MFU 30-Day Meme: Day 4
Jun. 24th, 2011 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carabeleDay 04 – Least favorite episode: THE SURVIVAL SCHOOL AFFAIR (Season 4) and THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN AFFAIR (Season 3)
Again a toss-up for me, so I'm listing both my least favs. I will put this under a cut, since it is kind of long.
SURVIVAL SCHOOL: Oh how to count the ways I absolutely abhor this episode! First of all of course there is no Napoleon, so ultimate negative for me. [chuckle] But the thing that really makes me hate this ep is how vacuous it is.
I like that we are given a glance at how U.N.C.L.E. agents are trained, that there is a specialized and isolated school provided for that training, and that we learn when Illya attended that school and that he had a particular mastery for explosives. Yet beyond these tiny tidbits this episode has no redeeming factors. The agents-in-training who receive the focus are all sorry excuses for recruits to an organization like U.N.C.L.E., particularly the one female in the group. (Whose comments at the end about preferring to "be a woman" and that such is "very dangerous" make me want to puke every time.)
Then there is the very concept that sneaking a recruit into the U.N.C.L.E. training program would be really attractive to Thrush and a real threat to U.N.C.L.E. Hello: just a few months before Thrush had a mole in U.N.C.L.E. who was one of the five Continental Chiefs! And over the course of the series Thrush got moles into U.N.C.L.E. in various positions of some importance. A green-grass possible Section II, but more likely Section III, agent just starting out in the organization would have little worthwhile info to offer Thrush for likely many years to come. That's presuming the guy/gal wasn't caught in the meanwhile or killed on a mission when he/she was pretending to be a true agent.
And then there is the way Illya comes off in this episode. Oh boy, brilliant he is not. And as well he isn't even the one who neutralizes the threat in the end. He's kind of playing second-string here and that is with no Napoleon around. So shouldn't his character have been the dead-on focus of the episode? Nope, he definitely isn't.
Finally there is the way the "training" is itself implied here, particularly in the persona of Cutter: not true teaching of ways to anticipate and deal with an enemy, just sort of "suck-it-up!" bravado. Ewww... U.N.C.L.E. to my mind is more sophisticated than this.
ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Oh the sheer stench! ("Yellow snow" must abound in that particular mythical Eastern locale. [chuckle]) You know I consider this ep much worse that GORILLA in the same misguided Season 3 simply because I really think the writer(s) of GORILLA was/were trying for a true (if unsuccessful) turn at pure camp. With SNOWMAN, on the other hand, I think the writer(s) really was/were attempting to write an actual mission story. You know, one with some humor but a real plot. However...
What happened in ABOMINABLE is -- excuse the pun -- really abominable. Illya's Yeti disguise: Yech! The western-style actress and her saloon-get-up home: Double yech! The stereotypical dreaded Asian minister with the thirst for personal power: Oh brother! The "eerie" emotionless Eastern priestess with unique powers: Oh sister!
Not one facet of this episode works in my humble opinion. (And don't you have to wonder about the supposedly happily-married Waverly going off into a moonlit garden with Miss Annie-Oakley-clone at the end? It has more implications than his usual kind of fatherly walking off with the innocent-du-jour for tea or dinner or a show of some sort.) This is one episode that honestly I cringed when I rewatched for the first time in so many years after getting the DVDs.
Again a toss-up for me, so I'm listing both my least favs. I will put this under a cut, since it is kind of long.
SURVIVAL SCHOOL: Oh how to count the ways I absolutely abhor this episode! First of all of course there is no Napoleon, so ultimate negative for me. [chuckle] But the thing that really makes me hate this ep is how vacuous it is.
I like that we are given a glance at how U.N.C.L.E. agents are trained, that there is a specialized and isolated school provided for that training, and that we learn when Illya attended that school and that he had a particular mastery for explosives. Yet beyond these tiny tidbits this episode has no redeeming factors. The agents-in-training who receive the focus are all sorry excuses for recruits to an organization like U.N.C.L.E., particularly the one female in the group. (Whose comments at the end about preferring to "be a woman" and that such is "very dangerous" make me want to puke every time.)
Then there is the very concept that sneaking a recruit into the U.N.C.L.E. training program would be really attractive to Thrush and a real threat to U.N.C.L.E. Hello: just a few months before Thrush had a mole in U.N.C.L.E. who was one of the five Continental Chiefs! And over the course of the series Thrush got moles into U.N.C.L.E. in various positions of some importance. A green-grass possible Section II, but more likely Section III, agent just starting out in the organization would have little worthwhile info to offer Thrush for likely many years to come. That's presuming the guy/gal wasn't caught in the meanwhile or killed on a mission when he/she was pretending to be a true agent.
And then there is the way Illya comes off in this episode. Oh boy, brilliant he is not. And as well he isn't even the one who neutralizes the threat in the end. He's kind of playing second-string here and that is with no Napoleon around. So shouldn't his character have been the dead-on focus of the episode? Nope, he definitely isn't.
Finally there is the way the "training" is itself implied here, particularly in the persona of Cutter: not true teaching of ways to anticipate and deal with an enemy, just sort of "suck-it-up!" bravado. Ewww... U.N.C.L.E. to my mind is more sophisticated than this.
ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Oh the sheer stench! ("Yellow snow" must abound in that particular mythical Eastern locale. [chuckle]) You know I consider this ep much worse that GORILLA in the same misguided Season 3 simply because I really think the writer(s) of GORILLA was/were trying for a true (if unsuccessful) turn at pure camp. With SNOWMAN, on the other hand, I think the writer(s) really was/were attempting to write an actual mission story. You know, one with some humor but a real plot. However...
What happened in ABOMINABLE is -- excuse the pun -- really abominable. Illya's Yeti disguise: Yech! The western-style actress and her saloon-get-up home: Double yech! The stereotypical dreaded Asian minister with the thirst for personal power: Oh brother! The "eerie" emotionless Eastern priestess with unique powers: Oh sister!
Not one facet of this episode works in my humble opinion. (And don't you have to wonder about the supposedly happily-married Waverly going off into a moonlit garden with Miss Annie-Oakley-clone at the end? It has more implications than his usual kind of fatherly walking off with the innocent-du-jour for tea or dinner or a show of some sort.) This is one episode that honestly I cringed when I rewatched for the first time in so many years after getting the DVDs.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-24 05:59 pm (UTC)I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I will again--I'm convinced Mrs Waverley died between Seasons 1 and 2. Once Mr. Waverly noticed, he went back to his old skirt chasing ways ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-24 06:06 pm (UTC)[chuckle] Well, that would explain some things, wouldn't it?