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I wanna talk about a transcendent moment from The Prisoner, no spoilers for the watch group
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the premise in brief: A superspy resigns from his job, then gets abducted and taken to The Village, where he's trapped and they're trying to extract information out of him regarding why he resigned
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the spy is now Number six, and each episode there's a new Number Two trying to extract his secrets
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episode 3
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the premise is that Number Two has some experimental sci-fi tech that he's going to use to manipulate and observe Number Six's dreams
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he suspects Number Six of having sold his secrets to another country, and has narrowed it down to three possible agents he had contact with
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A, B, and C
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so, one by one, he has number six drugged, then zaps his dreams into a recreation of a meeting he had in the past with each agent
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to try and learn more about his relationship with each one
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During each one, number two is watching the dream on a viewscreen and can feed lines to the people in the dream
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The A dream goes basically fine, and establishes that Number Six didn't sell any secrets to A
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but the B dream starts to break down when Number Six notices some inconsistencies
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and starts asking B various questions about her background like, what's her son's name
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determining when she can't answer that this is a setup
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the following day, Number Six knows something is up
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so he does some snooping
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and finds the dream laboratory
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putting together the pieces of what's going on from the dossiers on each agent and the machinery
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and finds the C dream serum
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empties half of it, refills it with water, and puts it right back where it was
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now half as potent
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and we enter Dream C
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wherein Number Six negotiates with C to sell a stack of secret files
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looks like we've found our counterspy
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Six gets into C's car, and takes him to where the trade will happen
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not with her, with the person she works for
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Number Two is salivating at this point. he had no idea there was a fourth person involved
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a D, if you will
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Six gets out of the car, and meets a mysterious masked figure
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they trade barbs for a while
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then Six pulls off D's mask, revealing that it's Number Two
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which is just confusing for everyone
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because the serum was watered down, Six knows what's going on, and is in control of the dream
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but Two doesn't know that so he's just, gradually losing his mind as the dream derails from his plans
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and he watches as, in the dream
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Number Six goes through a door and enters the dream laboratory, with Two and his assistant in it
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like, the exact same room that they are currently standing in
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and like. they know it's a dream
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they are watching it on the dream monitor
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but Two is losing it so hard at this point that, just for a second
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he turns, in reality, to check the door
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to make sure that Number Six didn't just walk in
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despite Number Six already being in the room, in the dream machine
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he's so unraveled by what's happening that for just a second he's like
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"am I the one dreaming somehow"
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back in the dream, Number Six hands Number Two the 'secret files', which are vacation pamphlets. He was going on holiday, he never sold out
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but that moment, when the dream enters the dream chamber and Two's brain briefly disconnects from reality
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is peak Prisoner
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it's honestly peak TV. just an absolutely perfect moment of television
Niamh Vibes
the prisoner's so fucking good
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The Prisoner is peak fiction
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I really appreciated, on this watch, Six's behavior in dream 3 of just
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wobbling around as the camera spins, trying to stabilize himself and the dream
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Turning a mirror to center the dream, but filmed as if he's turning the camera
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Yelling "WHAT A DREAMY PARTY THIS IS" to the fake people
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just as fun to try to stay ahead of as who's on which side is just
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who's completely fucking with who
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Number Six in the third dream, the art contest judges with the boat
Niamh Vibes
Its such a malicious mind game