Might be a bit rambling...

[carabele]

This post will likely turn out a bit rambling, but I just rewatched ALEXANDER THE GREATER (both parts) tonight and a whole bunch of things struck me.

I have to say right-off that this isn't one of my favorite episodes, though I always do enjoy watching it.  Yet how close it road the line toward camp really hit me tonight.  Don't get me wrong: it's done well and it works.  (Unlike the many failed attempts at camp during Season 3.)  Still, one has to admit the entire premise is rather silly with this guy thinking that breaking "moral laws" made him someone who could conquer the world like Alexander the Great.  Since when were those two things even remotely related?  [chuckle]  And the bits in the tomb are really over-the-top theatrical.  Though as always I love Napoleon's dauntless optimism throughout.

As a couple of for instances of that: when he is up against the big, muscular Ingo and Illya calls on the communicator with news on Tracey being taken out of the spa by Alexander's heavies, Napoleon's response of "I'll likely be busy here for a while so you go ahead."  No calls for assistance; no "I got this big gorilla trying to kill me" expletives; just a simple "I'll likely be busy for a while."  [chuckle]  So nonchalant Napoleon!  (Even that he bothers answering the communicator at that moment is nonchalant!)  And in the tomb when he is under that swinging scimitar and Tracey and Illya are tied up over that bottomless pit, Illya's comment is "It's no use" while Napoleon's response to Tracey's question of "What do we do now?" is "Well, the best we can."

I just love this irrepressibleness in Napoleon.  Get him down even when the odds are stacked against him?  Nah, no way.  He'll always have a quip and just as likely a plan.  That's so much of what appealed to me in his character back when the show first aired and still what makes the character enduringly special to me.

About a week ago I rewatched GAZEBO IN THE MAZE.  Watching ALEXANDER THE GREATER tonight did set me thinking that, though the two episodes used setups that were in some ways similar (two rogue madman who thought they should be ruling a good portion of the world and set about doing that in nonconventional ways) and used environments that were just as over-the-top (the tomb in ALEXANDER and the medieval dungeon in GAZEBO) GAZEBO still retained a more realistic edge.  I mean in ALEXANDER we have pendulum scimitars and bottomless pits, while in GAZEBO we have racks, hot irons and wolves.  No question which one tends more toward theatrical camp.  Both work, but in many ways these two episodes bespoke the changes that came about in MFU between Season 1 and Season 2.

Another thing I noticed (I did say this post would be rambling, didn't I?  [chuckle]): Napoleon's office in ALEXANDER does make it apparent that the room used in the beginning (and a little later) in BOW-WOW is indeed Napoleon's office as well.  The two rooms are actually very similar, though in ALEXANDER it has been "glammed up".  Still, there are banks of computers in his office in both eps  (though they set more "out-of-the-way" in ALEXANDER) and that leatherette chase lounge type thing that Napoleon was lying on in BOW-WOW while Sarah "exercised" his bad leg was indeed there in his office in ALEXANDER (though it was now pushed against a far wall rather than sitting out in the open).  And just as a sidebar, there is indeed only one desk in that office.

One final note: It's in this episode where it becomes noticeable how much the character of Illya was being "de-Russianized" in the series.  I mean the will gas that Alexander stole was part of a top-secret U.S. military biological weapons research project.  BIOLOGICAL WEAPONRY being created by the U.S. military and supposedly Soviet Illya (he certainly came across as actively Soviet in NEPTUNE in Season 1) doesn't even blink an eye at the revelation.  No, of course he wouldn't go into a tirade about it or anything.  He was a professional.  But I expected maybe something (disapproval? discomfort?) to be hinted in his facial expression when this is revealed.  Instead he just looks very blase about the whole deal.

Oh, and a little sidebar: Could U.N.C.L.E.'s lab and research folks REALLY be incompetent enough not to realize that the stone tablet found from where the nerve gas was taken was a piece of recently quarried stone?  I mean Napoleon recognized the composition of the stone as being from Alexander's quarry just by sniffing and tasting some other stone from that quarry.  So professional lab folks wouldn't have realized the same?  Waverly should fire all the lab guys that worked on researching that tablet!  [chuckle]

Okay, I'm now finished rambling for tonight.  [grin]