Summing Up: Season Two

In his "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Book," Jon Heitland points out that ". . . the stories of the second season stand on their own.  Though they lacked Sam Rolfe's touch, they nevertheless adhered to the U.N.C.L.E. formula of adventure with humor.  The plots were not to be taken too seriously, but the villains still exuded menace."  True enough; when it came time to list honors for this season, I found that, while not always up to the quality of Season One, Two has almost too many charms to count.  I wound up with a lot of ties!

Now, my coveted Silver Communicator Awards for Season Two.  Feel free to join in with your own winners and losers:

Best in Show: "Ultimate Computer," "Alexander the Greater," "Re-Collectors"

Best Performance by Robert Vaughn: "Nowhere"

Best Performance by David McCallum: "Ultimate Computer," "Arabian"

Most Important to the U.N.C.L.E. Universe: "Waverly Ring," "Nowhere"

Best Innocent: Buzz Conway, "Project Deephole"

Best Villains: Victor Marton ("Foxes and Hounds"), Vincent Carver ("Discotheque"), Mother Fear and Captain Jenks ("Children's Day"), Arthur Rollo ("Minus-X")

Most Delightful Stories: "Foxes and Hounds," "Ultimate Computer," "Adriatic Express," "Minus-X"

A for Atmosphere: "Very Important Zombie"
And the Tarnished Medals go to:
Dullest: "Round Table"
Silliest: "Yukon," "Foreign Legion," "Indian Affairs"

Onward to Season Three!

"The Indian Affairs Affair" (ep. 2/30)

Here we are at the close of Season Two, which fielded 30 episodes to Season One's 29.  I gather Dean Hargrove's "Indian Affairs" is considered yet another silly story, which it is. And yet, and yet . . .

. . . there's the skeleton of a serious plot here, poking out through the tongue-in-cheekiness.  Thrush's "transistorized" hydrogen bomb poses a real threat, and Mr. Yamaha could have been an effective if mannered villain.  (I suspect Hargrove made the mastermind Japanese as a sly dig about transistor radios from Japan.)  The kidnapping of the chief's daughter to insure his cooperation and that of his tribe is a good, if standard, Thrush ploy.  Solo's spiking of L.C. Carson's guns at the climax by seeing through the courier setup has the authentic U.N.C.L.E. flavor (though it could have been filmed more suspensefully).  Plus the idea of seasoned world travelers Solo and Illya dropping into the middle of yet another culture and finding themselves at sea would have been a hoot -- the kicker being that the culture exists right within the borders of the U.S.

Instead, in 50 minutes we get nearly every Hollywood cliché about American Indians, from "How!" and "scalped" to headbands on the braves, "Indian uprising," "redskins," "war dances," and the bigoted white man who calls Charisma "squaw."  Now, Hargrove is lampooning most of these clichés, of course.  The young Cardiak (!) braves use motorbikes instead of war ponies; they attack the circled vehicles, only these are cars instead of wagons, and the heroes are attacking the villains; and, in possibly the funniest bit, a brave threatens the staked-out Illya with giant red ants, only to be told there aren't any giant red ants to be found.

All this, however, loses ground when confronted with things like a brave using a cigar store Indian as cover to trail Solo like a Warner Brothers cartoon; and Illya, "disguised" as an Indian, looking more like Prince Valiant than like any of the Cardiaks.  We have to wonder why nobody in Thrush noticed Illya's blue eyes, too.  At least "Hombre," in this same period, explains Paul Newman's baby blues:  He plays a white raised by Apaches.

Good stuff: a guest appearance by the U.N.C.L.E. Special carbine; Solo's communicator dart; his thoughtful planting of a homer on Charisma (though deliberately allowing her to be kidnapped by

Thrush is too much); Illya's rattletrap loaner truck from the Tulsa office; and, as mentioned, Solo's outmaneuvering of Carson regarding the couriers and the bomb.

Diving through a closed window to rescue Charisma, while cool-looking, wasn't necessary, Mr. Solo.  There was an iron garden chair right there you could have used.  And Princess Charisma, there's only one proper response to a villain telling you a gun's not loaded:  Pull the trigger!

Yes, that guy playing Ralph, Carson's aide, who smiles beatifically in Act IV at the idea of burning their captives to death:  That's Nick Colasanto, known to us two decades hence as "Coach" on "Cheers."

Imagine, if you will, that Sam Rolfe had been producing, and he sent Hargrove's script back for a major rewrite.  Envision a story featuring the Navajo in New Mexico/Arizona, with our guys having to convince a clan on the Big Rez that they are there to help (picture Solo and Illya in a sweat-lodge ceremony!).  Yamaha as chief villain.  Illya the disguise master, with bronzed skin, contacts, jeans and boots, and a black wig, actually blending in with the Indians.  Solo, minus suit and tie, driving a battered pickup and masquerading as a BIA agent.  And a nail-biter of a climax, in which Solo or Illya, or both, must outguess Yamaha's moves regarding which briefcase has the bomb --!  Would have been neat, huh?

Verdict: My notes from the CBN days say, "The plot is fairly serious -- it's the tone and the jokes that make it funny."  True . . . though it's neither serious enough nor funny enough to make it a classic.

Memorable lines:
Ralph: "Why can't you just talk to [your chief] over this phone?"
Illya (as a Cardiak Indian): "The voice can be recorded.  I have been personally tricked that way by the telephone company many times."

Illya (to Ralph, after a long series in "sign" language): "Would you like for me to repeat that?"

Illya: "Communicator dart.  Fired it through the window, I suppose."
Chief Highcloud: "Yes."
Illya: "My friend is always showing off."

"The Minus-X Affair" (ep. 2/29)

This one, as Bill Koenig notes on his site, should have been the last episode this year; it would have ended Season Two on a strong note.  Peter Allan Fields's "Minus-X" is a favorite of mine, for the plausible SF plot, Barry Shear's sharp direction, the "Goldfinger" flavor, and an Innocent who is drawn in because of her unknowing link to Thrush.

We open with a weird scene, as Waverly, Solo, and Illya observe Louis, one of their fellow agents, in the grip of what we'll later learn is Plus-X.  Louis knows them; Solo identifies himself and Illya by their first names.  There are more than five senses, really: the sense of your own position in space, where your limbs are in relation to your body and each other, et al.  The amplification of so much input, as well as that of smell, hearing, etc., would be likely to drive you mad.  Imagine being able to hear your own muscles working!  (For an example of how the super-magnification of just one sense, smell, could smash civilization, see Spider Robinson's SF novel Telempath.)

