This Friday on 'The Prisoner' ep 6 'Checkmate'

So we come to the end of this bizarre show with an ending that is massively confusing NO NOT CONFUSING....implausible
The previous two episodes set us up nicely for the finale but I feel its been thrown away.
I expected a sort of similar set up to the A B and C experiment from the original series,mrs 2 connected up to the artificial village being fed images as McGoohan was fed images of Paris.
I expected digital recreations of Summakor staff being fed into her mind for some purpose.

But no ,what we got was a nonsense about layers of subconscious and she apparently went there at will. What was the link between the purpose room and Helen ( mrs 2) ,there didn't seem to be any physical link. But somehow those images of summakor personnel got into the village through her ,or did they? God knows. I can't accept that it was all just her little sweet dream, so therefore she killed 11-12 she dreamt it she did it! However Curtis (2) goes on about fixing the people in NYC by placing them in the Village so this artificial place can affect the real world despite just being in Helen's head.Uh ha !
313 being mentally damaged in the real world and takes Helens place as the dreamer with Michael as the new 2 is er something or other . You know I don't know why I'm bothering to figure this out It's implausible self indulgent over the top "oh look aren't we clever " nonsense.

2 silly endings out of ten

Have I been too hasty in my marking? Lets work it through.
Summakor keep cctv surveillance on the good folks of New York led by Curtis with Michael gathering data on subjects. Meanwhile wife Helen has discovered deep subconscious and paid it a visit. I hope the village was her creation and not already there as Curtis seemed to suggest,anyway Curtis wants to fix broken people by er transferring avatars of them into er Helen's head and into The Village . Then they get cured and it affects their real world selves,......that's all folks i was too hasty in my marking
ZERO marks

Ok where to begin with this jumbled mess.

6 is a bit shocked to see "new" arrivals to the village. He's very curious and asked them were they came from and they can't really answer yet they're ecstatic that they've arrived in the village. This baffles 6 in that it goes against the notion that the village is a self contained entity. 2 begins showing new houses like George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" so we get the impression that the village is indeed expanding. 6 questions 2 about the "new arrivals" which soon becomes trivial when 2 informs 6 that he has been injected with a disease that will kill him. 2 explains what village death means and tells him he has a choice.

6 meets up with 1112 at the grave of 909. They speak for a moment about identity and the nature of reality and 1112's reality. 1112 is conflicted of his existence and the nature of reality so he ends up smothering his mother to death and then he hangs himself. It's his belief that he doesn't really exist and no one in the village really exists.

We then flashback or "flash-present" depending on your concept of the conscious and un-concious mind. Events in the village and NYC begin to happen simultaneously in parallel planes of consciousness. We find out that 147 the taxi driver is really Michael/6 limo driver in the conscious state. 6 is taken to "Mr. Curtis" who is really #2. We find out that #2's wife was a brilliant bio-chemist from MIT and she discovered that their were more than one state of "un-consciousness" in ever person and she discovered a way to tap into this multi layer of un-conciousness to create a self contained entity called "The Village".

O.K. you following this? The village was created by a bio chemist and it exists solely in a multi layered level of a human being's unconsciousness. I'm guessing that she has to remain in a semi-concious dream state in her conscious mind.

I'm a bit sketchy as to how or why she created the village but I think it had something to do with her depression and her inability to have a child. So how exactly did she tap into her multi layered un-conciousness to create the village? Was it a series of pills that she took?

Ok you following this? Curtis/2 then explains that the village is a form of un-concious therapy to help people with mental trauma and illness and Sumakor's role was to identify these people. Once the people are identified they are then taken to the village. These people exist in both their own conscious state and unknowingly the un-concious state of #2's wife. O.K, I have to pause here….What the hell is the point of all this? It just seems like a jumbled mess of junk. Why go through all this trouble? Are these just altruistic people and if so what kind of altruism forces people into a situation without their consent? Does Curtis and his wife work for Sumakor? and what does Sumakor have to gain from all of this? They never really deal with any of these points.

