“Memory” broadcast on September 24th, 1966. Directed by Charles Rondeau (who would go on to direct a substantial number of episodes this season) and written by Robert Levin, it finds Dan Briggs’s Impossible Mission Force team stopping a burgeoning tyrant in Eastern Europe. A man who is “trying to start a war and succeeding,” Briggs remarks.
1.) Assassins? What Assassins?
From the start, Briggs is told assassination is not an option. The dissent needs to come from within the agitator’s ranks, making it a sort of proto-Inception sort of job. Additionally, this group possesses a list of field agents that Briggs’s superiors would really like to see. In order to pull this off, Briggs hires Joseph Bausch, an actor recovering from alcohol addition with a photographic memory. Their plan involves him impersonating a famous agent, getting thrown in prison, and tearing everything down from the inside.
What struck me was how Briggs was told assassination was off the table, but the troops end up executing the agitator anyway. I don’t know, but I think even if the IMF didn’t pull the trigger themselves, their actions and manipulations led to this guy getting taken out of the picture. Sounds like an assassination to me. And it’s not like they feel anything about it. Chalk another tally mark up on the board that shows governments toppled and rulers disposed from American meddling. At least this guy was established as being a massive ass.
2.) Gadgets!
While the team used various equipment in the pilot, most of their mission was executed by slight-of-hand, misdirection, and sneaking around. “Memory” is ready to appeal to the spy fantasy. Gadgets and gizmos appear throughout, almost like it was making up for lost time. The benefit of this is that Greg Morris’s Barney Collier is given more to do this time around rather than sneaking through the air ducts pretending to look for rats. He makes a device to trick the security camera. He installs a smoke bomb. He hot-wires a fuse box so that when it goes off, it gives some security guards an electric shock. We still don’t see ejector car seats or jetpacks, and that gives the episode a stronger plausibility.
Still, they do rely extensively on misdirection. Some of the best moments of the episode, the ones that most feel like Mission, involve them disappearing into the shadows or disappearing from the guard tower’s view for a split second.
3.) Let’s Hear It for Cinnamon Carter Again, Because I Don’t Think They Heard It All the Way in the Back
I argued last time that the show exists in an ambiguity. The IMF are dealing with political maneuverings and manipulations, are traveling to other countries to upset their systems, yes, but everything is so generic and so much more focused on the single mission that the politics of the time period don’t rear themselves as loudly as other shows. That being said, Mission: Impossible was a show created in the ’60s and it treats its sole woman character with a ’60s sensibility. “Memory” doesn’t give Cinnamon Carter much of a presence, though she does have some of the best moments of the episode.
For instance, at one point, the IMF are making a film to distract the security cameras at a prison. Some cops show up and they quickly pretend like they’re making a “New Wave thing.” Cinnamon buddies up with Martin Landau, himself posing as the person they want to bust out of jail, and starts to unbutton her blouse. The cops are disposed of and she turns to Briggs and says, “You waited two buttons longer than you had to.”
Then, she gets to type a letter.
4.) Who Are They?
The Mission: Impossible pilot came bursting onto TV screens with confidence and zest and gusto. It was snappy, it was a thrill. I don’t think I appreciated the extent of that confidence and zest and zeal until I watched this episode. “Memory” isn’t bad, it’s just confused and messy and unsure of itself. Rondeau never generates the tension this episode needs, so the set pieces are never lively or engaging, but more a series of things we watch happen, a checklist of action sequences.
“Memory” isn’t clear about its stakes or goals, nor is it great at finding ways to undermine those stakes and goals. The episode follows the IMF recruiting an actor recovering from addiction to infiltrate a Eastern European military operation, sow dissent, and find a list of spies. The opening scene finds Dan Briggs explaining to Joseph Bausch their plan and how he thinks it will go and . . . the episode pretty much unfolds as he predicts. There are some obstacles, but nothing comes of them. Bausch is constantly tempted by a bottle of brandy this colonel torturing him has laying around, but he never takes from it. When one IMF team member tells Briggs that he thinks Bausch was drinking, Briggs says, “No. He’s on the level.” And that’s that.
Continued belowThen I think they were supposed to break Bausch out during a staged fire? This fails and they have to come up with Plan B. I wasn’t too clear about the whole thing, especially because they were quick to run off during the moment. I thought it was another part of their master operation.
These obstacles feel obligatory, hand motions. They’re quickly overcome and the IMF don’t seem to be too put out by them. It’s one thing to have professionals enact a well done job, but it’s much more interesting to watch how they react to situations they hadn’t planned for.
It also doesn’t help this episode feels so cheap. It does a poor job of hiding its sets. One of them looks like the backdrop from Between Two Ferns: a navy blue background with some prop trees placed in front of it. What’s worse, this doesn’t match with the set in the reverse shot, which, again, isn’t a location shot or anything, but the production designers at least spent more time building it up and selling its seclusion.
Rondeau approaches “Memory” with a more classical, point-and-shot style of filmmaking. His basic setups and compositions never find that verve from the pilot. Editor Robert Watts can’t find a rhythm, either. There are moments when the episode jerks back and forth, moments where he holds too long, moments where he’s deliberately trying to hide an ADR line.
“Memory” is the second Mission episode, and therefore one that doesn’t have a firm grasp on the series’ identity because the series doesn’t yet have an identity. It all but abandons some of the setup. There’s no “Your mission should you choose to accept it,” or “If any of your IMF team are killed or captured, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of their actions.” The lack of that beat kills the momentum right off the bat. So, what we see is an energetic opening episode followed by something that’s far too willing to follow TV filmmaking conventions. And that throws it into a weird place that feels generic and forgettable.
5.) Ties to the Franchise
There were a couple beats I noticed that made another appearance in the films. You could argue for the prison break, because Ghost Protocol had that prison break at the beginning, but there are 171 episodes of this show and I’m willing to bet this wasn’t the first time they busted someone out from behind bars. The most noticeable beat I saw was the effort to get the list of secret agents out in the field. This is similar to the NOC list in the De Palma film. Again, this is a small enough detail I bet we’ll see it pop up again and again. There’s 171 episodes, they’re not all going to be winners. This time, it led to a prison break, rather than one of the most iconic set pieces of all time.
Anyway, the IMF escape again, mission accomplished.