Wheels within wheels here.  We presume, after we learn (surprise!) that Prof. Stemmler is a Thrush, that the attempt on her lab foiled by our heroes was a ruse.  After Louis escaped, Rollo would know the Command would check out Stemmler, and had her prepared with the story of the "break-in."  His men then pretended to steal her equipment to conceal her Thrush status.  Later he uses Leslie to get Stemmler out from under the eye of U.N.C.L.E.

Theo Marcuse's spats-wearing, cane-twirling Arthur Rollo is much like his dandified killer, Valetti, from "Re-Collectors."  However, he gives Rollo an evil jollity that Valetti did not have.  I imagine him collecting Sevres porcelain and eighteenth-century paintings (and perhaps underage girls).  Watch his sheer enjoyment and anticipation as he briefs his men.  His dynamic with Eve Arden's Stemmler sings, too.  Probably they've clashed many times during this project; yet they are on a first-name basis themselves.  They are, as Rollo points out, part of the culture that is Thrush.

Barry Shear's direction here is superb.  As Louis races out of the frame, we cut to a lab mouse emerging into a maze.  Later, as party girl Leslie drops a glass, a hard cut shows us Stemmler sweeping up broken glass in her lab.

I love Illya's "Well played. Point to you" nod to the Thrush trumpet player after the latter shoots him with the dart, and Stemmler's unhesitating stride to the door when Rollo delivers his ultimatum.

"Apples, and cookies, and cinnamon toast . . ."  Robert Vaughn must have had loads of fun as Solo pretends to be a slobbering five-year-old.  When Solo shoots trumpet player Whittaker, though, it's with three Luger slugs, not with a sleep dart.  However charming Solo may be, he's still a pro.

Illya snipes at Solo and grumbles at him when the older agent asks about his headache.  Yet their teamwork when they assault Rollo's plant, especially in the scene where Illya volunteers to "take out the garbage" and Solo salutes him British Army style, is classic.

If the story falls down at all, it's in the last ten minutes.  We never see Rollo and his team steal the data they came for -- and if the team members have memorized the circuits, plans, and whatnot, why transmit the data cards?  (As a backup, in case one or more of the team were killed?)  What was that power room where Solo and Illya face Rollo and his men?  The team seems rather easily knocked out for temporary supermen, too.  However, the rare unhappy ending, as Rollo shoots Stemmler before dying himself, saves the scene.

I love Sharon Farrell's brittle Leslie, she of the bitterness and febrile gaiety.  Her lines at the tag, though, don't convince me that her mother's death has really gotten through to her.  A line about, "She must have loved me; she died for me," would have done it.  (Solo, thankfully, does not come on to her, not she to him -- a flashback to Season One's flavor.)  If Leslie was depressed, an emotional after-effect of Plus-X, will the surviving team members defect from Thrush in remorse?  And what is the after-effect of a dose of Minus-X?  Do you giggle too easily at reruns of "The Partridge Family"?

Verdict: A suspenseful "Goldfinger" for the small screen, though it could have used another quarter hour of screen time: to explore the effects of Plus- and Minus-X, to show us Rollo and his men actually stealing their data, and most important, to fill out the bitter dynamic between Dr. Stemmler and her wayward daughter.

Memorable lines:
Lillian Stemmler (on Rollo's ultimatum): "The girl is my daughter, Mr. Solo.  A stranger, perhaps, but nevertheless my daughter. . . .  You may shoot me if you like.  That will stop me."

Stemmler: "By the time you reach your adversaries [at the plutonium plant], Mister Rollo, they will be dumber than a box of rocks."

Leslie (gaily, bitterly): "And these Neanderthal friends of yours with their muscles and their guns?  They a part of your salon of Nobel prizewinners, Mother?"

Rollo (to Stemmler): "We don't like each other much, huh?  But we are Thrush.  Above all, my dear . . . we are Thrush."

"The Bat Cave Affair" (ep. 2/28)

Jerry McNeely's second script for the series is a fan favorite, apparently for the campy tone and for Martin Landau's intentionally theatrical performance as Count Zark.  It bounces neatly from the Ozarks to two locations in Spain, and then to Transylvania (which in the MfU world seems to be only a short motorbike ride from Vienna) while confronting our heroes with a world-sized threat.

We open up with a colorful, and distinctly odd, setting for our urban sophisticate Solo, a farm "somewhere in the Ozarks."  We get "an easy country charm," as John Denver sang, from Clemency McGill -- the "Petticoat Junction" stereotype of rural folk which prevailed on TV in those days.  There's also a distinct Peter Lorre vibe from Mr. Transom, and, thank goodness, a solid reason for Solo to be there:  Clemency, apparently, "foresaw" (thanks to Thrush's comb transmitter) the planting of a bomb at the United Nations.  The teaser ends with Illya doffing a battered Borsalino and dodging a live bull in the ring in sunny Madrid.  What's not to like?

At HQ, as well as at her home in the Ozarks, Clemency's ability to ID the hidden pictures depends on Transom, the Thrush plant, being able to "send" the message somehow to her comb transmitter.  (I'll leave the exact method as an exercise for the student.)  But Transom does not see the picture of Waverly's nephew, and therefore cannot prime Clemency's response.  Her "knowing way" must be a real if erratic psi power, which probably is why Thrush selected her to start with.

We get to see the U.N.C.L.E. commissary, which, oddly, has what looks like a window.  The blue tables make it look a lot less institutional, somehow.

For some reason Vaughn's Solo fumbles for words throughout the story.  Almost the first moment when he seems himself is when he puts a swift bullet/sleep dart into Zark's hulking henchman.  The first?  At 41:21, revel in his "We go this-a-way" gesture. Ah, Martha, the boy's got such style.

Clearly Illya does not care for bats at all.  Understandable; by the '60s we knew the little darlings can carry rabies (though, Wikipedia tells me, not so much in Western Europe).  I wish we'd had more comments like Illya's statement that the piranhas in the castle moat wouldn't be able to live in the Rumanian climate.  If Solo, say, had remarked that Zark, clearly insane, is gambling that he can collect the billion before Thrush Central squashes him, it would have pushed the whole thing back over the spoof line and made it somewhat more plausible.

Mr. Redline of our Easily Corrected Corrections Department informs me that when Illya says Chiroptera is "Latin for 'a bat,'" he really should have said it was Greek.  Also, when Count Zark says that bats use radar, he should have said sonar.  Well, maybe that one wouldn't be so easily fixed; the entire story depends on the notion that bats are furry little radar transmitters.

