The six-hour-long miniseries The Prisoner began tonight with two episodes back to back, a trend which will continue both tomorrow and Tuesday, with the show ending Tuesday night. There was mystery aplenty in the first two hours of the series, and I can only guess that the mystery will continue to deepen with each passing night.
A man wakes up in a desert, with fractured memories running through his mind of himself in his apartment. Disoriented, he stands up and begins running around, unsure of where he is or where he should go. Suddenly, he hears gunshots and barking dogs. As he climbs over a ridge, he sees figures standing on a clifftop, shooting at an old man who is fleeing below them, stumbling down rocks and dunes. He falls, and sees our hero. He calls to him for help, and our nameless hero obliges, picking up the man and carrying him to a cave. As he waits for the old man to regain consciousness, he takes a peek outside and finds that the land all around him is barren. It's all one big desert, as far around as he can see.
The old man finally wakes up, and tells him to visit someone named 554. When our hero has no idea what he's talking about, the old man realizes that he isn't from here, and calls him a "bloody miracle." After uttering "Be seeing you," he dies abruptly.
Our nameless protagonist buries the old man and begins wandering around once more, eventually stumbling on a perfect line of suburban houses, which he soon sees are part of a larger neighborhood. He flags down a passing taxi (which looks like it's from the 1950's) and wants a ride to the railroad. When the taxi driver isn't sure what he means by railroad or train, he tells him that he just wants to leave. The taxi driver laughs him off, telling him that he's in the Village. There is nowhere else. The man then jumps out of the moving taxi, much to the driver's chagrin.
The man continues, eventually stopping at a dance club. He catches a woman's eye, and he nears her. He expresses to her his confusion, though she's not sure what he's confused about. He begins hearing the dogs once more, and he leaves once he sees the shadows of the men on the wall -- though the woman he has met sees nothing.
Upon fleeing, he once again boards the taxi. The driver seems to think nothing of his earlier behavior, and then begins complaining about the long hours, which give him no time to see his family, including his daughter, "my 832." The man is confused by what the driver has called his daughter, but realizes the correlation between the name and what the old man told him, and asks to be taken to see 554. The taxi driver seems to know the location, and they take off.
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