"It's Your Funeral" is NOT a throw-away episode of The Prisoner
After listening to the Back In the Village podcast on The Prisoner, I just wanted to get my two cents in on why certain episodes are important overall.
You simply must look at each episode as to what it does for the series as a whole. Why is it there at all?
"It's Your Funeral" with Darren Nesbitt as Number Two always falls into the category of "why did they make that one at all?" I show The Prisoner every year to sophomores as an examination of allegory, with other texts and shows. Seventeen episodes for eighteen week semester? Perfect. So I show them all. This episode never ceases to make the smart kids crazy when they realize that there was no real purpose in getting Number Six involved in the scheme.
Or was there?
Overall, I put this episode in a category of the leaders of the Village trying to show Number Six that it is all pointless and you might as well submit.
You have not one but two dumb Number Twos in this episode. Blondie Number Two is clearly getting orders from some kind of higher authority. Old Number Two is resigned to his fate and appears impotent to do anything about it.
I think the higher authority wanted Number Six in on the action to make him feel like he could do the job better.
How many times have we all looked at our bosses and thought what idiots they were. We can definitely do the job better. I have had that with previous principals before in the high schools I have worked at. There are some principals who excel but some clearly don't cut the mustard. I have even heard of some administrators switching jobs with just a few years to retirement simply because they want to get that boost in pay before retirement.
The higher authority wants Number Six to look at these bumblers and say to himself that he could do this job better. They want him to see that he should take the reigns out of these hands.
We all think that moving up is going to be better. However, there are some cases where people who have been promoted leave the job they are actually best qualified at and best suited for. Some teachers are so good that they should not become principals.
It's like Kirk in the Star Trek movies. He becomes an admiral but even Spock says it was a mistake to accept promotion. But try telling someone that when everybody else is telling you that you are so wonderful that you should run the whole show.
Overall. the higher authority has always wanted Number Six to become Number Two. And that's why this episode stands out. Maybe Number Six will see that if he really wants to change things, he has to become a higher authority himself. He has to become the "man." Isn't that what the final episode "Fall Out" also tells us?
You simply must look at each episode as to what it does for the series as a whole. Why is it there at all?
"It's Your Funeral" with Darren Nesbitt as Number Two always falls into the category of "why did they make that one at all?" I show The Prisoner every year to sophomores as an examination of allegory, with other texts and shows. Seventeen episodes for eighteen week semester? Perfect. So I show them all. This episode never ceases to make the smart kids crazy when they realize that there was no real purpose in getting Number Six involved in the scheme.
Or was there?
Overall, I put this episode in a category of the leaders of the Village trying to show Number Six that it is all pointless and you might as well submit.
You have not one but two dumb Number Twos in this episode. Blondie Number Two is clearly getting orders from some kind of higher authority. Old Number Two is resigned to his fate and appears impotent to do anything about it.
I think the higher authority wanted Number Six in on the action to make him feel like he could do the job better.
How many times have we all looked at our bosses and thought what idiots they were. We can definitely do the job better. I have had that with previous principals before in the high schools I have worked at. There are some principals who excel but some clearly don't cut the mustard. I have even heard of some administrators switching jobs with just a few years to retirement simply because they want to get that boost in pay before retirement.
The higher authority wants Number Six to look at these bumblers and say to himself that he could do this job better. They want him to see that he should take the reigns out of these hands.
We all think that moving up is going to be better. However, there are some cases where people who have been promoted leave the job they are actually best qualified at and best suited for. Some teachers are so good that they should not become principals.
It's like Kirk in the Star Trek movies. He becomes an admiral but even Spock says it was a mistake to accept promotion. But try telling someone that when everybody else is telling you that you are so wonderful that you should run the whole show.
Overall. the higher authority has always wanted Number Six to become Number Two. And that's why this episode stands out. Maybe Number Six will see that if he really wants to change things, he has to become a higher authority himself. He has to become the "man." Isn't that what the final episode "Fall Out" also tells us?
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