"I Should Have Demanded Gold" Dept.: Aside from the radar/sonar stuff, and the massive task of "altering" (how? Selective breeding?) the emissions of a horde of bats, Zark's plot would indeed induce chaos.  However, even if he got the billion in "assorted currencies" and aborted Night Flight, the ensuing loss of consumer and investor confidence in air travel (remember, people were starting to panic) might well have led to a stock market crash.  Imagine Zark trying to explain to Thrush Central why his one billion bucks is now worth only about fifty million.  "I screwed up" won't cut it.

You know it's a real crisis when Enforcement guys like Badge 26, at the start of Act IV, are on communications duty.

On the plane to Europe, Solo and Clemency have just finished watching "One Spy Too Many" (the movie version of "Alexander the Greater"), to which Solo says that spy movies are light entertainment, but rather far-fetched.  (OSTM hadn't been released yet, so it was an in-joke the audience wasn't expected to catch.)

Verdict:  Rein in your critical faculties and just enjoy.  It's a romp in which the gag depends on no one actually saying the words "Count Dracula."

Memorable lines:
Waverly (to Solo, re: Clemency): "Keep a close eye on her, will you?  . . .  Not too close."

Clemency: "Well, shoot fire and save the matches --"

Count Zark (as Dracula-ish as Lugosi at his best): "I am . . . Zark.  Count Ladislaus Zark.  You have heard of me, of course."
Illya (poker-faced):  "Well, there's something familiar about you, but just what it is escapes me for the moment."
Zark: "You have shattered my ego!  I have fantasies of U.N.C.L.E. issuing orders: 'Get Zark at any price!'  And here you haven't even heard of me!"

Zark (explaining the psi powers hoax): "All we need to do is program our computers to the desired thought patterns, and microwave them directly to the subject.  The marvelous thing about it is that Miss McGill doesn't suspect a thing!  Isn't it marvelous?"
Illya (flatly): "It's difficult for me to restrain my admiration."

Waverly: "Of course it's regrettable if the people panic [over Night Flight].  To paraphrase Marie-Antoinette, 'Let them drive cars.' "

"The Round Table Affair" (ep. 2/27)

Partial transcript of a phone conversation made by Norman Felton, February 1966:

“Sarah, get me Mr. Ingster, please. . . .  Boris! Boris, what do you mean by this, this script? . . .  What script do I mean?  You mad Russian, this thing called ‘The Round Table Affair,’ that’s what!  You’re telling me you actually accepted this? . . .  What’s wrong with it?   Boris, it’s not only silly, but it isn’t even funny.  And there’s nothing much for Bob and David to do in it! . . .   Don’t try that.  I know Bob Hill, he’s done some good work for us, and as for an old hand like Hank Slesar to turn in such a --  What?  Slesar said he owed us a third script, but nobody told him it had to be a good one?  Now you listen to me, Boris --   Boris?”

Well, maybe it went something like that.  “Round Table” is the poorest story yet out of both seasons.  To give it credit, it begins with a sharply filmed car chase, as Illya, piloting the Sunbeam Tiger we’ve seen before, races after wanted criminal Lucho Nostra in his Jaguar E-Type.  It winds up with our favorite Russian agent headed to the local hoosegow.  The concept is a good one (I suspect this was Slesar’s idea), a country lacking any extradition treaties which then becomes a haven for gangsters and criminals of all stripes.  The basic conflict between the thugs as led by blackmailing pig Artie King, Vicky the young Grand Duchess, and her regent, Prince Fredrick of the expensive tastes, has potential.  One imagines Solo and Illya mounting a clever ruse to sow dissension among the crooks and to get them to flee on their own across the border, where they can be arrested.

Unfortunately, the story degenerates into silliness about the time Solo pops that gray John Steed-ish bowler on his head.  (Of the other lids sported by Solo in this one, the less said, the better.)  Aside from a lack of drama or danger, its own illogic torpedoes it.  For one thing, if Uncle Freddie must act as regent, then Vicky -- as reinforced by her schoolgirl status -- is not yet of legal age.  It would do Solo no good whatever to enlist her aid, since she wouldn’t be able to issue any legal edicts.  Even if she could, why would our crafty heroes march up to the criminals and tell them they’re about to be evicted?  This is like Hannibal of Carthage informing his Roman general opponent of his strategy for tomorrow’s battle!

Artie’s total change of heart toward the duchess and his marriage to her is completely unmotivated, even for a comedy.  Nostra (longtime heavy Bruce Gordon, who I’ve always thought should have played Senator Joseph McCarthy at some point), is mostly bluster.  He threatens people, but we never see him, or any of the criminals, do anything nasty.  And as anyone who’s read any military history knows, suits of plate armor were very heavy.  Artie, being younger, might have lasted for a few sword-swings, but Nostra would have collapsed long before.

Aside from the beautiful black E-Type and the red Tiger, the other gem for car buffs is the white Mercedes in which Solo drives the young duchess to Ingolstein.  Some of the most beautiful cars ever produced by Mercedes-Benz, the “fintail” coupes and convertibles (1962-1971) were expensive then, and are collectors’ items today.  When you find yourself marveling over the cars in a story rather than the humans, something’s wrong.

Verdict: “I’m quite disappointed in you, Messrs. Ingster, Hill, and Slesar.  Go to your rooms and think about what you did.”

Memorable line:
Nostra (as Artie, clad as the White Knight, rides in):   “What is this, a commercial or something?”
(A wink to the Ajax “White Knight”/”Stronger than dirt!” commercials of the time)

"The Project Deephole Affair" (ep. 2/26)

This one has been a favorite of mine since the CBN days.  A crisp Dean Hargrove story that feels like a Season One, a real threat, fantastic villains (one of whom has a history with Solo!), and a refreshing male Innocent who is drawn into the story not only because he is a bystander, but also because he's a bit of a weasel.

A fast-moving teaser brings us to HQ's infirmary, where Illya, over Buzz's unconscious body, fills us in on Mr. Conway's sad history.  Jack Weston's Buzz is no criminal.  He's a "Guys and Dolls" figure, the horse player who is positive the next race will bring him the big payoff, who proves himself bright and brave when the chips are down . . . and yet doesn't change his ways once the adventure is over.

What I enjoy about Solo's plot to use Buzz as a decoy is that our guys are being proactive in leading Thrush down the garden path.  Is it unethical of them to drag Buzz into this?  Well, it's not as if Buzz turns himself in to the police when he finds the cash and fine clothes, and the "body" in the closet!  And, as Solo points out, they are protecting him by involving him.

