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).
Look who’s in this episode! Dan O’Herlihy… best known as “The Old Man” to geeks like me from the first two Robocop movies. Uber-geeks (like me) would also know him from his role as Andrew Packard in the second season of Twin Peaks and his portrayal of Grig the navigator in The Last Starfighter. O’Herlihy plays a master thief who helps Napoleon and Illya in their attempt to steal $50 million from a THRUSH bank… though not by choice.
Of course, complicating matters is O’Herlihy’ character WORKS from THRUSH, and our heroes don’t know that. Adding spice to the mix is the “innocent-of-the-week”, a girl from Iowa that Solo recruits to help in the caper.
This is a fun episode, and we have have finally achieved the prototypical U.N.C.L.E. episode structure (the one we will see for many episodes to come). Illya and Napoleon work together at first, then separate to achieve separate goals, get together to compare notes, and finally work together at the end (usually with one saving the other’s hide at the end of the fourth act).
The gadgets in this episode are ludicrous, though – rubbing lotion that when applied to dice allows them to be remote controlled, a special $100 bill that can somehow detect a safe’s combination… Come on. And we see the return of the “sleep darts,” that can be fired out of the U.N.C.L.E. gun… Uh-huh. Paging Mythbusters…