A New Idea: The Little Rewatch

[tinturtle]

I had a really good time writing my longish Professionals fic The Wind and the Rain. Pretty much the only parts of the process I didn't like were the parts where I wasn't feeling well enough to work on it. Now I want to write more fanfic. In particular, I'd like to write another Man from U.N.C.L.E. fic. (I posted a short one in 2021.) To do that, though, I need to refamiliarize myself with the show; it's been a long time since I watched it regularly.

That need gave me the idea to do a rewatch of the entire Man from U.N.C.L.E.. All 105 episodes feels like a lot to work through, though, if my main goal is to get to a point where I can write some fic. Also, I don't think it's controversial to say that some MFU episodes just aren't very good. Thus, I'm thinking of restricting myself to the list that I generated some time ago by asking other fans to name their favorite few episodes. (The list was part of my eventually abandoned project to run a regular social MFU watch.) I ended up with 51 episodes, which appear below in filming order.

Season One - 14 episodes
The Shark Affair
The Quadripartite Affair
The Giuoco Piano Affair
The Dove Affair
The Project Strigas Affair
The Terbuf Affair
The Fiddlesticks Affair
The Mad Mad Tea Party Affair
The Bow Wow Affair
The See Paris and Die Affair
The Hong Kong Shilling Affair
The Never Never Affair
The Girls of Nazarone Affair
The Gazebo in the Maze Affair

Season Two - 13 episodes
The Ultimate Computer Affair
The Recollectors Affair
The Foxes and Hounds Affair
The Tigers Are Coming Affair
The Arabian Affair
The Cherry Blossom Affair
The Children's Day Affair
The Adriatic Express Affair
The Deadly Goddess Affair
The Foreign Legion Affair
The King of Diamonds Affair
The Project Deephole Affair
The Bat Cave Affair

Season Three - 13 episodes
The Monks of St. Thomas Affair
The Galatea Affair
The Her Master's Voice Affair
The Pop Art Affair
The Thor Affair
The Concrete Overcoat Affair, Part I
The Concrete Overcoat Affair, Part II
The Come With Me to the Casbah Affair
The Off-Broadway Affair
The Take Me to Your Leader Affair
The Suburbia Affair
The Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum Affair
The When in Roma Affair

Season Four - 11 episodes
The Deadly Quest Affair
The Test-Tube Killers Affair
The Thrush Roulette Affair
The Master's Touch Affair
The Summit Five Affair
The Maze Affair
The Prince of Darkness Affair, Part I
The Prince of Darkness Affair, Part II
The Fiery Angel Affair
The Survival School Affair
The Gurnius Affair

(I'm a bit surprised by what a high percentage of the episodes in Season 4 ended up being mentioned, since I've heard many fans say they don't like that season.)

At this point, I started feeling sad that I would be watching so much MFU and no Professionals. The number of Pros episodes is also in the 50s, so I could have chosen a few more MFU episodes and maybe weeded out a few from Pros—*cough* Blackout *cough*—then alternated them. MFU is still the show I'm trying to bone up on, though, so I decided maybe I'd do a similar highlights tour of Pros. I was able to find a list I'd made a long time ago after asking LJ Pros fans for their favorite episodes. It contained 22 entries, and appears below, again in filming order.

Production Run 1
Killer with a Long Arm
Heroes
Everest Was Also Conquered
Stake Out

Production Run 2
Rogue
Hunter/Hunted
First Night
The Rack
Man Without a Past
In the Public Interest
Blind Run

Production Run 3
Runner
Mixed Doubles
The Purging of CI5
Fugitive
The Acorn Syndrome
Slush Fund
Involvement

Production Run 4
Kickback
Discovered in a Graveyard
The Ojuka Situation
No Stone

Then it occurred to me that if I chose one more MFU episode and three more Pros ones, I could watch two MFU followed by one Pros twenty-five times, then two more MFU at the end. Accordingly, I picked the following supplements:

MFU
Season 1 - The Secret Sceptre Affair

Pros
Production Run 2 - Backtrack
Production Run 3 - Need to Know
Production Run 4 - The Untouchables

And there you are: a detailed plan for what, if I proceed with it, I'm going to call The Little Rewatch (in contrast to a Great Rewatch). I'm not going to set any kind of timetable for this, since consistency is very much not my strong suit. (That's what happened to the social MFU watch, sadly.) As I go along, though, I will probably post some informal thoughts on what I watch. I'm not sure yet whether they should be in my journal or in the appropriate fandom comms.

Let me know what you think. I know I've got a bit of a tendency to try to organize everything, but it's been making me happy in the case of my fanfic reading games, so this seems worth a try. This post itself has cheered me up on a bad night.

Comments

[timemidae]

Oooh, I'm so excited to hear your further MFU thoughts. I've found myself rewatching a bunch of season 1 lately and it's been fun.

[tinturtle]

So far I've only watched The Shark Affair. I might have some thoughts about that. I haven't decided.