Discuss Mission: Impossible

This is the second episode of the season (note to fellow Honorary IMF agents: I may change my review at a later date if I noticed some important plot point on a rewatch.)

This is the story of a disgruntled scientist who thinks that America doesn't appreciate him and his wonderful weapon of mass destruction. So he's arranged to sell it to a foreign buyer then move to Switzerland and live happily ever after. The IMF gets the assignment and gets to work. However, a mysterious bad guy (who is Larry Tate from Bewitched of all people!), has entered the situation and wants to buy the WMD as well. In seasons four through seven most of the episodes have had third parties (some innocents, mostly not) stumbling into the IMF operations. The interuption was usually resolved well. So Larry calls the scientist, tells him he's being watched, and he'll be in touch.

The IMF grabs the scientist, who shall now be called Sparky and drives him to police HQ, then Willie and another agent let Sparky believe there's been a nuclear explosion that conveniently blows up in front of their office window. Meanwhile, back at Larry's office......Larry has no idea what the hell is going on and has a bought cop try find out. After a conversation with Lt. Uhura (I have no idea why she was there, either) at the REAL police HQ, the cop tells Larry the men who picked up Sparky are bogus(I always wanted to use that word!) Moving on.....Sparky comes out of his daze and notices that he's working on some kind of assembly line. He finds out that He looks about 28 years older and (of course) he has no idea what is happening. He then gets put in a cell with Barney, so Barney can do his world famous "Jamaican exposition" act.

Barney tells his new friend Sparky that their two countries have been at war for 18 years (we've been at war for 18 years with JAMAICA?) The situation is dire, Jamaica is about to nuke us (Jamaica has NUKES?) Could you possibly help us stop them? Yes, Sparky replies, I believe I can.

So, Sparky gets taken to Jim and an importantly dressed bunch of extras, gives the location of the WMD, Jim tells Sparky he's been punked, Larry Tate, who's been watching all of this from afar, curses and drives away.

This episode made great use of one of the buildings that was destroyed in the Earthquake that happened in the Los Angeles area a couple of years previously. I was going to say that I'm getting sick of the phony time- jump ploy, but really can't since it's the last season. I'd rate this one average.

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@sukhisoo comet In another thread I mentioned that one of the differences between Jim Phelps and Dan Briggs was that while Jim "might" shoot a bad guy, Dan would "definitely" shoot a bad guy.

They both are willing to do what it takes

True, but I always got the impression that Dan was tougher than Jim.

One of the reasons I grew to like Stephen Hill as Dan Briggs was that he had an otherworldly, elusive way about him.

@LansingFan said:

One of the reasons I grew to like Stephen Hill as Dan Briggs was that he had an otherworldly, elusive way about him.


He was certainly elusive from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.

@wonder2wonder said:

@LansingFan said:

One of the reasons I grew to like Stephen Hill as Dan Briggs was that he had an otherworldly, elusive way about him.


He was certainly elusive from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.

When I read about Stephen Hill's refusal to work during that period, I think about my dad. For religious reasons, he also didn't work from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. This was okay except for the period when he was a junior high school basketball coach.

Fortunately, the school didn't schedule the games. Instead, he had to coordinate games with other coaches in the region. This meant that all of the games his teams would play would either be on weekdays or on Saturday nights. The school was a little frustrated because Friday nights would have been the most popular draw. He stuck to his guns, though.

He always coached winning seasons and even had a couple of years where his team went undefeated.

Still... his "No Friday Nights" insistence irked the higher ups and he had to stop coaching.

That was okay, I guess. He only got paid $200 for the entire season and it was in small bills and change. I think it came directly from the concession revenue.

When Steven Hill was hired to play Dan Briggs, he told the show's producers that he was an Observant Orthodox Jew and he couldn't work on the Jewish Sabbath. Apparently, from what I can figure out, the producers didn't seem to realize that Steven wasn't kidding about observing the Sabbath.

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