I'm assuming at this point that Curtis owns Sumakor and Michael/6 was the key guy and he inadvertently found out about the village.

So 1112 never really existed, he was just created in 2's wife's un-conscious state. Since 1112 never really existed his existence in the village threatened to disrupt the whole village. So I'm guessing that the holes were the village imploded on itself because of 1112's existence. Why was the village going to implode on itself because of 1112's existence? Because we told you so that's why. I guess you can dream up bars, diners and swimming pools in the unconscious mind but you can't dream up a person because then the universe will implode on itself.

We then flashback or flash present to NYC and we meet "Sarah" who is really 313. We find that she is a disheveled homeless mess and basically insane because of childhood trauma. 6/Michael takes over Sumakor from Curtis and makes Sarah the new dreamer. Sarah and Michael look upon the empty desert pondering a new village.

This show was just a pretentious self-indulgent incoherent meandering pile of crap. This had nothing to do with the original series and I'm guessing that the only way they could get this produced was to stick "The Prisoner" on the title.

Here's a few thoughts questions:

*What was the point of Sumakor? Was it just some huge corporation that did altruistic work for people with mental illness and trauma?

*Couldn't they just pay for a psychiatrist to help "Sarah" rather than create a whole corporation to go into people's unconscious. Actually couldn't they just open up some type of clinic and treat people with psychiatrist rather then create this whole bizarre unconscious universe??

*Do they ever explain how they exactly get the people into the woman's head in the first place?? Makes no sense

*So what do they do, kidnap people and then drug them to get them into this alternate universe? How is that remotely ethical?

*What was the point of all those people falling in the holes?

*What mental illness did the taxi driver have? It seemed like he was just frustrated that his wife left him with their daughter.

*Between the flash-forwards and flash-presents and the flash forwards this was a mess. Then the story telling is done in such a fragmentary way that makes it difficult to follow. This seems more like material you would read in Psychology department not a t.v. show.

*There was absolutely no humor, no wit, no drama, no action. It was just a mess of a crazy incoherent puzzle that you kind of had decipher. It was a such a bleak series.

I give this episode 3 out of 10 pills for wasting hours of my life I can never get back.

I finished watching the final episode of THE PRISONER (2009) today precisely at 6:00 A.M.; how appropriate. It was a satisfying finale, explaining most of what had happened in the prior shows and added a good conclusion, albeit somewhat open-ended.

I won’t recap the events, but rather try to explain how I interpret what I saw. Once upon a time, a man named Mr. Curtis saw problems in this world and wanted to help solve them. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions as they say. He reasoned that some of these people could be helped if they could be transported to a place where life was simpler - a sunny, secluded hideaway where you could just do your job, raise your family, and live your life. He knew each of us has a conscious and a subconscious mind, and deduced that there are more such levels within the mind. His wife became the first part of his experiment, her “dreams” while in a trancelike state somehow created the Village and allowed people to live there even while living in the real world at the same time. (Perhaps some were in a coma, assisted living facility, or asylum – maybe even most of them.) 147, for example, was Mr. Curtis’s chauffeur. He suffered from paranoia to the point where his visitation rights to his daughter were taken away. He was sent to the Village to be cured. His daughter’s disappearance down the hole was either an unintentional physical manifestation of his daughter being taken away from him, or part of the healing process itself (probably the former, based on other events occurring in the show.)

But Curtis himself needed healing as well. He and his wife, possibly unable to have a child of their own, wanted a family and thus 11-12 came into their Village life. Whether he grew up in the Village or just was created as a teen is unknown; it depends on how long this process has been going on. Her reward for her constant semi-dream state in the real world was to have a son in the Village. But her work required her to be in a virtual sleep state in the Village. Thus with Number 2 running the place and his mother in a virtual coma, 11-12 felt abandoned and wanted to escape – eventually causing him to kill his mother and hang himself.

