This week in TV Guide: October 18, 1969

It could be said that the history of Mission: Impossible falls into three distinct eras: the first, which covers only the inaugural season and features Steven Hill as M;I leader Dan Briggs; the second, which began with Hill's replacement by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps; and the third, which is marked by the departures of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, rendering the remainder of the series, to a large degree, forgettable. This week, we get a look behind the scenes at what instigated the show's fall from the summit. 

It involves, as is so often the case, a behind-the-scenes power struggle at Paramount, where the series is produced. The heavy, according to Richard Warren Lewis in his 10-page article (expect this to be a dramatically condensed version), is Douglas Cramer, vice president in charge of production at Paramount. He's been charged with reducing the costs of producing Mission: Impossible, which is a very successful, but also a very expensive, program; each episode costs Paramount more than $225,000, while the network pays the studio little more than $170,000 (plus a "small sum" of foreign sales) to air it. Cramer (whom Lewis describes as "sipping a Bloody Mary in a studio office he had decorated with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg abstracts," ordered creator and executive producer Bruce Geller to reduce what he called the series' "alarming" expenses, both in front of and behind the cameras. Geller, furious about what he took to be "insinuations and implications that he had operated in bad faith," voiced his own objections about Cramer's meddling. 

While this was going on, Cramer was inspecting the various assets of the program with an eye to what brought M:I the greatest value. His conclusion was that "the audience buys the show itself, rather than those who populate it," with the exception of Peter Graves, who was seen as the glue that held the entire show together. The study also suggested that it would be possible to find a substitute for Martin Landau, whom Lewis characterizes as "undoubtedly one of the most charismatic performers on television," but who also came at a high price ($6,500 per episode, residuals amounting to 75 percent of his full salary, and an additional $60,000 "to be used by him personally for developing properties"), and had a unique year-to-year contract, rather than the standard five-year contract. Geller accuses Cramer of looking for an excuse to get rid of Landau; "Right from the beginning, he did not want Marty back. I don’t know why."

Paramount and Landeau came to loggerheads on negotiating a contract for the fourth season; Paramount offered to bring him back as a guest star for half of the season's episodes, which Landau's representative, Ed Hookstratten, rejected out of hand. Michael Dann, vice president of programming at CBS, pleaded with Paramount to do whatever it took to bring Landau back, but he was, according to Lewis, "dealing from less than a powerful position," as existing contracts prevented the network from exercising creative control over the show or its cast. "That [expletive] Doug Cramer is crazy," he complained. "The real truth of the matter is that he wants to show he’s bigger than anybody involved in the show. He wants control. The loss of Landau is a great tragedy. CBS is terribly upset.'

Meanwhile, Landau's wife and co-star Barbara Bain, a multiple Emmy winner for the show, was experiencing contract difficulties of her own. Paramount had yet to pick up her option for the fourth year of her five-year contract, and when she was notified to report to the studio on Monday for wardrobe-and-makeup discussions, she refused, telling the studio that Monday was her maid's day off, and Tuesday she was scheduled to do promos for the American Cancer Society and the Heart Association. She asked for permission to report on Wednesday, but heard nothing back from the studio. Instead, Cramer moved to charge her with breach of contract and sought to replace her with Dina Merrill. Bain filed a countersuit alleging not just breach of contract but defamation of character. Geller fumed, and didn't recast the part at all.

So at this point, Cramer has succeeded in reducing costs, and imposing a lower budget on the show, not to mention putting some of his own people on the production staff. Geller, angered by Cramer's moves and resentful of Cramer's people, says, "Mr. Cramer has provided an aura under which it is very difficult to operate. The crew doesn’t feel that. this is a happy place to work. Nor do they feel that management has a high opinion of them. I’m terribly upset. People are depressed, irritated, unhappy—almost despairing. | have a hit show, a hit operation and a flop management." CBS is furious; Dann says that "Cramer has jeopardized the show in the most serious way possible. He has interfered creatively, telling them how to do the show. This is from a man who has never produced a show." Bain says she doesn't know what is going on, and Landau, working on a movie in Sicily, comments only on the camaraderie shared by the old cast.