The dynamic between Narcissus and sun-hating Marvin Elom (veteran character actor Leon Askin; you'll recognize him from "Hogan's Heroes") is interesting.  He drools over her; she clearly thinks of him as just a stepping-stone in her Thrush career.  For Narcissus, other people are only valuable as they enhance her image of herself.  You'd think anyone who is as obsessed with her own appearance as the Divine Miss N. wouldn't smoke.  Yellows the teeth, you know.

Narcissus brushes right by Illya at the SF airport.  He doesn't seem to know her (though she must know him, since later Thrush follows him to the garage rendezvous).  In that scene, though, Solo walks right by her!  He couldn't fail to recognize her; he dealt with her in Portofino in 1962.  Why wouldn't he mention her presence to Illya?

The "drone control" Narcissus uses to control the rental car with Buzz in it makes for an exciting sequence on the freeway.  Apparently Solo has encountered it before.  Or maybe the Command has similar devices? 

Another nice element here is the sense that Thrush has agents everywhere, at the garage and the seemingly-innocent lobby girl at the Elom Industries office building.  Not everyone is a Thrush, however; see the insurance guys who just happen to be in the elevator with Illya.  Thrush is not all-knowing or all-powerful, thank goodness.

Part of the earthquake footage must be from the 1964 Good Friday quake in Alaska; see "Anchorage" on one sign.  And Elom says his people created that carnage.  Brrr.  (I agree the drill isn't very convincing.  Maybe Elom & Co. are using quadrillenium drill bits instead of diamond.)

The quiet scene between Solo and Narcissus reminds me of Solo's tete-a-tete with Serena back in "Double."  But why does Narcissus agree to take Solo through the Elom security?  A line from Solo would have set it up:  "You'd best get me through.  If I fail, I won't be there to save your skin; Mr. Elom will think you betrayed him anyway; and missing your next pedicure appointment will be the least of your problems."  Personally I think he should clip her a good one on the jaw when she screams to alert Leon.

Verdict: One of the best adventures of Season Two, and on a level with many winners from Season One.

Memorable lines:
Illya (watching via video bug as Buzz awakes in the hotel room):  "Napoleon, I think it is time to deliver unto 'Dr. Remington' a change of apparel."

Solo: "How was the flight?"
Illya: "Second class."
Solo: "Snob."
(Free champagne on the flight?  It didn't look that second-class to me.  Illya's been spoiled by all this capitalist decadence!)

Buzz (as they drive on the San Francisco freeway):  "Isn't this a roundabout way of going downtown?"
Solo:  "I thought you might like to see our air pollution."

Buzz (exasperated):  "You've got a lot of nerve, y'know?"
Solo (serenely):  "Thank you."

Mr. Elom: "It's very appropriate that I use California, the land of sunshine -- where those disgusting people mechanically expose themselves to poisonous sunlight, in a foolish desire to fry their
skins brown."
(A villain with an emotional motive for his evil plot.  Neat!)

Buzz (dazedly, re: Solo and Illya): "Boy, they work fast."

Solo: "So you suppose [the finance company] will ever catch [Buzz]?"
Illya: "Probably.  Their manhunt procedures are modeled after ours, remember?"

"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 Nowhere Affair" (ep. 2/24)

Once upon a time on the Channel_D Yahoo! Group, we compiled a list of "essential" MfU: those episodes which are original, well-written, or important to the MfU universe.  Dr. Cindy Walker suggested adding this one, and I agree.  It provides an original twist to the ancient wheeze of amnesia, some clever lines -- and a window of understanding into the character of Napoleon Solo.

Scripter Robert Hill opens with the elegant figure of Solo, in a modern Chrysler ragtop, picking his way across the Nevada desert  in a sandstorm.  Next we get J. Pat O'Malley (who in the `60s was the Go-To Guy when you needed an Old Coot) as "The Old Prospector," the episode's Innocent, looking like Walter Huston in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."  He must really be attached to Sophie the mule.  Nowadays prospectors would drive a Jeep or a truck.  But it helps set up the surreal contrasts here.  On the one hand, the tumbleweed-swept ghost town and the black-clad Thrush cowboys; on the other, the ultra-modern Thrush computer installation.  The name of the town, the odd angles on Solo in the teaser, and the stage-like computer room later all create a flavor of disorientation.  This foreshadows and echoes the disconnection of Solo from the world of U.N.C.L.E.

I do wonder, though, how the Thrush cowboy knows who Solo is.  And there seems to be one too many watches -- the one Illya finds behind the saloon painting (?), and the one Solo finds with the map in it.

About David Sheiner's Parviz in "Alexander the Greater," I wrote, "You get the impression that he is tightly wrapped . . . and if things get beyond him, like a deep-sea fish brought to the surface, he'll explode."  Here, as impatient Thrush project leader Longolius, he does great work showing us that explosion of rage as Mara fails him and Solo breaks loose to smash his plans.

Lou Jacobi's Tertunian is clearly unenthused about helping Thrush, excited by the capabilities of his computers, and amused by Longolius's growing exasperation.  (Though why would he have developed a truth serum, as Longolius says?  He's a cyberneticist!)

Okay, let's tackle the central problem here.  Though Diana Hyland's Mara is charming and good-looking enough, the script never gives us much reason why she would be the perfect match for Solo.  A woman who could get "distracted by differential calculus" seems an odd match for a "swinger" like Solo (and hasn't that term changed meaning in forty years!).  Take into account, though, that 48  minutes isn't enough time to tell this sort of story and have an action-adventure plot.  We've been spoiled by multi-episode story arcs in modern shows, in which the characters' background is shown in flashbacks, and we can see their relationships grow.  What we see here is a kind of shorthand, a short story rather than a novelette or novel.

Robert Vaughn's performance is terrific: comic when Solo first wakes, almost shy and frightened when he comes to Mara's room, and at the climax, snarling in anger.  We've seen Solo irritated, urgent under pressure, and pretending to be a "homicidal maniac" to get a Thrush to talk . . . but never this kind of fury.  That it's clearly fueled by Mara's betrayal provides us a clue to his personality.  And that shot of Solo as he ranges through the computer room, gun in hand, the tiger loose and intent on ravaging the Thrush base, is iconic.

For his part, Illya has several character-defining moments: his ignoring the Old Prospector as he searches the mule's saddlebags; his polite "Excuse me, Madam" to the painting of the lady in the saloon; and his gleeful laugh as the dynamite brings down the Thrush setup.

