Diary of a Prisoner Virgin – Number Six carves a boat out of a single tree in an afternoon

(Episode 4 – “Checkmate” & Episode 5 – “The Chimes of Big Ben”)

I have to admit that, going into “Checkmate,” I wasn’t digging this show. I loathed to hear the awful “music” again, and … well, that’s about it. The music really is that bad. Fortunately I seem to have gotten somewhat used to it and have somehow allowed myself to ignore it for the most part.

After hearing basically the same episode intro for the fourth time, I’m finding myself analyzing it more. The show opens the same way, with Number Six (we never know his real name, at least not yet) racing in his cool-ass car to what is presumably his boss’s office to resign. Thunder booms and awful music plays over whatever he’s ranting about to his boss, he walks out in a huff to his car and speeds off home. There, he’s packing his things for what looks to be a getaway somewhere tropical, someone gasses his flat and he passes out. Then he wakes up in The Village and we hear the same dialog again and again (from Wikiquote):

Number 6: Where am I?

Number 2: In the Village.

Number 6: What do you want?

Number 2: Information.

Number 6: Whose side are you on?

Number 2: That would be telling. We want information … information … information.

Number 6: You won’t get it.

Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will.

Number 6: Who are you?

Number 2: The new Number Two.

Number 6: Who is Number One?

Number 2: You are Number Six.

Number 6: I am not a number! I am a free man!

Number 2: [laughs]

Lots of questions come to mind with just that one simple exchange:

• Why is there always a new Number Two, and where does he/she come from? It doesn’t appear to always be someone promoted from within the Village community. Is it someone brought in from the outside every time? The election from a few episodes ago was fake.
• Why would it “be telling” to inform Number Six whose side they are on? Why not answer that they are “the good guys” and be done with that line of questioning?
• Why is Number Two repeating this exchange in every episode? The Number Two changes each time, including the voiceover we hear in that exchange. So, presumably, Six is asking it again … and again … and again. Is it all part of a mind experiment, like that we saw at the beginning of “Dance of the Dead?”
• It appears, in the intro before that exchange, that Number Six is telling his superior exactly why he was resigning. If not, then what’s he going on about?

In the way this show airs, it would confuse the hell out of most primetime TV watchers of even mildly complicated shows like Lost, just from each episode’s repeating intro.

Something else I noted a couple of episodes back, which likely means nothing but I thought I’d bring it up: every time someone gives the familiar “be seeing you” salute, they form a circle with their thumb and forefinger over their eye and bring it forward. Do that with your left hand and notice it makes a number six. Coincidence?

I do like that, in each episode so far, Number Six continues to work toward getting the hell out of The Village, and we’re not left with a mere “filler” episode. In “Checkmate,” it almost appears as though he’s finally made some progress, though the Guardians (as I believe is the first I recall them being named) seem to be playing countless mind games with Six in this regard.

“The Chimes of Big Ben” was what originally aired as the second episode, when the series first appeared on TV. I feel it fits in quite well where it is in the DVD set, and really doesn’t carry any prior episodic knowledge that throws it out of whack. This is the episode that, for me, definitely Blew the Hatch and had me sit up in my chair at the events unfolding. It appears as though Number Six has made it out of the Village and is so close to spilling the beans on why he resigned from his “highest security clearance” job, when a critical mistake in detail is made by the Guardians … and it all falls apart for everyone. And just like that, Number Six carries on, through to another day to finding out where he is, why, and how he’ll get the bloody hell out of there.

“Chimes” showed some characteristics of Number Six that shows he really is grinning like a smartass, like I mentioned in my first post (and that Wil Wheaton said for me to look out for): he throws off the Guardians’ information about him by taking three lumps of sugar in his tea, versus the “none” reported in their information on him. This infuriates the Guardians, since Six is purposely throwing them off what information they have, making it all useless. And, lastly, we see that Number Six is apparently a master woodworker, able to carve a seaworthy sailboat out of a single tree in one afternoon, using nothing but rocks, sticks and twine. Bad-fucking-ass.

Past posts: Episode 1, Episodes 2 & 3

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Jun 16, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT