Five Thoughts on Another Five Mission: Impossible Episodes

1.) A Long Search for a Cold Day

“Snowball in Hell” originally broadcast on February 18, 1967. Directed by Lee Katzin and written by Judith and Robert Guy Barrows, the episode finds the IMF preventing a sadistic prison warden from selling nuclear secrets. What makes this mission impossible is that those secrets come by the way of a formula only the prison warden knows and a chemical compound that combusts at high temperatures. It should come as no surprise, then, that the country they are dispatched to has an average high of 107 degrees.

Christopher McQuarrier, director of the previous two Mission: Impossible films and the next two upcoming entries, has frequently said Mission will tell you what it is and what it wants. Every idea, no matter how dark or gritty or campy or silly, its processed and rebuilt through the Mission machine, turning out a singular spectacle time after time. When the process is respected. We’ve seen a lot of the show flirting with ideas and conventions of all sorts of genres throughout the first season, and beginning to double down on what works. Yes, we’re looking at it in retrospect, with this knowledge of the catchphrases, music, stunts, and set pieces that have permeated the zeitgeist, which makes it impossible to put us in the mindset of someone watching this on TV on a Saturday night in 1967. Nevertheless, I think Mission, as a series, has a much clearer idea about what it wants now that we enter the home stretch of season one.

And “Snowball in Hell” has many of the elements for what makes a classic Mission: Impossible episode. There’s a complicated and daring caper, with the IMF attempting to pull off three separate, interlocking jobs in order to remove this chemical compound from the corrupt warden’s clutches. There’s the villain, played by the great Ricardo Montalbán, who cheerfully and thrilling devours the entire set. It is glorious. At one point, we’re told he’s into cats, but not that kind that you think. Later on in the episode, he suddenly pulls out a cat o’ nine tails. Now that I think about it, the one thing the TV series might have on the films is the bad guys. Montalbán might be the best of them so far, in no small part because he’s Ricardo Montalbán, but the mustache twirling across the board is something to behold. These guys feel dangerous, present in a way the movies struggle to make for their baddies. Here, they’re interacting, in the best Mission films, they have a tendency to react. The only thing absent is a book mask pull, but at one point Martin Landau does disguise himself as a stack of cardboard boxes.

Katzin and editor Neil Macdonald build genuine tension, cutting around the various operations. And then there’s Gert Andersen, who’s photographed the vast majority of the episodes in season one, delivering the action with clarity and verve. I’ve said it before, but not many TV shows these days throw as much energy behind the filmmaking.

So, yes, “Snowball in Hell” works. It’s firing on all cylinders, identifying the elements that separate Mission from other shows and pushing into them in an effective and exuberant way. It’s sharp and quick and knows what it’s doing and dives in fully to do it.

2.) Rolling the Reels

“Action!” originally broadcast on March 4, 1967. Directed by Leonard J. Horn and written by Robert Lewin, the episode finds the IMF preventing a propagandistic film depicting American troops cold-bloodedly murdering some doctors from being released. What makes the mission impossible is that there are peace talks about to occur between several countries, talks those behind the Iron Curtain don’t necessarily want to go through. Not only that, but the IMF’s target, a neurotic, paranoid, and arrogant filmmaker, keeps everything close and guarded, making it difficult for the team to access their usual tricks.

There’s something quaint, almost adorable about “Action!” It’s an episode that feels particularly outdated, not because of the technology or fashion, not because of the film stock or filmmaking techniques, not because of the way the characters speak or the roles they’re positioned to fill based on their sex or race or body size. This antiquity, this dated idea, comes more from the IMF launching one of their patented complicated operations to stop an incriminating film from being released. Produced by an Eastern European film studio, the film features staged footage of American soldiers committing war crimes stitched into an actual documentary newsreel. At the beginning of the episode, the secretary tells Cinnamon Carter that if this film was released, peace talks with foreign countries would completely break down.