You'd think Waverly would have sent both Solo and Illya on such a big job, to retrieve the map and get Tertunian out.  I think it just emphasizes the reason for the show's title.  You might need an entire squad of FBI or CIA agents for a job like this, but you only need one man from U.N.C.L.E.  As a former boss of mine, a one-time Army sergeant, used to say, "One riot, one Ranger --"

Verdict: Though it lacks background on Solo and Mara to make us believe they would fall in love (and for that matter on the Old Prospector, to let us see why he has chosen such a life), this one is, considering the constraints of the times, an U.N.C.L.E. classic.

Memorable lines:
Illya: "Oh! That's the new capsule the research boys were bragging about in the cafeteria!"
Waverly (sternly): "Were they!  It was supposed to be top-secret."
(The chastened look on Illya's face: priceless)

Solo (on being told his name, after taking Capsule B): "There hasn't been anybody named Napoleon since the Battle of Waterloo!"

Mara (examining Solo's fascinatingly thick dossier): "He's classified here as a `swinger.'  What's that?"
Longolius: "A manic-depressive who is never depressed."

Tertunian: "I thought all Thrush girls went through some course of, uh, an elementary man-woman relationship.  What's it called?"
Mara: "I had measles that semester.  I meant to make it up, but somehow I got distracted by differential calculus."

Illya (to Waverly, about the source of the radioactivity in the saloon): "It appears to be coming from a lady's abdomen, sir."

"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!)

"The Foreign Legion Affair" (ep. 2/22)

Here we are in the home stretch of the sophomore season.  "Foreign Legion" betrays a certain weariness on the part of everyone involved, and a too-strong tendency toward broad comedy in what should be an adventure series spiced with humor.  It features both good moments, mostly from David's performance and that of noted stage actor Howard Da Silva, and bad.

We open with Illya, who wisely masks his blond hair with a skull cap as he maneuvers through the casbah somewhere in the Sudan.  The opening scenes, as he breaks into a Thrush enclave and cracks the safe to steal something called the Triad, are exciting -- though I wonder why, even rushed as he was, he would leave the safe door open.  If he'd shut it, the Thrushes might have concluded he'd never had timeto get into the safe.

This episode's mix of good and bad begins with the moment when, snugly aboard the charter plane to Cairo, Illya identifies himself as "Number Two, Section One."  That must have come as a shock to Waverly.  Illya's scene with Barbara the air hostess is a delight ("You would love Bob if you knew him the way I do." Illya, dryly: "Somehow I don't think that would be entirely possible").  Then he allows himself to be taken by the Thrushes (despite Barbara's warning gasp) and stripped to his skivvies, but then recovers miraculously in time to dive out the hatch with Barbara and their shared parachute.

Waverly says that Illya reported in at six p.m. New York time.  Khartoum, the logical place for Illya to have boarded the plane, is seven hours later, or 2 a.m.  Check.  But could a small twin-engine plane of the time make it to Casablanca without refueling?  If they're only 300 klicks from Marrakesh when Illya and Barbara bail out, why does the scene seem as though it all happens just after the plane has taken off?  It takes a while to fly ca. 2500 miles.  The script should have had them take off from Algeria or Mauretania.

I can just imagine the squeals of delight emitted by all the Illya fangirls, then and now, as he travels through the desert in his Fruit of the Looms.

Why, sez I, would Solo, the chief of Section Two, not know what Thrush's Triad was, and what his own section had arranged regarding it?  (I know, this had to be brought out for the audience, but Solo should have been reporting to Waverly instead of the other way around.)

From this point things get pretty silly, with Solo, supposedly the best of the best U.N.C.L.E. has, getting caught like a trainee by Thrushman Bey.  Da Silva gives a wonderful performance as the disgraced, sun-addled, but dedicated Captain Calhoun.  Calhoun is treated with respect during the quiet backstory scene in Act III, but even that can't save things.  The scene between Illya and Rupert Crosse's Corporal Remy, in which Illya goes down the list of possible contact methods ("Wireless telegraphy? . . . Crystal set? . . . Carrier pigeons?") is more like a "Would you believe . . .?" exchange on "Get Smart."  And the appearance of Macushla, Calhoun's lost love, doesn't come out of left field; it wasn't even inside the stadium!

Verdict:  Maybe there's something about adventures set in the Sahara or Arabia that makes them so tough to write believably.  "Arabian," earlier this season, could have been fixed.  "Foreign Legion" couldn't.

Memorable, or at least funny, lines:

Barbara: "Can I get you anything?  A cup of coffee, tea, milk?  A hot toddy?"
Illya (deadpan): "Borscht."
Barbara (without missing a beat): "Cabbage or beet?"

Captain Calhoun (roaring at Illya): "How many pieces of silver did [Ali Ka-Bar] pay to buy your soul, Judas?"
(In character, but still a neat in-joke; as we know, David played Judas in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" the year before)


Barbara (in shock): "Camel?  I'm eating a camel?"
Calhoun: "I must confess we don't dine this well usually."

Barbara (outraged): "Confinement?  I'm not even married!"
(I'm curious: Would anybody younger than 40 get this joke? That meaning of the word has faded away)

Solo: "Illya! Illya, we're here!"
Illya (irritably): "You're five minutes late!  You know, you're getting completely undependable!"
Solo: "I go 300 miles across a steaming desert and this is the thanks I get?"

"The Bridge of Lions Affair, Part II" (ep. 2/21)

Part II picks up as it should, with the cliffhanger, as Solo and Illya manage to survive, barely, by wedging the wooden grates under the descending wine press.

The latest test cat, which Corvy placed in the machine in Part I, was turned into a kitten in minutes -- Illya arrived only moments after De Sala & Co. left.  Yet here we see that, more logically, the process takes time to teach the body how to repair and rejuvenate itself.  If the process works so differently on cats, why would Gritzky have used them so often as test subjects?  Or is it merely that it takes minutes for a cat, an hour or two to reduce a human to childhood and death, as we see later?

At the start of Act I here, Sir Norman comes out of Gritzky's machine still looking the 80 or so we know him to be.  Yet at the end of Part I, we saw Sir Norman come out looking 50 -- a continuity error that I hope was corrected in the film version.

Jordin the efficient Thrush is on his mettle here.  Of course, if he were really as professional as all that, when Solo says that Illya is dead, Jordin would have put a bullet in him to make sure.  "Can't hurt him, what?  He's already dead."  Yet his careful disarming of Solo is a model for Thrush field operatives everywhere.  If not for Illya, Solo would have had little chance to survive.  I wonder if the scene would have worked even better had we thought Illya was actually dead until his surprise reappearance?

Solo and Illya were running a step behind when they let Jordin get to Gritzky first.  Knowing Madame De Sala was in this up to her coiffure, they should have tailed her, or staked out her Paris salon.

