airdate:
27 May 1961
We begin with a
shot of (probably) a real building – which then gives way to a shot of a model
building inside the real building.
It’s an apt
symbol to kick off an episode in which everybody is putting on some sort of
false front. Jeremy de Willoughby
(essentially an updated version of P&P’s
George Wickham, and the similarity in names may be no coincidence) feigns love
for Marilyn Waller while hiding his true mercenary intentions; Marilyn hides
from her father, Thomas Waller, her plans to elope with Willoughby, while the
father hides from his daughter his criminal connections, and specifically his plans
to have Willoughby beaten to a pulp.
The good guys do
likewise, beating the bad guys through trickery rather than force (well, for
the most part) – convincing one criminal that his neck is broken, and another
that a hypodermic is filled with acid, and finally bringing in an actress to persuade
Marilyn that Willoughby has abandoned his sainted mother and so is unsuitable
as a husband. Steed in particular morphs
so effortlessly from one role to the next (helpful friend, menacing captor, gay
chaperone) as to leave us wondering whether anything we see of him is genuine.
“The Frighteners”
is the last surviving episode of season 1, and our (though not the original
audience’s) first encounter with Steed. He’s
a darker, more ambiguous figure than the Steed we’ll know later: not yet the central figure, but rather a mysterious
trickster who lurks in the margins of the narrative, intervening unexpectedly
when necessary. Keel is the sorcerer’s apprentice,
who gets chided by Steed for trying to tackle, on his own, some risky trickery
that Steed feels Keel isn’t quite ready for. (When Sydney Newman suggested that Steed’s clothing was boring,
Macnee responded by abandoning his leather jacket for a dandified ensemble complete
with bowler and umbrella.)
The title “The
Frighteners” is multiply ambiguous.
First, to “put the frighteners on” somebody is, in British usage (I
explain for my North American readers), simply to scare or intimidate them;
despite what the wording might suggest, it doesn’t imply sending other people
to do the scaring. But second, Waller does send other people to do his scaring
for him, and so the thugs he hires are themselves literal “frighteners.” Finally, Steed and Keel through their
trickery become “frighteners” themselves, as they manage to scare Waller’s
frighteners into giving up information on Waller; scare Waller into not hiring
any more frighteners; and – through their truth-within-a-lie illusion – cause Marilyn
to become scared of Willoughby.
Some
of Steed’s and Keel’s trickery is morally problematic. When Steed in effect threatens to torture a
captured prisoner, Keel’s criticism is rather mild: “no more applied psychology
– not on the premises.” The final
deception involving the actress is fair sauce for Willoughby, but a
paternalistic trick on Marilyn. Indeed,
Marilyn is never allowed a single autonomous choice; she begins as the dupe of
Willoughby, becomes the prisoner of her father, and ends as the dupe of Steed
and Keel. All the same, the protagonists’ reliance on trickster-heroics rather
than weapons gives them a moral distance from their opponents, who lovingly
fondle their brass knuckles (Moxon, Deacon) or their more abstract corporate
equivalents (Waller).
Willoughby’s
mistake, by the way, when the actress impersonating his mother is introduced,
is to act the way one would expect him to act if her story is true. Rather than turning his back on her in
embarrassment, he should have relentlessly quizzed her as to who she was and
who she was working for – which might have dampened Marilyn’s suspicions.
One of the
delights of the episode is “the Deacon,” a crime boss played by Willoughby
Goddard (not to be confused Willoughby the character). The Deacon, ensconced in his hideout behind a
literal false front, gets many of the best lines (often to the accompaniment of
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony).
Some of these
play with analogies between crime and politics
The Deacon tells one of his thugs who’s worried about getting another crime
on his rap sheet: “Thinking of retiring,
Moxon? That’s laziness for you – that’s
the welfare state.” He warns the same thug not to beat up the wrong target with
the words “We don’t want to go wasting expensive treatment on the wrong
taxpayer,” and considers what to do “if the patient doesn’t respond to
treatment.” In short, the Deacon is
using the socialised medicine of which he apparently disapproves as a metaphor
for his own criminal enterprise. (Steed
continues this medicine analogy when discussing the “therapeutic value to the
patient” of being beaten up.)
The Deacon is
also fond of analogies between crime and business, as when he describes himself
and Waller as fellow executives having to deal with annoying “little people,”
or jokes about listing the need to beat people up as an expense on one’s income
tax. (Steed again joins in when noting that
there’s “more to takeover bids than the polite board meeting,” though this time
he may have in mind actual rather than analogical connections.) But the Deacon, as befits his title, can stretch
as well to Biblical metaphors, exhorting his thugs to “smite the Egyptian, smite
him hip and thigh” (an amalgamation of Exodus 12:23 with Judges 15:8), and to
pagan metaphors too, as when he calls his thugs his “gladiators.”
As with the
unseen dog-stroking villain in “Hot Snow,” the Deacon’s
possession of a parrot suggests an anticipation of the Bond movies (the
scriptwriter for this episode, Berkely Mather, would go on to be one of several
contributors to the screenplay of Dr. No
the following year), as does the cash register’s secret key combination that
opens the hidden door to Deacon’s lair.
The use of the parrot might also be inviting us to connect the Deacon
with Sydney Greenstreet, if we’re allowed to run together The Maltese Falcon’s Greenstreet-the-cultured-and-garrulous-crime-boss
(albeit somewhat more affable than the Deacon) and Casablanca’s
Greenstreet-with-a-parrot.
We get a bit more
witty banter in this episode than in “Girl on the Trapeze” – and not just from
the Deacon. For example Keel, when told
by Steed “Good of you to come,” replies “So I thought too.” Later on Steed, when asked “Can’t you read?”
as he forces his way past a “Closed” sign, replies: “I suffer under the disability of a public
school education.” (In America, “public” schools are state schools, and the
joke would be about declining educational standards in such schools; but in
Britain “public” schools are private schools, traditionally associated with the
upper class, and the joke, I suspect,
is double, with the real joke “that’s why I learned to barge in as if
everywhere were my property” concealed in the false-front joke “that’s why I
didn’t learn to read.”)
Miscellaneous observations:
It is finally
settled that Wilson is indeed a nurse (and strongly hinted that she is in love
with Keel).
Those who recall
the show’s later ban on black characters and uniformed policemen will be struck
by the appearance of both in immediate sequence here.
The cool manner
in which Keel faces down Waller’s bluster when visiting his office is
enjoyable, though the slight Keel’s victory in arm-wrestling over the beefy
Waller is a bit surprising.
Steed’s
suggestion that Keel (Ian Kendry) “give the
police surgeon the night off” is a nod to Kendry’s previous series, Police Surgeon.
Nigel the
guitar-playing con man is a fun character; one wishes he had more screen time.
The way the two leads
stop to pet cats and talk to birds is rather charming.
Is that a sketch of the Florence Duomo in Willoughby’s apartment?
The episode ends
as the show will go on, with the celebratory pouring of alcohol (though not yet
champagne).
Speaking of
which: until next time, keep the
champagne cold and your bowler on!
