3x11-2 The Concrete Overcoat Affair

I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. The Concrete Overcoat Affair is a 2-part episode about 3 competing factions in a war over climate change and marriage. Back in the Man from UNCLE days, an hour-long episode really was an hour long, so this is a feature-length story, and it's got the story material to back it up. This review contains lots of spoilers, and it's a good episode so it's definitely one you should watch for yourself. Skip this review if you intend to watch it.

Before I get into spoiler territory, I'll concede that even this episode falls prey to some Man from UNCLE anti-patterns. Illya Kuryakin gets caught by the villain because, as we know, there are only 2 UNCLE agents in the entire world, so he goes "under cover" twice. Obviously they recognise him and capture him. Napoleon Solo runs away from the villains even though they've captured the civilian he's dragged into this affair. Illya and Napoleon are ill-equipped to infiltrate enemy territory, and endanger the lives of everyone is a Sicilian village. There are moments of UNCLE at its dopiest, but by now I think we can all accept that a hero's incompetence is a storytelling technique that 1960s television was comfortable using. There's no changing that now, so we have to accept it.

By contrast, I think the UNCLE writers have discovered some new tricks in this episode. There's a nicely developed subplot in this episode that affects the events of the story, even though it's only indirectly related. There are 3 competing factions, including UNCLE and Thrush as direct opponents plus a group of Sicilians with their own unique interests. That doesn't even count the complexity of key individuals within each faction. Waverly wants to blow up an island to save the world, but Solo wants to rescue Illya first. Strago wants his plan to work, but Miss Diketon just wants to be accepted by Strago. Pia just wants to open her pizzeria, but her uncles (not UNCLE, to be clear) want her to start a family, and Miss Diketon wants her dead. These aren't story threads, they're character motivations and it adds depth to the story without adding complexity.

Story

Napoleon and Illya are following Dr. von Kronen, a Nazi war criminal, and see him meeting with a Thrush agent. The give chase, but either Thrush or fate intervene and the UNCLE agents end up in a ditch.

This is the intro sequence, and no expense is spared. It opens at a carnival (maybe Coney Island, I can't tell) and ends in a car chase, which features an amazing shot that's probably only 2 seconds (if that) in which the windshield cracks on screen right before your very eyes. It's really a throw-away shot. It would be easy to establish that there'd been a car wreck by cutting to the truck that cut the UNCLE agents off, then their car in a ditch. Simple. But that's not what this episode does.

For this shot, a special effects technician had to mask the shot, animate the windshield cracking over the interiour footage, and then put the interiour footage with cracks back into the shot. Today it's a relatively trivial exercise, but back then it meant lots of pre-planning, days of work, and expensive chemical processes. I'm impressed.

Anyway, Dr. von Kronen leads UNCLE to Strago, a wine baron and evil mastermind. His winery is in Sicily, so Napoleon and Illya go there to investigate next. Being UNCLE agents, they do a terrible job of infiltrating the base (they literally stop to ask directions at one point), but meet Pia Monteri (played by Letitia Roman, an actual Italian!) Pia is preparing for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of her new pizzeria when Napoleon rushes into it to hide from a Thrush agent, which results in the pizzeria being blown to bits by a grenade intended for Solo.

Pia decides to help Solo, but when her grandmother discovers that she's hiding a man in her bedroom, she insists that Napoleon marries Pia. He tries to explain, but the grandmother alerts Pia's uncles, who were all notorious bootleggers 30 years ago and still have a vested interest in the "family's honour."

Villains in an underground base

Strago intends to launch some missiles, from his secret underwater base, to instigate a massive shift in the global climate, and von Kronen, I guess, is going to help him (it seems to me that von Kronen mostly just stands around and nods, but maybe that's what Strago needs.)

Strago is played by Jack Palance, and his deadly assistant Miss Diketon is played by Janet Leigh (she's that lady who was "killed" in the shower, in Hitchcock's Psycho), so this episode has serious star power. And they're both unhinged (the characters, I mean.)

Strago is obviously a megalomaniac, but he doesn't seem to be enjoying it. He's constantly under stress and relies heavily on Alka-Seltzer (or whatever) to calm his stomach. He's morbidly misogynistic, simultaneously drawn to women and repelled by them for being "unclean" or "corrupted." By the end of part 2, you're legitimately and uncomfortably afraid for Pia's life.

Miss Diketon is possibly worse than Strago. She comes across as a professional and composed secretary, but it's soon revealed that she has a fetish for killing people with knives. She's also highly dependent on Strago's approval, and wants nothing more than to be accepted by him. Until, that is, she catches him toying with his prisoner Pia, at which point she changes her dependency to a need to personally kill Strago.

The spy in the green hat

This episode got a theatrical release as The spy in the green hat (I don't understand the title and didn't notice any green hats in this episode), which doesn't surprise me because it's written and shot like a feature. It's got big sets, lofty goals, an intricate plot, and nicely complex characters. The story's main weakness is its reliance on UNCLE agents being bad spies, but then again maybe James Bond was guilty of the same tropes (I haven't seen much James Bond, so I don't know.)

The ending, I admit, also feels a little obligatory. About 20 minutes to the end, everything's been set in motion, and you just sort of have to wait for everyone to get into their positions. I think they probably focused too much on Strago trying to hold his failing plan together, and not enough on Pia being in danger and Miss Diketon's quest to kill Strago. I think those were the 2 plot elements that ought to have hung in the balance, but they played out so casually that there wasn't any tension, and no real reason to seriously engage with the movie. It plays out exactly as you expect. That's not necessarily bad, it's just not as gripping as it could have been.

This is a very good episode of Man from UNCLE, or if you prefer, a very good spy movie. All the right ingredients are here, and if you're a fan of 1960s spy movies then you ought to see this one.