Thanks to Netflix, I have something of a nightly ritual now. I found
out a while back that if I get really into working on something and
then try to go to bed, mental inertia keeps my head running in the
same direction for a couple of hours. Lying there in the dark, I
keep getting ideas for new stories and little insights on how I could
improve existing ones. So I'll turn on a flashlight (I accidentally
turned on the over head light once in the middle of the night when I
thought Claudia was still up and in her study. The sounds she made
convinced me that between midnight and six AM my loving wife is
replaced by some alien life form that is both homicidal and
photosensitive. I now use the flashlight) and write my new ideas
down. Then three minutes later another idea will pop up. You see
where this is going.
So I enjoy some TV reruns to shift my brain into neutral before
closing down. I watch shows I saw and loved when I was younger, and
some of the shows that gave the seeds of ideas that are still banging
around in my mind today. One of these was the original Mission:
Impossible series, truly a gem if there ever was one.
I started at the beginning, and got a shock when I discovered that
stoic Peter Graves has not always been the infallible leader of our
team. Steven Hill was originally in that position, and did a good
job of it. But I'm noticing something else, too.
As I work my way through them, I'm re-watching some of the ones that
made a big impression on me. That's where I got another one of those
moments where I have to admit, just to myself, that I'm not a kid any
more.
You know the premise of the show. Mister Phelps gets a set of
instructions on a tape-recorder that's been stashed in an abandoned
car somewhere, or hidden in a phone booth marked 'Out of order.' He
briefs his team of super-spies, and then they dive right into the
action. We know what they need to do, but because a detail or two
from the plan never gets mentioned, we don't know exactly how they're
going to do it. Somewhere along the line, something seems to go
wrong. But more often than not, it turns out to have been part of
the strategy from the beginning.
I never questioned how none of those tape recorders were ever
discovered and vandalized by kids, or how Phelps’s car was never
stolen when he left it parked in the street with the top down.
Having studied a bit of electronics engineering and a smattering of
statics, I now look at all those neat toys with a bit of skepticism,
wondering how much range a detonator with no antenna would have and
pondering what metal that expanding beam has to be made of to go all
the way across a room without collapsing under its own weight. But
the biggest shock is coming from the tension in the scenes. Most of
them are repeats for me, and at some point over all the years I'm
sure I've gone over them all in head at one point or another. I've
probably even used them as a model when I'm trying to give to readers
the same effect that these shows had on me. What you take in when
you're young forms your framework.
Good grief but some of those lines are campy. Peter Graves sounds
like he's reciting Shakespeare, and Martin Landau hams it up enough
to be a three course Christmas dinner. Peter Lupus and Greg Morris
now seem just a little stiff, though I've found one episode where
they both get a bit more of the spotlight.
On the other hand, damn but Barbara Bain seems to be made of ice.
She's got a lot more on screen presence than I ever remember. It
really is a pity they didn't let her get a little more hands-on with
the dirty work. She could have pulled it off. On the other hand, it
probably would have made people's heads explode, back then. The TV
watching audience of that time likely wasn't ready to see a ruthless
female. Might be part of the reason that real-world female agents
were so effective.
It's like someone went back in time and made them all re-film every
episode, with none of what really mattered to me in the show. I have
my memories, and they don't match what I see. How? Well, it's
difficult to admit this, but the obvious answer is that the change
isn't in the show, but in my head. Some of the episodes were made
before I was even born, so I couldn't have been too old when I saw
them. The thought of having once been naïve enough to worry whether
the team would survive, let alone succeed, is, well, let's just say I
plan on claiming my blog was hacked on the day this post was written
if I ever get asked about it.
Am I going to stop watching? Heck no. Even with the mismatch, to me
this series will always be the standard that all the others are
judged against. This show emphasized wit over brawn, and the agents
are more like con men than soldiers. Without Mission Impossible, I
don't think there would have ever been shows like Hustle, or
Macgyver. It had, and still has, the appeal of being a little more
sophisticated than what the James Bond franchise became for a while.
Unrealistic gadgets or no, there's a lot of the real here.
So I'll watch it, after I write.
