22/03/2022

The New Avengers Season 2 Eps 11-13

 

A bitty episode that only gains traction in the final ten minutes, `The Gladiators` sees our team once again in Canada this time on the trail of a KGB agent called Karl Sminsky who may be behind the disappearance of a number of Western operatives. Played with stoic Russian determination by Louis Zorick, Minsky is super trained in disciplined martial arts to the point that he can stop bullets with his hands. Yes, it’s one of those slightly tedious training based plots in which a group of bulky muscle men are put through rigorous tests to find the best. These sequences are almost comically straight faced as the assembled beefy blokes are clearly not actors. They alternate with the Avengers chasing about somewhat randomly for clues allowing us to take in the Canadian scenary. Add to this the preposterous idea that a top secret security organisation would have an open day (even Steed questions the logic of this) and you have a storyline that neither engages nor convinces. 




I’m not sure of the point of setting episodes in Canada in any case. It makes little difference to the plots and takes away some the quintessential Englishness of the series. Nonetheless the producers seem proud to `Present the New Avengers in Canada`. There a couple of genuinely amusing moments- when Steed turns out to be a great friend of the Russian envoy and later when Gambit gets to drive a police car and revels in turning on the siren. Otherwise it’s a bit of a snoozefest till the last ten minutes when some sharp action wakes us up even if the conclusion somewhat undermines Sminky’s earlier rhetoric. Against the Avengers he’s still in second place; perhaps that’s the point. Steed and co are initially pretending simply to be on holiday and I think that would have been more interesting!



The Canadian sojourn continues with the delightfully playful `Forward Base` in which events take place around a secret aquatic Russian enclave on the shore of Lake Ontario. The audience soon grasps the idea of where this place everyone is searching for actually is but the episode has some fun along the way making it clear that this is not a serious story.  Even the explanation of how the base came to be deployed- in the middle of a hurricane- is a quirky one. So its an episode that very much fits into the off kilter aspect we might expect from The Avengers including an extremely slow chase in boats dressed as swans, a fisherman who keeps getting stranded in the water and a melodramatic Russian boss who enjoys listening to classical music. It’s directed with the timing you might expect from a sitcom with perfectly placed reaction shots and a sense of the absurd.

The regulars love it and are clearly at ease with this sort of material displaying the more individualistic performances that marked the first season; Patrick McNee in particular is excellent. There are the usual fatalities of course but nobody seems to be taking things that seriously. It ends with Steed and a fishing rod with a magnet on it as he calls the base to tell them they’ve been rumbled.



There’s a distinct end of term vibe to `Emily` in which the Avengers are chased across the Canadian scenery in an old car which has a bowler hat taped to the roof. The archetypal headgear is protecting a hand print that will identify yet another mysterious agent called The Fox. This time the viewer is quickly shown who this felon is and the fun is in seeing how he attempts to stop the print reaching headquarters. And it is fun to some extent with a light tone from the start and unlike some episodes it never really gets more serious as if the whole thing is a bit if a jape. Quirky banjo led incidental music and incredulous looks from policemen is the order of the day in what is mostly an extended chase scene.

Along the way we have such tomfoolery as Purdey lying astride the car roof as it travels through a car wash, an encounter with a brewer who challenges Gambit to a fight and ultimately the trio being attacked by the Fox who has a shell launcher. The car belongs to an elderly woman who adds to the eccentricity of matters. Some Avengers fans reckon this series wasn’t really an authentic continuation of the classic series so this episode must stand completely on its own as it doesn’t even resemble any other New Avengers episode. Even the lead trio seem different, more relaxed, perhaps they already knew this was to be the last ever episode as indeed it turned out to be.

These Canadian episodes where apparently a necessity as the series was co funded by Canada but it might have been better to have spread them out rather than bunching them together giving the impression that Steed and co have been in Canada for months presumably leaving Britain vulnerable. `Complex` and `Forward Base` are the better two of the four yet the wide open spaces, roads and countryside feels like a different series altogether. Generally the second season suggests the writers had run out of original plots as several of the episodes are a variation on similar themes. Though there were plans for a third series Brian Clemens was preoccupied with The Professionals (which was more suited to his sensibility) and financially it proved unviable. Despite several attempts to relaunch the format `Emily` turned out to be the final ever episode. There was a film of course but nobody talks about that…

 

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