Cramer vows that the viewer "will see a show in no way different from what he has seen in the past," and predicts that Nimoy will be "superb" in the role. Neither prediction is accurate; Nimoy, frustrated by a lack of depth to his character, will leave after the show's fifth season. Lesley Ann Warren is brought in for the fifth season, but never hits it off, and leaves at the same time as Nimoy; Peter Lupus is reported to be replaced by Sam Elliott, who appears in several episodes, but an outpouring of viewer support forces Lupus to be brought back. While the series itself will survive until the end of its seventh season, it never attains the heights and panache of those first three seasons. Cramer leaves Paramount in 1971 to form his own production company, and later joins forces with Aaron Spelling. After all, you know what they say about people failing upwards.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup.

Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled: Cyd Charisse, comics Bill Dana and Joan Rivers, Spanish singer Raphael, Australian songstress Lana Cantrell, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis and his band, puppet Topo Gigio, and Tanya the Elephant.

Palace: Diana Ross and the Supremes (Cindy Birdsong and Mary Wilson) do a return engagement as Palace hosts, Guests: Sammy Davis Jr., Laugh-In’s Alan Sues, ventriloquist Willie Tyler and the Jackson Five (aged 7-16), Diana’s proteges.

From an entertainment standpoint, this week's winner depends largely on your taste in entertainment. From a historical perspective, however, I think it's fairly easy to see who comes out on top. With Diana and the Supremes, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Jackson Five, the Palace not only has a talent edge, but when you include Willie Tyler (and, undoubtedly, Lester), it's an example of a mainstream network variety show with an almost entirely black lineup. My, how the times have changed. This week, Palace takes the crown.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

When CBS's sitcom The Governor and J.J. premiered, William Drinkwater (Dan Dailey) was introduced merely as the governor of a quiet Midwestern state. That didn't prevent speculation as to which state he was supposed to be from, especially as the series was in the habit of introducing real-life state governors playing themselves in cameo roles. (According to the Teletype, Florida's Claude Kirk has just been signed as the fifth governor to do so.) One leading theory was that the state in question was Minnesota, a state which was highly regarded at the time and hadn't yet fallen into the cesspool of crime and homelessness. We never did find out just what state the Guv was from, but that doesn't stop Cleveland Amory from giving a qualified thumbs-up to this series.

Given the dismal state of sitcoms in 1969, Cleve says, "this show is probably as good a comedy half-hour as you're likely to get. It is fast-paced, reasonably funny and even, for this type of program, relatively sophisticated. But beyond that we will not go." It's wildly implausible (if you believe these characters, then this show "is after your bedtime and you should not be watching it"), and there hasn't really been a good TV show about politics since Slattery's People. The plots, so far, have featured such dilemmas as the widowed governor's daughter, J.J. (Julie Sommars), discovering that the chairs put out for her appearance at the opening of the art museum are covered with the same material as her dress. Come to think of it, if that was the worst we had to anticipate from our politicians, things really were better back then.

Nevertheless, as Amory pointed out at the beginning, there are bright spots. "Dan Dailey is very good as Ronald Reagan and Julie Sommars makes an excellent Julie Nixon." James Callahan, as the governor's press secretary, is good as well, and the dialogue is generally fun, if not always funny. Speaking from the perspective of a former Minnesotan, however, I can promise you that Dan Dailey as governor would be at least twice as good as the current incumbent—and Dailey has been dead for 45 years. That's politics for you.

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The new television season may only be a month old, but of course it's never too early to start worrying (or celebrating) about ratings, and with the first report in, there's room for both—sometimes with the same show! Take Get Smart, which during the off-season was cancelled by NBC and picked up by CBS. It finished 66th for the week, and that's bad news. But, it got better ratings that the shows it was up against, Let's Make a Deal on ABC and High Chaparral on NBC, and that's good news. And, CBS boss Mike Dann gloats, wait until next month when the Smarts have triplets. "The ratings should leap up," he tells Richard K. Doan in this week's Doan Report, "and Get Smart could have a five- or six-year run!" Or more likely seven months, to be precise: the show's final episode airs on May 15, 1970.

