bronx accent in that scene.  Plus, twice he calls Olaf, the Baron’s retainer, “Sunshine.”  That’s a Solo-style remark.  Our Illya would say to the glowering thug, “You’re such a cheerful creature” or “Thank you for bringing a ray of sunshine into my life.”  (Olaf looks weirdly like Jerry Stiller, don’t you think?  I kept expecting him to break into a Frank Costanza riff.)

The Hamburg dive looks authentically smoky and dingy, the kind of joint, I’d guess, where the young Beatles often played. 

Something about the steady way Illya assesses Bibi/Rosy/Bibi early in Act III makes me think he’s tumbled to the Baron’s substitution, but we see later he hasn’t.

It scarcely comes as a surprise that the Baron is the hidden figure, the Thrush treasurer.  We see him ruling Olaf with a steel fist, tracking down Slate and keeping an eye on him via the maid, building a plan to circumvent Slate and Illya’s play with Rosy, and lying to Bibi (“We are both captives of Thrush”) to get her to cooperate.  It would have been neat to have the hidden mastermind turn out to be someone we never suspected, but this makes a good deal of sense. 

The tag, with Solo swooping in to take Bibi out to lunch, reinforces his reputation as the best there is at what he does.  However, it cheapens the relationship, whatever it was, that seemed to be developing between Bibi and Mark, making Bibi look as flighty in her elegant way as Rosy is in hers.

Verdict:  Without the Solo-Illya dynamic, this one seems odd (and you have to ask how Mark can be so energetic moments after being “mildly tranquilized”).  But scripter Jackson Gillis, an old hand whose credits go back to the George Reeves “Superman,” delivers a better script than you’d think, with tricky plot switches and a good villain revealed and killed at the end.

Memorable Lines:
Illya (overhearing Rosy at work):  “Speaks English.”
Slate:  “English??”
Illya:  “They call it Bronx.”

Baron de Chasseur (levelly):  “Bibi’s last instructor played a bit too close to the net.  I’m sure you would never make such a mistake.”

Slate (in a murmur meant only for Illya, as Solo strolls off with the Baroness):  “Napoleon doesn’t waste any time, does he?”
Illya (grimly diving into his paperwork):  “Yes.  It’s just like he’s never been away.”

"The Moonglow Affair" (ep. 2/23)

What a difference a week makes!  Unlike "Foreign Legion," the pilot for "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E." is vivid, colorful (with more expensive sets), and fast-moving, all thanks to Dean Hargrove at the typewriter and Joseph Sargent behind the camera -- the combo who gave us "Never-Never" and "Alexander the Greater."  Ah, if only the series had been like this . . .

We open with Illya looking like a Russian wolfhound despite his well-cut tuxedo (and later, taking a characteristic chance to eat and drink).  He uses the cigarette case communicator to call Solo, I suppose, because someone murmuring into his pen would be kind of conspicuous at a party.  For his part, Solo slides into the Thrush installation much as he did aboard Gervase Ravel's yacht in "Quadripartite."  Nice detail:  When Illya fires at Andy the scientist, we see the splatter of tranquilizer powder on the door.

We see that U.N.C.L.E. HQ has its own infirmary, which makes sense, and that they have specialists from other countries.  However, I can't believe that they have enough room to give each Enforcement agent an office the size of April's.  Supervisors, perhaps, and certainly Solo's office -- but you'd think the rest would have to make do with desks in a bullpen.

From Slate's reaction when he, and we, meet April, it's clear the idea of a woman Enforcement agent is new to him.  We've seen female Command personnel in the field in support roles, though -- in "Vulcan," the agent-in-place who lays the groundwork for Solo and Elaine; and the underestimated Sarah, who teamed with Solo in "Love."

Okay, let's get into it.  Mary Ann Mobley makes a very different April Dancer from that played by Stefanie Powers (from what I remember, and from what Jon's book tells us).  She's good-natured and smart as a roomful of whips.  Her skills as shown here are less athletic than Stefanie-as-April, more suited to cunning undercover work and manipulation, like Barbara Bain on "Mission: Impossible." There's an old saying involving flies, honey, and vinegar, and April clearly knows it and lives by it.  Note how much info she gets out of Andy by charming him.  But she neither kowtows to Slate nor, refreshingly, tries to dominate him.  The series would have been much more vigorous had they kept this older mentor/new agent dynamic.

The description of the quartzite radiation projector ("throwing [human sensory systems] into imbalance") sounds as if it induces synesthesia -- the condition where a person "sees" sounds, "tastes" shapes, etc.  In Act IV, the distortions in color and sound from April's point of view bear this out.  However, Solo and Illya react more as if they're severely drunk.

Slate's taking the German's place on Andy's scuba team makes for a very exciting sequence.  The intriguing thing about the Thrush plot is that they intend to disable both the U.S. and Russian moon projects to make room for their own.  Thrush: Your Equal Opportunity Saboteur. 

Standout performances: Woodrow Parfrey's Andy as he gleefully frazzles Solo's senses with his ray; Mary Carver's resentful, passive-aggressive Jean Caresse (" . . . it's your poor, frail little sister"); Kevin McCarthy's sleazy if capable Thrush businessman, ignoring his sister's advice, ultimately to his downfall; and Norman Fell's bemused, phlegmatic, professional Mark Slate.  (I love that his Plymouth looks like a car pool vehicle.)

I do wonder why Caresse thinks a woman would want lipstick which glows in the dark. And the gag about Slate being out of shape (implying that it's just because he's 40) is a little tiresome, but you'll notice that, after her first gaffe, April never kids him about it.  The tag scene implies that Waverly, while he surely knows Slate is 40, is willing to ignore it for the sake of a successful agent pairing.

Verdict:  Again, if only the series had simply gone with the dynamics and characters set forth here and with this sort of energy, I suspect many of us fans wouldn't wince whenever we hear the words "Girl from U.N.C.L.E."

Memorable lines:
Andy: "The United States government has so little imagination.  Always putting their secret laboratories under basketball gymnasiums."

Caresse (to April, as she fiddles with the model rocket on his table):  "It actually works.  The button activates it."
April: "That sounds dangerous."
Caresse (smiling): "Yes; we're considering a line of children's toys."

Andy (gasping, staggering in wearing his scuba suit): "Just try to get a taxi wearing one of these --!"

(Interestingly, Solo and Illya have no verbal exchanges at all. Illya calls Solo by communicator, but he doesn't reply. And a record is set: Aside from some mutters and gasps in the infirmary in Act I, Solo has only three spoken lines!)