The scene in Act II between Sir Norman and De Sala, now Lady Swickert, is a neat reversal of what she considered their former roles.  Now she has the power over him, as he obsessively examines himself in the hand mirror for (re-emerging) signs of age.

Jordin's plan is more subtle than a simple theft of the rejuvenation process.  He knows Thrush's scientists, once they know it's possible, can probably duplicate the process -- or failing that, they can screw the necessary info out of Gritzky.  His goal is something higher: to leave Sir Norman in place and use him to Thrush's ends.  (Though he states at the climax in the lab that he and he alone, not Thrush, will be the sole possessor of the process.  Was he planning on striking out on his own?)

Once again we see why Waverly deserves to be primus inter pares in Section One.  He's as well-equipped as his agents with gadgets -- in other words, he came prepared to the party! -- and as quick on the uptake when it comes to action.  Act IV belongs to him and his unflappable manner and clever dialogue, as much as to Sir Norman as he heroically tries to warn his confreres about the danger of Thrush.

Illya's defeat of the chauffeur Fleeton, and using him as a stepping stone to scale the estate wall, is another fun highlight.

The revelation that Gritzky himself, even though he knew the risks, was willing to rejuvenate himself back to boyhood and death, is startling (though it would have been more effective had the costume people not put a mustache on the kid actor!).

If Gritzky's notes are in code, wouldn't he have put the note about booby-trapping the machine in code as well?  Or did he slip in the Sixties equivalent of a yellow Post-It for Illya to read?

Verdict: Part II stands as better-paced than Part I.  Both Jordin's subtler plan, to leave Sir Norman in place as a Thrush tool, and the peculiar relationship between Sir Norman and his wife, lift this story above a simple "Thrush steals/develops something dangerous; Solo and Illya get it back/destroy it."

Memorable lines:
Jordin: "Seventy-three percent of all accidents happen in the home.  Very rarely do you see somebody who dies in a wine vat."

Solo (as he lifts the mannequin Illya is mistakenly gripping off of him): "Have you been introduced?"

Waverly (unflappably, trouncing Jordin despite the latter's gun):  "Yes, apologies, apologies. But when one has good manners, there's no need to apologize."

Waverly (to Nurse Sweet, as Solo prepares their explosive escape):  "If you and I are wise, like Lot's wife, we'd better not look."

"The Bridge of Lions Affair, Part I" (ep. 2/20)

This, the series’ second two-parter (and, eventually, fourth theatrical film), is based on a novel by Henry Slesar.  Apparently it was not unheard of in those days for a series with continuing characters to purchase a novel for adaptation; John D. MacDonald’s “Cry Hard, Cry Fast” became a multi-parter on the Ben Gazzara series “Run for Your Life” a few years later.  Here, Slesar was involved in creating a handsome, if somewhat slow, episode.

We open with a classic among the trademark “What the heck is going on here?” teasers, as Illya releases and tracks a black cat in night-shrouded Soho.   Not until almost the end of this hour do we get an inkling why he is doing this -- and we are never told what leads him to do this.  Would complaints of disappearing cats attract the attention of U.N.C.L.E.?  Truly Illya is fascinated by patterns -- and here, darned lucky that Olga the trench-coated hitwoman only wings him.

Back in New York, Solo sounds like Spock reporting to Captain Kirk as he rattles off Dr. Lancer’s resume for the benefit of the audience.  Better if Waverly had said that he’d asked Solo to research Lancer’s background prior to the meeting.   It’s also odd how Solo refers to Illya by last name only, even in the formal atmosphere of Waverly’s office.  “Illya” or “Mr. Kuryakin,” surely?

Vera Miles’s elegant, dangerous Raine De Sala is the driving force here.  Her desire to see the love of her childhood, Sir Norman, rejuvenated -- and not for his own sake, but so that she can marry him and enjoy political power by his side -- leads to her subsidizing Gritzky’s process, to the Command’s involvement, and thence to Thrush’s interest.  Bill Koenig has aptly likened Maurice Evans’s Norman Swickert to Winston Churchill; put a cigar and a balloon glass of brandy in his hands, and the resemblance would be complete.  He and De Sala are a kind of modern Lord and Lady Macbeth, though Swickert, unlike the Thane of Cawdor, does not cause and is not aware of the deaths De Sala engineers in her ambitious plan.

What the heck is an U.N.C.L.E. “Camel Station”?  A place to buy smokes or fresh water?  Waverly implies that it’s separate somehow from the regular HQ comm room.  And isn’t the actress playing Wanda, to whom Solo waxes eloquent about the Paris moon, the same one who, with raven hair, played Sarah in “Love” and other Season One stories?

“Bridge” also introduces us to one of the most efficient Thrushes ever.  As played by Bernard Fox (who so often played Colonel Blimpish or ineffectual characters), Jordin is exactly the kind of professional operative (“I’ll look into it”) that Thrush should have done anything to encourage.  Recruit another dozen like Jordin and the infamous Angelique, and Thrush would have U.N.C.L.E. in a corner.

I could really do without Solo’s stingy-brim tweed hat when he visits Sir Norman’s estate.  And why does Jordin engineer Solo’s car crash, but then fail to capture and interrogate him?

The sequence in Soho, with the high night wind swirling newspapers down the passage and Illya’s discovery of Corvy’s body (with one of his cats grooming herself atop him!) in the shadowy abandoned lab, is well done.  I applaud, too, the professional technique of Solo and Illya when they encounter each other.  The last thing you want to do is hold your flashlight in front of you, to let an opponent in the dark know where to shoot.  This, by the way, is where we should have had Illya tell Solo why he’d been on the cat-tracking mission to start with.

Verdict: Slow in places, possibly because of the human drama that is also its strength, it gives us a memorable cliffhanger, a refreshingly competent antagonist/competitor in Jordin, and a science-fiction McGuffin that is not just another Thrush plot.

Memorable lines:

Solo (via communicator, to Wanda): “[The moon] we have here is a girl moon, and her eyes are open wide, and her mouth is open in the shape of an O, because she’s just been kissed.”
Waverly: “I’ll relay your information to Mount Wilson Observatory, Mr. Solo.”

Solo: “Everyone’s hands are steady when they are dead.”

Sir Norman (glumly): “I take pills, therefore I exist.”

Illya (to the pet-shop owner): “Naturally, for a collar such as this, I need a very elegant cat. A nice, big, fat one.”
Owner: “Well, I’m a bit confused, sir. Which do you wish, elegant or fat?”
Illya: “What I need is the kind of cat that gets himself stolen.”