And maybe it’s because we routinely see footage of police officers decked out in heavy gear that seemed intense back when Batman was wearing it, pushing through city streets, brutally attacking its own citizens, its unarmed citizens, with rubber bullets and tear gas, with baton rods and pepper spray, with their tanks, their actual physical tanks, that this idea of stopping an incriminating film feels like it comes from another era. Every angle could be covered and still the authorities and pundits are like, “We don’t know the full picture,” and “There were good people on both sides,” while neo-Nazis and white supremacists and people who think Rorschach is a character you’re supposed to root for, literally fire unnecessarily large weapons into crowds of people.

Let’s be real: it’s not like America didn’t know films could be altered or falsified. Films have been altered and falsified from the beginning. After all, film is a highly subjective medium and audiences had already watched the white supremacy of D.W. Griffith and the blatant idolatry of Leni Riefenstahl. I don’t buy the foreign dignitaries would be put off with what they witnessed in the doctored film. Maybe they thought the raw, unaltered footage offered something close to the truth? But, faced with this, would America actually care? If a film like the one they’re after came out, it’s far more likely the government would be like, whatever, then use their considerable economic influence to get their way. At most, they would have claimed the doctors and medics in the staged jungle setting were actually terrorists and needed to go.

What I think “Action!” wants to go for is this idea that films can change the world, that they have a huge influence on the viewer. You see that pop up in movies about movies a lot. Leonard J. Horn clearly filmed this in and around the Paramount backlot, a peek behind the curtain complete with sound stages and Moviolas. The episode is positioned to celebrate and spotlight the power of film, but, after everything is said and done, we’re left in this shaky border between reality and fiction. One that wishes authorities would do the right thing when faced with incontrovertible evidence.

A couple stray thoughts before we move on: the IMF have never come close to failing than in this episode. Everything goes wrong and we’re not sure how it’s going to go until the last minutes. Also, Dan Briggs doesn’t appear at all in “Action!” Cinnamon Carter serves as team leader, and, if this season has proven anything about the characters, it’s that Cinnamon Carter knows what’s going on much more than anyone realizes, or gives her credit for.

3.) The Svardia Limited

“The Train” originally broadcast on March 18, 1967. Directed by Ralph Senensky and written by William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter, the episode finds the IMF convincing a pro-democratic dying prime minster that he successor plans to turn the country into a dictatorship once he’s gone. What makes this mission impossible is that the prime minster is blinded by fatherly love toward the other man and won’t hear a word against him, even while evidence of his power grab continues to accumulate.

Elements of “Operation Rogosh” and the previous episode, “Action!” permeate throughout here. The back half of the episode features the team staging a train ride through the mountains, setting a trap for the bad guy characters, complete with rear projection, an array of sound effects, specialized hydraulics, and expert levels of bullshitting. Mission knows how much fun it is to watch power-hungry autocrats back themselves into a corner and offers these characters plenty of space to do so.

I’ve made no secret that I see the filmmaking on this show as next level, especially compared with other TV shows of the era. The best episodes found clever ways to stage their actions and choreograph it to the camera. Even in scenes were the characters sit in rooms taking through the plot to each other, there’s a movement, a gravitas, an energy within the blocking and presentation. Probably a major reason Mission: Impossible was so expensive to produce, and probably only someone like Lucille Ball could get it off the ground.

But what I really noticed here, what goes under-appreciated throughout the series, is how much the filmmakers convey visually. There are long sequences throughout “The Train” without dialogue, other than someone telling someone else to prepare the next cue. We watch trains shift back and forth, we watch how they maneuver and manipulate the train car itself to sell their illusion. It’s not for nothing that once the operation is underway, Barney assumes the role of a sound engineer, a DJ, throwing whistles and track noises out like a wizard conducting a symphony of cacophony.

Mission isn’t just ambitious in it approach, but also confident and assured. It’s top-class filmmaking, reaches prestige TV levels and surpasses many of those series, too. It helps us forget “The Train” is an average-at-best episode. It catches us in its drama and movement and it does without having to blatantly explain each and every motivation out loud.

At its heart, this might be why Mission: Impossible works. Not only does it have confidence in itself, but also in its audience, trusts that we’re going to pay attention, takes us seriously. This respect for the viewer carries over to the films as well, so even if we see the usual spy narratives, we’re given them in a way that feels more active and present and engaging.

