THE ABSOLUTE WORST TV EPISODE EVER!

on Tuesday, July 9, 2013 ·

As the decades speed by, I find it’s helpful to re-visit movies and TV shows I’ve seen years ago, to refresh me as to why they were so influential to me.

I rented a show that has always had a warm spot in my brain – THE PRISONER.

Made in England in 1967-68 and shot at an eccentric resort in Northern Wales(I think), I remember it as surrealistic, funny, daring and inventive. The kind of quality, out of the box TV that we miss today.

With great anticipation, I started watching THE PRISONER again.

The pilot was okay, kind of what I remembered, but then I started watching the rest of the first season, and the show started declining in quality unbelievably rapidly. It was as if the budgets kept getting cut 50% each week.

After a few shows, I was so disappointed, bored and insulted, that I skipped to the last episode, the series finale, some twenty-two or so episodes later.

Well, that last episode was the absolute worst TV episode ever.

When I was working on a low budget show called WAR OF THE WORLDS for Paramount, we shot in Toronto and the show was called “The worst show on television.” by a newspaper in Arizona. I can tell you we were proud of that.

But, the last episode of THE PRISONER made WAR OF THE WORLDS look like Masterpiece Theater. The sets were beyond cheap. The acting, if you can call it that, was pathetic. The episode not only jumped the shark, but catapulted over it.

The beleaguered star of THE PRISONER, Patrick McGoohan, looked comatose…no, not comatose, he looked as if he were having a stroke right before our very eyes as he silently watched the unfettered cheesiness unfold before his pained eyes.

For a few scenes I was amused…not believing it could be so terrible, but son of a gun, it got so bad it began melting my brain, and there’s little enough of that left, so I turned the goddamned show off.

Please…don’t see that last episode.

I beg of you.

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Categories: Lazarus Rising · Tags: jumping the shark, Paramount, Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner, The worst TV episode ever, War of the Worlds

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