Sir Norman: “I ran out of time. . . . I don’t want it now, Raine. To lie awake wondering how to move puny people to great purposes --?”
De Sala: “. . . How I longed then to take your hand, and walk with you through the halls of power -- to feel that terrible strength going from you into me. . . . And it shall be.”

"The Waverly Ring Affair" (ep. 2/19)

This, writer Jerry McNeely's first and most serious script for the series (he would later pen "Bat Cave" and "Off-Broadway"), is a classic I well remember from its first broadcast in 1966.  Like "Never-Never," it gives us a good look at the inner workings of U.N.C.L.E., this time with a true "closed" mystery:  Who is the Thrush mole?

Yes, Thrush has managed to establish an agent within the Command before:  Riley the bomb disposal tech back in "Mad, Mad Tea Party."  This case is different, as I doubt Riley was highly placed enough to have access to File 40 documents -- though I wish we'd had Solo or Illya refer to the earlier case.  I do wonder how Carla, even as (presumably) the head of Personnel, would have access to any ultra-secret documents.  (Is the head of HR in your company privy to top-level meetings and memos about, let's say, the development of a hush-hush new product?)  Maybe it's because Carla is with Security and Personnel?

No matter.  "Waverly Ring" gallops along, gives us a glimpse of how the Command must move to deal with a traitor (possible even among such a high-morale, dedicated workforce), and is truly a Solo story to balance last week's Illya tale.  Technically there's no Innocent:  Stage actor Larry Blyden's Clark Kent-like George Dennell is already a part of the organization, like Mandy in "Never-Never."  He's innocent only in that he's not an Enforcement agent.

What good is a ring that explodes when not removed correctly?  I think the implications here are that (a) Waverly utterly trusts the wearer, (b) the wearer's mission is of the highest priority, and (c) most important, the wearer is ready (as per the oath mentioned in "Brain-Killer") to sacrifice his life for Waverly and U.N.C.L.E.  Sort of like being a courier, having pledged your life and your sacred honor, and bearing your king's or queen's signet ring in the Middle Ages.

The script neatly plants the clue that George is not the mole -- when Waverly asks him to stay behind, obviously (not at the time, but when we think back) so that he can bestow a ring on him.  We needed a scene, though, in which Solo and Illya arrive to find Carla already closeted with Waverly.  At the climax, Carla could then turn that to her advantage, telling Solo that she also is that trusted by Waverly ("I was there when you arrived to talk about George, remember?  Waverly enlisted me and gave me the ring!"), thus ratcheting up the suspense.

Director John Brahm, or his editor, does muff two chances for very effective scenes.  In the teaser, when Solo says in a hollow voice, "Thrush has a man in U.N.C.L.E." and the camera pulls away, the scene snaps too abruptly into the opening credits.  At the climax, too, when Solo pulls his neat trick and Carla begins to scamper off, knowing George's ring is real, the zinger of Carla's "I'm caught!" is somehow lost.  A series of sharp cuts between tight close-ups of the actors would have worked much better.  (On the other hand, Illya's sudden appearance from behind the postcard rack in the camera store is superbly done; the rack does move, hinting someone's behind it, but Illya's presence comes as a total surprise.)

The production also suffers in a couple of places from no-money-in-the-budget disease.  I have trouble believing that U.N.C.L.E. would pay George the highly-placed engineer so little that he's forced to live in such a tiny cheap apartment.  As for the detraining scene -- setting it in a cramped hallway?  Come now.  Surely the Command would have a special chamber for such things.  After all, the hypnotic training scenes in "Neptune" and "King of Knaves" were set in a room clearly dedicated to that purpose.

It was also a mistake to use the same actor in both the camera store and cocktail lounge scenes.  The big pockmarked thug would recognize Solo; he'd just tangled with him.  So the moment he saw Solo hanging around George at the lounge, he -- or his superiors -- would suspect George's detraining and disaffection was a ploy.  Come to think of it, Carla would suspect too.  George would have had a very hard time convincing her that his defection was for real.

I also want to see who held down the big chair while both Waverly and Solo were out of HQ.  Was it Illya?  If so, when he left, who took over?  And why would Illya need to track Solo?  He was right there when George told Solo to come to the Hazard Company on Long Island.  But I love Illya the Resourceful.  Trapped by a metal door?  No problem; just grab the nearest acetylene torch.  (We saw him employ one effectively back in "Fiddlesticks.")

Verdict: Despite some easily corrected plot problems, the verve of the story, the fascinating detail about the Command, and the mystery all carry it to the pinnacle (so far) of Season Two.  This is a good one to show someone who's curious about the series.

Memorable Lines:
Illya: "How sensitive is [the backup system]?"
George: "It can detect a passionate grasshopper passing by."

George (getting into his role as the disgruntled ex-employee): "The great Solo! The Babe Ruth of U.N.C.L.E.-dom!"

George: "The X36 communicator covers a 175-degree arc of the Earth's surface without having to go through a relay station."
(-- Wow! "Overseas direct, London to Port Moresby, New Guinea. And scramble!")

Illya: "Too bad. I'll have to report [the security technician] for allowing me to bully him into not doing his job properly."
( -- Nice to know the Command takes its security procedures seriously!)

"The Birds and the Bees Affair" (ep. 2/18)

With this one we move into a stretch of four memorable and generally well-done episodes.  "Bees," writer Weingart's second script for the series, is sharply directed, and focuses strongly on Illya for the first time since "Arabian."

We open with Solo and Illya as they enter a little clock shop in Geneva, the front for the local HQ.  By now we're used to the contrast between musty Del Floria's and the U.N.C.L.E. reception room, but this story makes it fresh, as Solo sets the clock's hands in the door and steps from the cozy little shop into the chrome and gunmetal chamber -- only to find everyone dead.  I love the overhead shots in which director Alvin Ganzer aims the camera down from the green ceiling lights.  Nice Touch Dept.: Solo and Illya take badges themselves, but they touch them to the dead receptionist's fingers as they should.

John McGiver's precise and pompous Mr. Mozart is not as colorful an antagonist as, say, Ray Danton's Vincent Carver, or Victor Buono's Col. Hubris.  His only human moment is his long look at his lead dance instructress's backside in Act I.  (I guess not all Thrushes will be larger than life; local satraps will always need the functionary and the bureaucrat.)  John Abbott's Dr. Swan is far easier to understand, with his compulsion for gambling and perfecting his "system."