Last summer's success, Hee Haw, is said to be on the sidelines warming up to replace the weakest of the network's new shows: Medical Center. Guess again; Medical Center winds up not only surviving the year, but becoming one of the longest-running medical shows on television, running for seven successful seasons,* while Hee Haw instead replaces The Leslie Uggams Show. Other shows in trouble: The Good Guys (also on CBS), The Music Scene, The New People, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (another import from NBC), Land of the Giants, and It Takes a Thief on ABC; and The Andy Williams Show on NBC (suffering from being up against The Jackie Gleason Show). Of those shows, only Andy lives to see another season.

*Tied with Marcus Welby, M.D., which also ran for seven seasons, beginning and ending in the same seasons as Medical Center.

As for the hits, the aforementioned Marcus Welby debuted in the top ten, as did The Bill Cosby Show. Welby stays there for awhile, as we know, while Cos continues through next season—but he'll be back.

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A note at the beginning of the program section warns us that if the World Series is still going, games six and seven will pre-empt regular programming. That's not a problem, since the New York Mets completed perhaps the greatest story in baseball history by defeating the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday to win the Series a mere seven years after setting baseball's all-time record for losses in one season. That doesn't mean the week's without history, though.

To put things in context, remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, the NBA Game of the Week didn't start until January (after football season), so for a network to televise a game in October, it has to be a special occasion. And this Saturday is one of those occasions, as Wide World of Sports presents the regular season debut of the Milwaukee Bucks' Lew Alcindor, one of the most heralded rookies to ever enter the NBA. (11:00 a.m. PT, ABC) Alcindor, who played three seasons with UCLA, was twice named Player of the Year, set a college record for field goal percentage, and won three national championships. The Bucks had earned the first pick in the draft by finishing with the NBA's worst record in their inaugural season. They won 27 games that first year; with Alcindor in the lineup, they would win 56 games and finish in second place; in their third season they won the NBA championship, and Alcindor was named MVP. Alcindor, who will change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the year after that title victory, will retire in 1989 as the NBA's all-time leading scorer, with six MVP awards, six NBA championships, 19 selections as a league All-Star, and a memorable role in Airplane. 

There's one more sports story, of a sort: on Sunday, NBC presents a repeat of the 1968 TV movie Heidi. (7:00 p.m.) It's been almost a year since the memorable 1968 Heidi Game, in which the network cut away from a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game that was running late in order to show the start of Heidi, only to have the Raiders come from behind with two touchdowns in the final minute to defeat the Jets. Thus, this note:

For the record, the Oakland Raiders are once again involved in the late contest, this time hosting the Buffalo Bills in a game that would have kicked off at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. The Raiders come out on top, 50-21, and I can guarantee the situation with Heidi did not repeat itself.

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Kraft Suspense Theatre had a nice two-year run on NBC from 1963 to 1965, but while the series consistently featured well-known performers and decent scripts, few of the episodes really made an impression, either in first-run or syndication. Saturday's episode (11:30 p.m., Channel 4), however, is an exception: it's "Rapture at 240," the pilot for Run for Your Life, with Ben Gazzara as attorney Paul Bryan, who learns that he has only a year or two to live. It's an interesting concept, yet another variation on The Fugitive, but the problem with turning it into a series was that it was self-limiting: two years at the most, according to his doctor. And while series have always played fast and loose with the passage of time (Combat!, Hogan's Heroes, and M*A*S*H all ran far longer than their respective wars, for example), Gazzara himself thought the show lost credibility when it returned for a third season. Maybe they could have given him a brain tumor or something instead, one of those deals where it could burst in ten minutes or ten years, or go away completely. I'm probably overthinking it.