Curtis has already seen that his Village was falling apart – the holes being the most obvious manifestation – even though he wanted to expand the Village to help more people. But a famous adage says “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Unfortunately, he was only giving people the fish, and when some rebelled they needed a session in the clinic or other such treatments – sometimes cruel ones. Curtis was at his wit’s end trying to solve it, which was one reason for his excursion away from his job last week.

Enter Michael – a man suffering from alcoholism and other problems, including guilt at a friend’s death while he was away getting oranges for breakfast - represented by the Lucy flashback, and the vision of him opening a buried coffin and finding it full of oranges. I’m taking the Lucy story to have been a manifestation of what had happened to him earlier in his life. The Summakor references she made may have been his combining of what he knew about Summakor with this flashback. Her real death may have been an accident, a random act of terror, even a suicide of turning up the gas and lighting a match; we can’t know for sure. Michael’s job at Summakor involved spying on people and reporting it to Mr. Curtis. Mr. Curtis found those people who he felt needed help and invited them to try the Village – though he may have done it involuntarily in some or most of the cases. In Michael, Curtis found a troubled man who had a deep yearning to do the right thing. So, he reasoned this was the man he needed to become the new Two.

Perhaps he took Michael up to the Purpose Room, showed him the Village and explained his reasoning. Michael was overwhelmed by it all and fled, dramatically spray-painting “resigned” on the wall before leaving. Somehow Curtis got to him before he left the building and began the treatment on him involuntarily (hence the ever-present gurney wheels shown from episode to episode). Michael thus “arrives” in the Village, which Two tries to show him is a wonderful place to live, but Michael fights it and wants to escape. But his own inner personal demons (manifested by Rover) keep him from fleeing entirely. I’m going to conclude that his flashbacks were not real – or at least not simultaneous to his Village experiences. They were a combination of memories and his inner guilts, brought out by his time in the Village. Finally, his demons come totally outside his body as another person entirely, trying to destroy Two and the Village. When he controls his demons and lets them back inside him, Two takes the final tactic of giving him the choice “Assimilate or die.” Michael begins to return to reality, going to Summakor and seeing the controls that make the Village work, including Mr. Curtis. Meanwhile 313, a woman who was abused as a child and does not want to become an abuser herself, begins to have feelings for Micheal/6. To save him, the Village, and herself, she volunteers to become the new dreamer and Micheal/6 becomes the new Two. Curtis is free of his burden, and his wife is allowed to be fully awake. Perhaps they will stay in New York; perhaps they will just be residents of the Village; perhaps both. The final shot shows Michael/New Two looking over the Village, saying he will make it succeed, while 313 lies trancelike with her head on his shoulder and a tear running down her cheek. Michael is also shown taking a seat in the Summakor control room. The Summakor symbol is a spinning “S” which, when spun around, looks like a “2”.

So is this a happy or sad ending or something in between? Will Six be a better Two and make the Village work, or will the same cycle repeat itself and the Village end up being infested by holes and unhappiness? Is 313 crying a tear of joy at finding a better way of life free of her torments, or is it a tear of sadness, realizing she and Michael have been sucked into the dark dreams of Mr. Curtis? I think it’s open to interpretation, and that’s fine with me. I tend to lean toward the darker answer. I think the cycle will repeat itself endlessly, until they realize you can’t fix people by simply giving them things. You instead need to help them find the strength and courage to get those things for themselves.

I give this episode a solid 9 exploding grenades in the mouth. And overall, I was pleased with the series. It wasn’t a remake, but an idea all its own containing clever nods to the original series. This week’s nod: the line, “Once the glass coffin closes, the dance ends.” (Reference to “Dance of the Dead”.) Certainly an improvement over the last six-part mini-series we watched, “Invasion: Earth.”

OK, that was actually even better than I remembered it, and it resonated in me in many levels. Let's see.

Let me start by illustrating this with a quote from Wikipedia. Carl Jung defines the collective unconscious this was:

Collective unconscious, a term coined by Carl Jung, refers to structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts and by archetypes: universal symbols such as the Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, the Tree of Life, and many more.

Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He argued that the collective unconscious had profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practice of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to the collective unconscious.