The bees are frightening, able, we're told, to kill you with a single sting.  But how can Mozart control them and retrieve the survivors, if any?  You couldn't whistle them back like a dog or horse.  Most honeybees are not as vicious as wasps or hornets; we needed a line describing these bees' aggressive nature.  And Mozart should have had Swan develop an anti-toxin first, so that he, Mozart, and his minions would be safe.  A terror weapon is only useful in the long term if it's controllable, or if your agents are willing to sacrifice themselves in its delivery.

Illya is very much the focus here.  Beyond his obvious attraction to Tavia the Hungarian girl, he suffers ear-splitting torture, is forced to lead Mozart into HQ (though his plan to spike the Thrush's guns fails), is outmaneuvered by Mozart yet again, and at the last thinks fast and shoots the Cumberly honey to draw the bees.  Bill K. has mentioned the gaffe that Illya wears badge 12 instead of 2.  If that's during the entry sequence, it's because he takes the badge off the security man he knocks out.

Vaughn's Solo seems rather discomfited throughout.  Only during his penetration of the Thrush enclave does he come into his own -- then, and when he's coordinating the search for the bees with Swan in the van.  Contrast, too, his nauseated look whenever Tavia sparkles at Illya, with his pleased smile that Illya and Marion like each other, back in "Quadripartite."

Tavia is the type we've seen Illya drawn to before, such as Susan Oliver's Ursula, back in "Bow Wow": a cat-eyed, graceful blonde.  Unfortunately we never get any background on her, and little motivation (aside from Illya's charm) to leave the store and become a dance "instructress."  Even Swan is a more rounded character.

Transports of Delight: I think the little black car Illya drives in the teaser is a Peugeot or a Renault. It's pretty upscale for those days -- note the sunroof and the leather or taxicab vinyl on the seats. Mr. Mozart's sedan, late in the story, is the then-current upper-level Mercedes nicknamed "the fintail." Finally, the fastback coupe Solo passes as he enters the Thrush enclave is the Plymouth Barracuda, Chrysler's answer to the Mustang.

Verdict: With various illogicalities (e.g., the Kryptonian ability of Illya to join Solo at the climax despite having the width of traffic-choked Manhattan between them in the previous scene), "Bees" isn't top-notch U.N.C.L.E.  But it moves fast, the threat is serious, and the story is notable for both the appearance of HQ in Geneva and the long sequence with its security traps which help to round out the portrait of the organization. Besides -- Illya fans will love it.

Memorable Lines:
Mozart: "Amazing, the therapeutic effect of ten thousand dollars.  I shall recommend it to all my friends."

Illya: "Illya Kuryakin."
Tavia: "Tavia Sandor."
Illya: "I'm with the U.N.C.L.E."
Tavia: "I'm Hungarian."

"The Deadly Goddess Affair" (ep. 2/17)

The show appears to be edging toward "Batman" territory, but isn't there yet.  This, Robert Hill's third script for the series, is a pleasant little spy-vs.-spy diversion with a delicious scene-chewer of a villain and his knife-wielding second, and some cool byplay between our heroes.

We open in a nightclub "somewhere in North Africa," as Solo, clad in a lightweight summer suit, plants a bug on a Thrush courier so that he (and Waverly and Illya, back home in New York) can listen in on Col. Hubris's plans.  It appears to be dusk in New York -- in January, that's about five p.m. -- so it's probably anywhere between ten p.m. and midnight for Solo, depending where they are (see below).  Check.

Victor Buono's Colonel Hubris truly fills up the screen (and I don't mean just thanks to avoirdupois, either).  Watch his baby blues sparkle madly behind his pince-nez; his roars of laughter as he fires his gun at his captives; and his towering rages.  Joe Sirola's Malik is madder still.  His Mephisto visage and his delight in wielding his knife, whether on an orange or a human captive, are scary.

What exactly are the plans that Hubris is waiting for?  All we're ever told is that it will conquer Africa for Thrush, and, as Solo says, they involve a great evil.  Deuced unfair to the audience when you don't even describe the McGuffin, eh, what?  Also, Hubris says the pouch contains ten million dollars, yet the Count finds lire notes in it.  Would Thrush have sent lire to Hubris?

From the name Circe you'd expect this island to be near Greece; but the natives use Italian forms of address, and we see many hints of Roman presence.  Illya also implies that Taormina, in Sicily, is the nearest large town.  Perhaps a little shard of land in the Strait of Messina?  This suggests that Col. Hubris's "home in the country" is somewhere in northern Libya.

Bill K. has mentioned that Daniel J. Travanty (as he spelled his name, years before "Hill Street Blues") wouldn't be proud of his over-the-top acting on this one, and I agree . . . but it's sort of fun to watch him channel Jimmy Cagney when he bares his strong teeth in a grin.

The charm in this one lies first with Hubris, a larger-than-life (and again I don't mean how he tips the scales) villain who is also smart.  He strings Solo, Mia, Angela, and their father up in the well to get

the Count to talk, but in a departure from cliché, doesn't give them a chance to escape by leaving them alone.  (Besides, he's having too much fun taunting them.)  If only Hubris had returned in another story!

The second element to treasure: Solo and Illya's squirming at the prospect of being forced to marry Angela, followed by (when she chooses Solo) Illya's unconcealed glee at his partner's predicament. It would have been easy to go for the cheap laugh, to draw Angela as a shrew or a pig; but she's sweet and lovely, and only the lack of a dowry has kept her unmarried. This story is the first of several which find Solo involved in a shotgun -- or, in this case, Luger -- wedding.

So the deadly goddess of the title is Fortune/Lady Luck, as Hubris hints?  I almost missed it.  A better title would have been "The Hubris Affair."

Verdict: No classic, but kind of fun, with some real danger from fairly competent villains.

Memorable lines:
Col. Hubris (to the dead Hamid): "Goodbye, traitor.  Enjoy the journey.  They say getting there is half the fun."

Illya (inspecting the Latin graffiti on the rock): "It seems that even the Romans were defeated by their own grammar."

Illya: "'Baudoin loves Berengaria.'  But that must date from the Crusades.  I never thought those boys got this far south."
Solo: "As any girl can testify, boys get everywhere."

Mia: "You do believe in marriage?"
Solo: "In moderation."

Illya (delighted that Angela plumped for Solo as a husband and father): "I must admit that next to Mr. Napoleon Solo, I am a reckless flibbertigibbet."
(Where did Illya pick up that word, I wonder?)

Hubris: "Why didn't you bring me the corpse [of Illya]?"
Malik: "Effendi, what good is a dead man?  You have plenty of those at home.  And if you haven't, I can always make one; it's no trouble."