Frank Sinatra Jr. gets to follow in his famous father's footsteps on Sunday, as the 25-yera-old singer gets his first network special, filmed in and around Las Vegas. (9:00 p.m., CBS) Joining the junior Sinatra in "With Family and Friends" are Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr., Nancy Sinatra, the Doodletown Pipers, Arte Johnson, Jack E. Leonard, and the Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team. Oh, and a duet with dad. 

I mention this because in order to catch Frank Jr., you'll have to pass up ABC's Sunday Night Movie, Stagecoach (9:00 p.m.), a remake of the John Ford classic that, according to Judith Crist, "embodies all that has gone wrong with movies in the past 30 years—unspectacular spectacle, violence for its own de-luxe-color bloody sake, dialogue riddled by maudlin sociology and five-cent psychiatry and inept performances by ersatz stars." Included in the cast are Ann-Margret, Alex Cord, Red Buttons, Mike Connors, Bing Crosby, Bob Cummings, Van Heflin, Slim Pickens, Stefanie Powers, and Keenan Wynn. And still the movie doesn't work. 

Nineteen sixty-nine marks the 100th anniversary of college football, commemorated in a CBS special, "100 Years Old and Still Kicking," hosted by Charles Kuralt. (Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.) Kuralt looks back at the game's history dating back to a painting of the first college game, played between Princeton and Rutgers, and film by Thomas Edison at the turn of the century. There are also clips of great stars, including Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Knute Rockne, Glenn Davis, and Doc Blanchard; scenes from movies showing the game's role in pop culture; and how television has helped the game boom. Oh, and since CBS only shows a couple of college bowl games each season, there's also a segment on the professional game, including the Super Bowl. I'd think Kuralt would be just about right hosting a program like this. 

Speaking, as we were, of Get Smart, Friday night's episode is well worth a look, as Broderick Crawford guest stars in "Treasure of C. Errol Madre" (7:30 p.m., CBS), a wild takeoff on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Don Adams as Smart as Humphrey Bogart. We're told that the script, by Chris Hayward and Bob DeVinney, is loyal to the movie, which I assume means there are no stinkin' badges. It makes a good warmup for a Gene Barry episode of Name of the Game (8:30 p.m., NBC) with Darren McGavin as one of Barry's reporters, searching for a missing scientist (James Whitmore) suspected of defecting to Cuba. Not interested? Then stick with CBS and the movie The Last Challenge, a Western with a terrific cast, including Glenn Ford, Angie Dickinson, Chad Everett, Gary Merrill, and Jack Elam. Unlike that other Western on Sunday, Judith Crist says this "unpretentious stock story" glows.  

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No MST3K update this week, but a couple of Japanese sci-fi flicks that should have been on: first, Battle in Outer Space, from 1960, with Rye Ikebe, Kyoko Anzai, and Leonard Stanford (!). (Monday, 6:30 p.m., KTXL) "Catastrophes sweep the globe, and earth’s scientists conclude that beings from another planet are attacking." Makes sense to me; what else could it be? Then, there's the 1959 movie The H-Man, starring Yumi Shirakawa and Kenji Sahara. (Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., KTXL) "H-bomb tests create beings, made of water, that subsist on humans." Those would have worked, don't you think?  TV  

Around the dial

We'll start this week on a self-serving note; my latest appearance on the Dan Schneider Video Interview is up. We're talking about the original Mission: Impossible: why it's a terrific show, why it's a problematic show, and why you should watch it. I hope you do check out the video (as well as the rest of Dan's interviews). Let me know what I'm doing right, and what I need to improve. 

at Cult TV Blog, where John is beginning a series of posts about The X-Files and the American Dream—specifically, how the show overlays the American Dream with "a dystopian scenario of government corruption, interference, violence, experimentation, and is largely a delusional front to what is portrayed as a controlling despotic country." Needless to say, I'm interested in this kind of thing, considering the scope of my "Descent into Hell" series, so I'll be following this closely.

From the website of the Brownstone Institute, Thomas Harrington writes about "those silly dads on TV" —a situation that's existed since virtually the beginning of the medium—and why this isn't particularly good for our culture.

