2x19 The Waverly Ring Affair

I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series from start to finish. This review contains spoilers.

There's a mole in UNCLE! Classified documents have been removed from headquarters, and it's Napoleon Solo's job to find out who removed them. Waverly has to go to Japan, so he gives Solo a priority ring, colloquially known as a "Waverly ring". It's sort of like a class ring, only it explodes ("more of a boom than a bang," Waverly assures Solo) if you remove it. The upshot is that it affords the wearer ultimate authority over any UNCLE agent. Not magically or scientifically, it's just a special ring that all agents know indicates that its wearer has the same level of authority as Waverly.

It's up to Napoleon to uncover the traitorous spy, so obviously all the new faces we see around the UNCLE office are instantly suspects.

One of the prime suspects is the unnaturally likable agent George. He's officially a security specialist in Division 4. From what I know of the physical security at UNCLE, I have to admit that George is a pretty good candidate. In season 1, THRUSH agents strong-armed their way into UNCLE offices, a woman wandered into the UNCLE office while undressing, and Waverly's brother pen-tested the office and nearly put UNCLE out of business. Honest mistakes, or carefully designed backdoors successfully exploited? Only George knows for sure.

Good UNCLE bad UNCLE

As with the previous episodes dealing with questionable alliances, this was a really engaging and clever episode. It doesn't hurt that the guest cast is so darned likable. Everyone in this episode is a pleasure to spend time with, and I honestly wondered whether George was being prepared as a backup plan in case Robert Vaughn or David McCallum (Solo and Kuryakin) left the show, he's that likable. I'll never know, but this was a fun episode and it really did have me guessing right up until the end.