4.) Pad the Count, Throw One Out

“Shock” originally broadcast on March 25, 1967. Directed by Lee Katzin and written by Laurence Heath, the episode finds the IMF rescuing an American envoy kidnapped but a foreign agent set on sabotaging an exchanging agreement between two countries. What makes this mission impossible is that the envoy has been replaced by an imposter, and if anyone moves against him, the secret agent will kill the original envoy.

I will say, “Shock” has some next level mask play. James Daly plays three different people posing as the same character, though the episode does not too much with the conceit. Conveniently, Daly’s given the chance to take off the mask before the next envoy player steps into the scene. We’re also given a subpar mask pull, which I haven’t decided is better or worse than no mask pull at all.

Apart from that . . . “Shock” commits the most cardinal sin an episode of Mission: Impossible could commit: it’s boring as fuck. I realize the series’ engine is in its formula, and the most engaging episodes find clever ways to exploit that formula, or maneuver within that formula, or let the characters run wild in that formula. “Shock” treads through it, making it to the end like it couldn’t have bothered to start to begin with. There was never enough story to sustain the running time, so we’re treated to long sequences where the IMF walk down corridors or through a warehouse. Even with Lalo’s music setting the scene, these sequences drag on and on.

It borrows from “Operation Rogosh” and “The Frame,” and, branching out, a little bit of Notorious, but it never develops an identity of its own. Even the usual IMF fuckery isn’t as entertaining or engaging as usual. All right, I get it. There are 28 episodes in the first season. They’re not all going to be winners.

5.) Gaslight Anthem

“The Traitor” originally broadcast on April 15, 1967. Directed by Lee Katzin and written by Edward J. Lakso, the episode finds the IMF preventing a former intelligence agent from defecting. What makes this mission impossible is that this former agent is holed up in a foreign embassy, with a a secret message full of vital information he’s using to buy his defection. Not only that, but he’s full of other top secret information he’s all too ready to hand over for the right price.

I’ve noticed Mission: Impossible episodes tend to fall into one of several plots: there’s the classic ones, where the IMF retrieve an item; the ones where they rescue somebody; the ones where they sabotage something; and the ones where they just fuck with a person. All this time, effort, danger, and expense just to drive a person up a wall, gaslight them, or, in how the show actually phrases it, discredit them. “The Traitor” most definitely falls into this latter category, with the IMF getting ambitious, branching out, and fucking with two people. The first is the titular traitor, an American agent defecting behind the Iron Curtain. The second is the Ambassador of this foreign embassy, who, in typical Cold War fashion, is incompetent and angry and brutish and controlling. The IMF have no real reason to fuck with this guy, other than that he’s there and he represents the enemy.

Of all the gaslighting episodes, “The Traitor” probably works the best. We’re talking strict gaslighting here, when it’s the primary mission objective, rather than the episodes where the IMF fuck with someone while also completing a different goal. (Like in “Snowball in Hell.”) These episodes always feel so callow and violating, invasive and intrusive. And the reasoning behind the operations never feel like they’re an actual threat to national security or whatever. Most of the time it’s because the United States would rather deal with the opposition they know, are used to, rather than having to adjust to a new threat. It’s foreign interference through and through, one that strains against the spy fantasy. American foreign meddling is too real, too common, and has caused irreparable damage to many parts of the world.

The IMF’s target here, though, is a former agent, one willing to sell out not in the belief of the other side’s ideals or morals, not because he’s grown passionate about their ethics system, but because they’re offering him a ton of money. If there’s one idea American media has always struggled with, it’s selling out versus making a ton of money. There’s a quaintness to how the characters react to the defector, their derision and hatred for this man. Rollin Hand is fully prepared to leave him to rot in the embassy, let the other side deal with him how they will. These days, the 45th American president openly colludes with Russia and North Korea and nothing happens.

But “The Traitor” does have Eartha Kitt going for it. She shuttles through the vents and breaks into vaults and somersaults over obstacles. Kitt’s flexing effortlessly in her guest appearance and she sells her charisma and intelligence and poise and prowess without many lines of dialogue. She could have probably pulled this whole thing off by herself if she needed.

Mission: accomplished.