azdak

My MfU viewing has slowed down somewhat, but I'm still averaging an ep a day and the pile of disks is getting much smaller.



Quadripartite

This started off really well. It was much faster paced than the other season one episodes I've seen, and it had a strong sense of seriousness. The bit where Napoleon discovers Illya under the influence of the gas is really rather shocking – I was expecting him just to find that Illya and Marion had been kidnapped, so in spite of the opening sequence it came as a complete surprise to me (and it's not often I can say that about an MfU plot "twist"). Bit careless of the baddies to leave that kind of evidence lying around, though. Gervaise Ravel is a wonderful villainess – the combination of that childlike face with the automatic assumption of authority is very good indeed, and must have felt strikingly "wrong" back then. But oh boy, the female figure has changed since the 60s – in her black bathing suit she looks positively matronly. Such a shame that once they get out to Yugoslavia, Marion turns into dead weight – I mean, I'll grant you that I would have handled things no better (I felt a sudden stab of sympathy during the fight scene, when she stood around wringing her hands and clearly feeling she ought to do SOMETHING but not knowing what) but in that case why on earth did the agents allow her to come along? Oh well, at least she let Illya stand on her shoulders – his boots looked enormous next to her head – but that hardly counts as being a Really Useful Engine.

Yo Ho Ho

I expected this to be DREADFUL, given the title, but it turned out to be a case of Bat Cave syndrome, because actually it was great. I don't think that if I had been Mr Waverly I would have extended the offer to Captain Morton to join UNCLE – he may have been given back his honour, but he's still a complete sot. Illya quotes Masefield! (And in Quadripartite he knew Cervantes – what a very well read young man!) Is Scotty, the engineer with the dodgy accent who could never harm his engines, a not-very-sly dig at Star Trek? But perhaps he also has a literary antecedent, given the Masefield quote and Scotty's pacifism - the Calvinist ship's engineer McAndrew in Kipling's eponymous Hymn ("No-one cares except mysel' that serve an' understand / My seven thousand horsepower here. Eh Lord! They're grand - they're grand!"). That's a very nice use of Masefield, incidentally, not just to establish common ground between Illya and Morton, and to show that there is more to Morton than meets the eye, but also because of the stress on cargo in the poem. And of course the cargo of this particular dirty British coaster is the Mcguffin of the episode. Illya certainly seems to know all about engine rooms – perhaps he really was in the Soviet navy. I certainly wouldn't have known which of those numerous little wheels to turn. Nice use of Hank – no quibbles this time about unintentional racism. Napoleon doesn't get much to do this episode except shag – that man is such a slut.

Deadly Smorgasbord

Okay, I think I've got this title thing sussed. Anything with Deadly in the title is just that.There wasn't even a smorgasbord in the episode! I was so disappointed – I've never seen a smorgasbord. In a show that features weekly Dodgy Accents, this episode had the largest collection of oddities – none of them bore any resemblance to each other, and they certainly bore no resemblance to Swedish (I guess we have the Muppets to thank for the fact that an entire generation of viewers can now do a halfway recognisable Swede). It also had not merely one bad actor amongst the villains but an entire trio of them, which made all the scenes of schemage particularly dull. The SAD was a cunningly cheap effect, but marred by the actors' inability to keep completely still, and when the baddies invaded HQ I couldn't help thinking that they would have done just as well with a conventional gun, given the way they were only ever attacked by one UNCLE person at a time. Oh, and no Illya, though frankly he was well out of this one.

Matterhorn

Very uneven. There's some wonderful byplay between Illya and Napoleon – that eyeroll at Napoleon's lousy joke about back alleys for a start – but the "comic" characters aren't nearly as funny as they think they are, and Martha and the Backstreet Boys (is there no end to my wit? Eat your heart out, Napoleon!) are the biggest hams I've seen outside a butcher's. You'd think you'd have to LOWER the temperature to get night-blooming flowers to bloom, but on the other hand why should MfU botany be any less screwy than MfU physics? Mr Waverly is wearing even more eyeliner than usual – guess he came straight to work from the drag club – and he keeps doing the mad eye-flashing thing.

Cherry Blossom

I notice that in this ep the heroine is relatively feisty, thus giving the Japanese villain the opportunity to tell her women should know their place and not mouth off like that – ooh, American culture is so superior! It doesn't oppress women like the Japanese do! And yet in Matterhorn Napoleon tells Martha not to speak until she's spoken to, and in Arabian Illya tells Sofie "Shut your mouth, you stupid little girl!" Double standards or what? I also get the feeling the writers weren't in control of the plot. How does Cricket know that Napoleon's at the karate club? Why does she go to rescue him because she needs an Illya substitute and then tell him she doesn't want to go to the novelty shop? What kind of a name is Cricket anyway? Why not Baseball or Long Jump or Synchronized Swimming? It was quite funny when it turned out Illya had a gun all along, but given Napoleon's amazing dart throwing ability in Gazebo in the Maze I have no doubt he could have skewered the Thrushie with that knife whether or not he threw the javelin at college.

