U.N.C.L.E. a day is my obsessive-compulsive approach at working through The Complete Man for U.N.C.L.E., now available on DVD. One episode, one review a day (usually – occasional hiatuses may occur due to travel).

Meant to post this yesterday, but I forgot to hit that silly “publish” button. Sorry.

Ah, the acting talent of Carroll O’Connor. A decade before his seminal role of Archie Bunker, here he plays a hypochondriac THRUSH agent named Brock who is obsessed with numerology (and specializes in chewing scenery). Napoleon has to infiltrate his sea cruise disguised as a secretary (!) to see what connection he has to a brainwashed U.N.C.L.E. agent.

This episode is a return-to-form after the last couple of episodes. They were… well, subpar would be charitable. Vaughn’s fopish cover is quite good, and O’Connor is fantastic. Lots of good stuff here – Illya practicing his martial art skills in Waverly’s office, the swamp fight between Napoleon and a big bad guy, Napoleon’s bluff and it’s aftermath, and the final reveal as to what THRUSH’ plot is (the brainwashed U.N.C.L.E. agent was bait, to capture Solo)… all in all, a solid episode.

The writers and Vaughn finally “lock into” his semi-serious/semi-cheeky character with this episode. The balance of action and whimsey that he brings to the show is in full affect here, and even though Vaughn and McCallum only have a few scenes together you can see the chemistry is almost “locked in” as well.

Note: we still don’t have the pen transmitter – Solo uses his umbrella to call U.N.C.L.E. HQ.

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U.N.C.L.E. a day is my obsessive-compulsive approach at working through The Complete Man for U.N.C.L.E., now available on DVD. One episode, one review a day (usually – occasional hiatuses may occur due to travel).

And we’re back. Back with an episode that mixes a stamp auction, the attempted murder of an old man in an oil drum, and a sexy (and deadly) blonde THRUSH agent. Sounds good, right?

Well… you also have a ludicrous scene where, during a kidnapping attempt, Solo PUTS TOGETHER HIS U.N.C.L.E. GUN before he acts to stop the kidnapping (like he needs an extended barrel to shoot the bad guys IN A HALLWAY).

Or the scene where the blonde THRUSH agent plants a deadly spider on Napoleon and it’s as plastic and fake-looking as one on a Halloween ring.

Or when Napoleon brings the girlfriend of the “innocent-of-the-week” to an ambush of the bad guy FOR NO GOOD REASON – and then she screws up everything…

Oh, and the scientist who is the Big Bad Guy in this episode? HE FROZE HITLER! And only Napoleon’s blood can revive him!

Sigh. This episode is kind of a clunker, and, along with the previous “Shark Affair,” represents the low point that almost every television program has in it’s first season. I’ve seen it many times before, and here’s the reason why: They run out of time.

When a new show first airs, they usually have already filmed the pilot/first episode. That episode’s story and production values usually has a lot of fine-tuning (they used it to sell the program to the network, so it had to be good). While they are in post-production on the pilot, usually the producers work on two or three scripts for the following episodes, and have time to tweak these as well. They also have some treatments for future episodes. Then the show gets bought, the episodes start filming and the deadlines start hitting – quick and hard. Around episode four the producers have to throw together shows out of the flimsy treatments that they came up with earlier.

Original Trek had “Mudd’s Women (not too bad, but not great either)”, Trek: TNG had “The Last Outpost, “ and U.N.C.L.E. had this episode.

Trust me, it gets better.

And then it gets a LOT WORSE…

UPDATE: Look! This sub-par episode is available to watch on-line!

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