THE PLOT:
Gorgeous Mary Lee Townsend is the daughter of a conservative American senator. Disowned by her father after taking part in Freedom Marches and antiwar protests, she now works as a flight attendant for American Airlines - and also as a low-level courier for the other side. The CIA approach Hunter for a favor: Frame Mary Lee for a non-political crime, something that will put her safely in prison for the remainder of her father's term.
Hunter sets to work immediately, assigning a promising female agent the task of setting up Mary Lee to look like a drug pusher. However, there is one complication Hunter hasn't taken into account. Mary Lee has a boyfriend in London. A certain David Callan...
CHARACTERS:
Callan: Is besotted with Mary Lee, but that doesn't dull his senses. When she loses track of some unspecified "papers," he instantly realizes what sort of mess she's gotten herself into. He gives her the best advice possible - to just get out of it. Still, he can't help but protect her, particularly when he realizes that she's put herself into Hunter's sights, leading him to a painful final decision.
Col. Hunter: "Do you ever find our trade disgusting?" he asks operative Charlotte Rigby as they prepare to frame Mary Lee. Charlotte replies that she only thinks of their actions as "necessary," but it's clear from his question and from descriptions of him looking "weary" that he is less sanguine. This character beat actually echoes a few moments from Series One (notably his distaste for Meers' sadism), indicating that his external detachment may have at least in part been a front.
Mary Lee: She despises her father, and there's a sense that her dedication to social justice is as much to rebel against him as anything else. Certainly, there's nothing noteworthy about her political convictions, which fall firmly within the stereotype of the self-righteous campus radical. That creates the single biggest problem with the script: I simply never believe that Callan feels anything for someone this naive and shallow.
THOUGHTS:
An unproduced script by James Mitchell, Goodbye, Mary Lee "reads" like a Series One episode. Mitchell likely intended it for Series Two, before two things happened that made the script untenable: actor Ronald Radd did not return for Series Two, and incoming producer Reginald Collin (wisely) made the decision to make Callan a full-time Section member. A new Hunter could have been written around; but the amount of rewriting needed to make this story work with Callan inside the Section would have been equivalent to creating a whole new teleplay.
Had this been produced, I think it would have ranked among the series' weaker entries. The entire story relies on the odds-defying coincidence that Callan's current girlfriend is also the target of Hunter's operation. I suspect this is the exact sort of thing that made Collin determined to reformat the show. Even in the filmed Series One episodes, the ways in which Callan became entangled with The Section often stretched suspension of disbelief. This script outright snaps it. Even if Mary Lee wasn't a dreadfully scripted character, it would be hard to buy into this particular setup.
Had this been filmed, the main things that would have been interesting to see would have been the realization of the "psychedelic party" that forms the story's main set piece (it probably would have been laughable). I also would have personally enjoyed watching the scene with Ronald Radd's Hunter out-cheating Lonely at cards.
Whether by design or coincidence, elements similar to this script did make their way into some early Series Two episodes. The idea of Callan trying to protect a naive young woman who foolishly made herself a target for the enemy? That is the basic premise for The Most Promising Girl of Her Year, which ended up being one of Series Two's stronger episodes. Callan getting romantically involved with a young woman who is linked to a current crisis? That would be one piece of the excellent Let's Kill Everybody. Whether this was deliberate recycling or not, in both cases, the filmed episodes made better use of the ideas than the unproduced script.
In the end, I'd rate Goodbye, Mary Lee as an interesting curio. But I can't say that I'm sorry that it didn't end up as an episode of the series.
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