Hot Number

Ergh. Can't think of anything good to say about this, except that it was outrageously slashy. Starting with that women who answers the door in her basque (as you do), and Illya saying tartly "Wrong door", and reaching its, er, climax, when Illya whips out the fire extinguisher and pumps foam all over Napoleon. Unfortunately the climax came (har har!) much too early in the show, and after that there was nothing else to do but marvel at how Sonny's hair brought memories of the Monkees rushing back. Why is there a University of Georgia in the Ukraine? Wouldn't you expect it to be in, well, Georgia?

Abominable Snowman

Aka The Man With The Plastic Forehead – honestly, you'd think it would have been cheaper to hire an Asian actor, not to mention more effective. Sherpa Tensing appears to have a nice little scam running, luring tourists over the border and then helping Calamity Rogers to take a pot shot at them. Hmm, this is one in the eye for the shmoopier slashers – not only has Napoleon "Never been a member of Illya's fan club", he doesn't even know when his birthday is. Napoleon is really sleazy in this one, but the kid is adorable – no wonder he did better at arousing Amraparli's (sp?) emotions. Illya quotes Kipling! Oh, and Hamlet, but the Ballad of East and West holds a special place in my affections, since my dad bribed me to learn it off by heart when I was a kid. Calamity is the only "older woman" so far who's been allowed to be sexy, reasonably competent AND not evil – I wonder if she was sleeping with the producer? The shooting competition between her and Illya is quite fun. Waverly reading Napoleon's horoscope to him over the communicator is hysterical. I can't believe the villain really said "Walk this way"!

My Friend the Gorilla

Oh my. Poor, poor Robert Vaughn. You know, if I were Girl the moment I tried on one of those shoes I'd have decided to stay in the jungle rather than be taken off to be turned into a barbie doll like my sister. I mean, it's not as if Girl lacked for the essentials of life like shampoo and make-up and a man in a gorilla suit, so what did civilisation have to offer her? Besides, with those thighs she'd have to wear A-line skirts for the rest of her life.


Discotheque

Yaaaaaaaaawn. Thrush is really very cavalier about where it leaves dead bodies. We had a hamster once that escaped and died behind a cupboard and in a very few days the stench was unbearable. You'd think if a tiny little lump of hamster flesh could draw attention to itself so effectively, leaving a great big human body to decompose behind your wall of Top Sekrit Recording Devices might not be such a good idea. I guess Napoleon's car is an automatic, can't see how else he manages to drive with one arm in plaster.

When in Rome

This had some nice moments. I liked Illya flicking to the end of the comic to find out what happened and going "Wow!" I liked the fact that the Mom was an older woman who wasn't actually villainous (and her totally unerotic relationship with her totally unerotic husband was quite cute, too). The girl was a frightful drip, but it was just about convincing that her vulnerability might make the Count feel like a cad. I loved it at the end, though, when the UNCLE girl comes in and his head automatically swivels round to follow her - the Old Adam rising again. I'm with IK on the chances of their marriage succeeding. Oh, and there's a splendid example of the Human Cannonball, when Illya launches himself from the flight of steps onto one of the Thrushies.

Re-collectors

Illya as a millionaire is cute, but the women appear to have had a dialect coach who thought the story was set in Paris rather than Rome. "Casting our bread upon the waters to bring home the bacon" – hee! The baddy's girlfriend didn't seem at all relieved to hear he'd only been shot with sleep dart, but perhaps the actress didn't want to ruin her Big Dramatic Moment by breaking off in the middle.

Deep Six

This started off really well – I LOVED Laura Adams, especially when she gave Napoleon the brush-off ("I'm Napoleon Solo" – eyeroll - "I'm definitely not interested"), so of course she had to turn out to be (a) evil and (b) much more of a wimp than she seemed at the start. The plot just got increasingly dull, once we were away from the interesting dynamic of Our Heroes having to do stuff they were uncomfortable with – well, Napoleon anyway. Illya doesn't seem to question Waverly at all, either here or in Fiery Angel, when one might think that perhaps his conscience ought to prick him at least a tiny bit. But it seems he's a company man through and through. A good ep for Waverly, though – I didn't think there was any way he could come out of it looking reasonable, but he pulled it off (research station in the Antarctic, hee hee!). Gosh, Brian Morton is played by a terrible actor. He's about as English as the cars, which all have left-hand drives (unlike in Gazebo in the Maze, where they'd at least made the effort to get one with a steering wheel on the right).