mission impossible

I fucking love mission impossible!

And right there I can hear all the ”Oh noes.” and screams of disbelief in the far off distance.

And then I got to say.

No no no! Not the Tom Cruise mission impossible movies! I hate those movies, probably even more than most other people, because in my mind they have nothing to do with mission impossible, what so ever! At most they are a very poor imitation of James bond.

What I am talking about, is the original show from the sixties! And if Leonard Nimoy playing a secret agent with the speciality of masquariding, pity thief trickery and imitations for two seasons, my god I don’t know what I am supposed to do convince that this show is awesome.

Seriously though, it’s such a joy seeing Nimoy putting out all the spectre of his acting ability in those seasons, he can do a lot more than just being Spock for sure.

And other than that, even without Nimoy it’s so a joyful show for me. It really comes down to the aspect in agent movies and series that fascinates me the most but I am getting exstremely little of, especially in Hollywood, I am saying never ever will I get it.

Except this show! This entire show is about it, and its’ awesome.

It’s about a groupe of agents, solving their missions, not by force, not by explosives, but by trickery, stealth and just sheer fucking around with who-ever the mission concerns. It’s about getting in and out without being noted.

And to do so they go undercover, they uses disguises they trick them selves out of tight situations rather than pull a gun, guns are only ever last resorts in this series, as agents that relies on their brains they rather trick themselves out, and it’s bloody awesome.

And what this show is also a lot about, it’s the team work! What it’s essential about is the same team, each one with some sort of speciality and the missions they are send out to solve, occasionally some team members would be exchanged, simply because the actors or actresses left the show. However three Characters were pretty much a constant.

Jim Phelps, who is the teams leader and also an accomplished masquerader and strategist.

Barney, who also happens to be the first leading black male in television history, is their handy man and gizmo genius who can do just about any engineering work.

And Willy, who is their strong man.. and yeah.. he is very strong, can do weapons and is just good to have around.

Then in every season but one there would be a lady, and this have been four different actresses doing the show’s run, though the lady’s would always pretty much be capable of the same things, they would kind of just be the masqurader, like Jim Phelps.

Lastly, they had two different tricksters onboard, who was also masqueraders and could do a lot of trickery such a pitch pocketing, illusions and so on. And as noted before, Leonard freaking Nimoy played this part.

They also had a doctor at a point, but he was only in the show for about one and a half season, and even then he was only in one third of the episodes, so I don’t know if it counts.

Which actually seems odd to me, as I find a field doctor to be a very good thing to have on the time, also because he would take the part as chemist rather than Barney.. but who am I to judge what makes sense or no.

And the best part is the massive plots that the team is forging to get to their information or item. We are talking staging a fake nazi submarine so a former Gestapo member is lead to believe that he is among friends, only to have the fake submarine attacked so he believes that he is going to die and thereby willingly give up the information no one could get out of him with torture, we are talking impersonating a terrorist leader to strike up a fake bargain so they can catch an illegal organisation red handed, sharing a prison cell with a convict, then the stage a prison outbreak with said convict to get to the location of a secret document. All sorts of plots!

Though the even better part, things doesn’t necessarily always go as planned, in a episode a team member was undercover as a convict, and was suppose to met up doing mission at a critical point, but then the team member actually got caught by the police long before he made it far enough, and brought to the police station due to the false conviction, thus not meeting up on time, thus the rest of the team suddenly finds themselves in a dia situation they have to use their wits to get out.

In one of my absolutely favourite episodes, Barney is shot doing a mission and is seen by the police running away, so what the episode is basically about is him being wounded while running from the police, trying to find his way to the meeting point, while the team try and diverse the polices attention by staging a fake convict.

Some of their ploys is pretty damn silly though, like when they convince a mobster that they own a mind reading tool, or when they convince the gangsters that one of their team members is actually one of the long since dead gang members, who of cause merely staged his death back in the day and got a plastic operation to change his appearance.. right.. way to use finger print technology guys. And it’s the sixties not the former centuries, they could use fingerprints back then.

Though mostly, it’s extremely inventive, fun and smart, a definite inspiration too much of my own writing as I very much think seeing hero use such inventive smart ways to get out is way way more fun than them just pulling a gun. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone in the worlds, as I really can’t say that the show have aged all that way, and often the viewer would have to be quite attentive to capture what is going on.

But when it works, it works. And it’s great.