(by aramis-112-804880 on 12 December 2014)

"It's Your Funeral" is my favorite episode of "The Prisoner."
In the first place, while the Village is populated by an endless supply of beautiful women (including Jane Merrow in "Schizoid Man" and Angela Browne in "A Change of Mind") the loveliest has to be Annette Andre ("A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"). She is always worth watching.
Then there are two excellent supporting roles from "Danger Man" alumni. Andre van Gysengham is a world-weary Two on his way out. On his way up is Derren Nesbitt. Having played serious hit men in "Danger Man" Nesbitt ("Where Eagles Dare") plays it for laughs here, especially flashing silly faces and doing a lot of business with heavy glasses.
The Trick in this episode is to pay attention to the envelope for "Acting Number Two" -- if you miss that, you're hopelessly lost.
van Gysengham is the real Number Two. It's clear he has been Number Two some time, but it's left ambiguous whether he has been Number Two all along and even great Number Twos like Guy Doleman and Leo McKern are, like Nesbitt's character, merely "acting" Number Twos. Number Six has certainly never seen him before, but Gysengham's Number Two acts as if he's been in the spherical chair a long, long time.
Because of this ambiguity, this episode provides a new and strange level of understanding (or confusion) to the Village's hierarchy.
The Village is never quite comprehensible. In "Schizoid Man" Merrow's character is called Alison, not referred to by a number. In "The Girl Who Was Death" children appear. So is there mating and/or marriage in the Village.? Here, we learn there is an underground movement of people who have maintained their personality and integrity, who have avoided being lobotomized, terrorized or killed, who are acting against their keepers (though their keepers know all about them and don't take them seriously). SPIOLER: As in "Checkmate" we see the masters keep the Villagers in such a state of paranoia no one is willing to trust anyone else enough to work together for escape or for a mass uprising.
The solid bottom of "It's Your Funeral" is nonviolent resistance, as Number Two and Annette Andre work together to thwart an assassination attempt, which will only lead to mass reprisals against the Villagers. This is a lesson that needs to be learned in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when violence is often a first resort to dissatisfaction.
For those who don't quite get "It's Your Funeral" -- I enjoyed the performances and the pulchritude of Annette Andre so much I watched this episode repeatedly before I comprehended it. When I finally pieced it altogether it quickly rose up from the pack as my most cherished episode, even head and shoulders over "Hammer into Anvil." It's one of the few episodes that's sheer fun from start to finish.