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Showing posts with label fall out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall out. Show all posts

Monday, February 04, 2008

"Fall Out", the final episode of THE PRISONER, aired 40 years ago today

It was 40 years ago tonight, on February 4th 1968, that the British network ITC broadcast "Fall Out", the psychedelic final episode of its popular series The Prisoner.

To this day, "Fall Out" is considered the most controversial and outright bizarre series finale of a television show ever produced. The episode literally broke ITC's phone system after it was overwhelmed with calls from confused viewers. The Prisoner creator and star Patrick McGoohan had to go into hiding for several weeks after the episode's airing because people kept coming to his house to demand that he explain it to them.


Even forty years later, "Fall Out" is no less startling. The entire episode is indulged - perhaps too indulged - in visual allegory and auditory assault. Taken literally, there's not much in "Fall Out" that makes much sense (along with pretty much every other episode of The Prisoner). But if you're watching this with a decidedly metaphorical mindset, it becomes quite a cerebral parable about the prison of our own modern world.

That still doesn't keep "Fall Out" from being the most whacked-out episode of a TV series in history, though...

The scene where Number 6 (the main character of The Prisoner, played by McGoohan) finally confronts the mysterious Number 1 still evokes considerable debate...

Most of the final third of the episode has no dialogue, only insane action sequences. Like this spectacular machine gun fight toward the end that has everyone shooting at everyone else while "All You Need is Love" by The Beatles (?!) blares loud over the din...

If you want to know more about "Fall Out" (which after watching the episode just about everyone does) here is Dark Childe's review of the episode (the page that these "Fall Out" pics were found on) and here's the episode's entry on Wikipedia.