A funny thing happened on my way here.

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.

Why do we want characters to change?

So as I'm beating my head against the brick wall that has 'In the Dark' painted on it (graffiti style), I'm slowly getting a better grasp of my protagonist. The first drafting set the framework of the story, but when I wrote it I was thinking about dozens of books and short stories that had the tone I wanted to capture. Now I need to make changes so that I'm playing the notes to produce those tones myself.

One note I realized wasn't right was the fact that my hero, who is not all cuddly and nice to begin with, is the same person at the end of the book that he is at the beginning. A change must be made, but, since knowing the reason helps guide the action, why? Why can't we let our good guy just go through the action, fight the bad guy and win or lose the girl, and then come home and go to bed early so that tomorrow he's ready to do it all over again? Why do we need this person to grow?

In real life, our views on change are selective. If we get a raise, rock on. If we find out our job is moving to the far east without us, well, that stinks. Change can be good or bad, but unless it's the exact kind we're seeking, we tend to view it with distrust. It's a huge, lurking unknown, and I've covered how we feel about that a few times now.

But this is fiction, in print or on a screen. The rules are different, and this fiction has to show us either what we desire or what we fear. For most of us, our lives are filled with struggles. Sometimes we fight to achieve something, but way too often we have to fight to keep what we already have or just to get through the day. We get up, maybe have some coffee and spend a few minutes with our family or the internet, and then we're off to work. The next eight or more hours are spent loading boxes, smiling at customers as they chew us out because they have to read the manual to know how to program their DVR, or whatever needs to be done to pay the mortgage. It's a struggle.

So when John McClean or Douglas Quaid has to fight to try to save some idiot about to get himself killed or find a way to live through his wife betraying him, we empathize. Most of us don't risk getting shot at while we're on the clock (some do. Please don't forget that), but the fact that we both have a fight on our hands gives us something in common with these heroes. It makes them someone we could sit down and have a beer with at the end of the day.

Way back when, my Texas history teacher taught us that one of the characteristics of the people of Texas is our strong work ethic. I think the feeling is not quite as simple as that, and I also think the point is valid for a lot of people, not just those from my home state. We don't just believe that we should work, we believe that if we work hard we'll be rewarded, and not just with our $7.25 per hour. We have faith that if we consistently give our earnest effort, we'll achieve our dream.

Now wouldn't it be great if we could see an example of that play out, right in front of us? If we could see someone who we identify with confirm our deeply-held hope? We could just sit there and nod, saying to ourselves, 'Yep. That's how it should be.'

Let me clarify that this isn't a blank check for our ego. It's safe to say that a lot of us think it would be awfully nice to have a bunch of people that we find attractive at our beck and call. Maybe we'd treat them like a bunch of pampered princes(ses), or maybe we'd keep them in chains and rags because that's what we think they deserve. (I see a future blog post about this) As a fantasy, it's fairly common. Try to make it a reality, and brother you'll open enough cans of worms to fish up every critter in the sea. If our hero doesn't just get the girl at the end of the story, but gets five or six of them, we may cheer and applaud, but we'll also be envious, which would cut back our empathy for him.

Note that this is a cultural attitude mainly of those of us here in the U.S., and that our friends in other countries feel differently. The French in particular seem to be able to be a bit more honest.

Also note that even though I've spoken about a guy through this whole thing, the same principles apply to the heroines in 'chick flicks.' Hope knows no gender, it's just that the movies that try to speak to women directly tend to have less sidekicks and explosions than those aimed at men.

So we need struggle, and we need change. Can we cheer our alter ego saving the farm, getting the girl, or taking the gold-medal for one-armed kayaking? All three? Absolutely. Would we cheer if he loses his home, is asked to be the best man when the woman of his dreams marries his best friend, or succumbs to stage fright just as he's about to enter the kayaking contest? Not unless the denouement shows us that he's learned something about himself. Maybe some day I'll be able to wrap my head around the appeal that tragedies have for some people, but I can't remember the last one I saw or read, and I don't think I've ever seen one willingly.

Damn I can type a lot when I get going on a subject, can't I? Enough pondering for now. Time to write.