At The View from the Junkyard, there's the usual Avengers post (which I'm always going to read), but also "Agenda for Murder," a fine episode of the rebooted Columbo featuring the third appearance of Patrick McGoohan as a killer, who is almost—but, of course, not quite—a match for the wiley detective.

There's a nice piece at Travalanche about Bud Collyer, whom most classic TV aficionado recognize from hosting a variety of game shows (most notably To Tell the Truth), as well as voicing Superman on the radio adventures and animated cartoons. There's more to him, as you'll see here.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence notes the 75th anniversary of The Ed Sullivan Show, one of the great shows in televisison history. As you know from my Sullivan vs. Palace TV Guide feature, I'm vested in Ed's place in pop culture history, and glad those performances continue to be available for viewing. 

A good week; as I've said in the past, what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. TV  

Giving a series the (re)boot

I've been sitting here the last couple of weeks wondering what I was going to write for today. Well, not literally - it isn't as if I've done nothing for fourteen days but sit here witlessly, waiting for my fingers to come up with some miraculous combination of letters forming words you'd be interested in reading. There's going to the bathroom, for one thing. But you know what I mean.

It's not that I don't have topics on my to-do list. There's a perfectly good post on the early '60s series The Rebel and how, both on- and off-camera, it epitomizes the existential quandary of America, and when I finally do finish it I'm sure it will be to my satisfaction, but it's become so rambling and disjointed that, rather than tighten it up and finish it, I just keep pushing it out from Wednesday to Wednesday. It must be scheduled for sometime in October by now; on the other hand, you could be reading it next week. That's just how it goes sometimes. If you're a fellow blogger, then you understand.

Anyway, I was making my own rounds of sites I read, looking for equal parts inspiration and amusement, when I came across this quote from Lileks, discussing how he's rewatching the last rebooted Star Trek movie in preparation for the new one when it comes out. He has no problems with the new set of movies, which means he's a better man than I - I never really got into the Star Trek sequels beyond the first couple of years of ST: TNG, when the show's overt liberalism finally got the best of me, and I never bothered with the rest, including the latest series of films. I don't mock those who have watched them and either loved or hated them; this is just my opinion. But I digress: to Lileks:

This is why I hate "Mission Impossible" movies on general principle: the first one broke faith with the story in a way that poisoned everything else. It's like learning that Bond was always working for an offshoot of SMERSH. There are some things you shouldn't do just for the sake of "revitalizing" a "franchise," and while the second New Star Trek movie did not give us a convincing Khan - he lacked that musky scent of rich Corinthian leather - it carried me along as it happened. 

He is, of course, talking about the first Mission: Impossible movie from 1996, in which it was discovered at the end of the movie that Jim Phelps, that stalwart all-American spy so ably played on TV by Peter Graves, was in actuality a traitor who'd sold out his country. As far as shock value goes it was effective, and because an entire generation of television viewers had lived with Phelps as the hero, there perhaps wasn't the level of suspicion that would have normally surrounded the Man Above Suspicion in a run-of-the-mill spy thriller.

But for all that, there was something extremely distasteful about it all. Lileks is right; there are just some things you don't do, because they don't make sense. Why reboot Mission: Impossible, using the Jim Phelps character, if you don't intend to include some continuity from the series? And if that's what you want, than you don't make that rebooted character do something so completely at odds with the existing character that it stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. It would have been more plausible to have Tom Cruise's character flap his arms and fly under his own power than to have Jim Phelps sell out his country. Why not just have Phelps hand things over to a new boss, who turns out to be a traitor? But then, Brian DePalma makes millions of dollars thinking up that kind of thing, while I provide you with sage television insight four times a week for free.*

*Mission: Impossible, of course, rebooted itself as a TV series in 1988, complete with Peter Graves as Jim Phelps and Greg Morris' son, Phil, succeeding his father. It suffered from many of the weaknesses of shows from that era, but it is certainly acceptable as a continuation of the original.

It got me thinking about reboots, though, which was a good thing since the new Bates Motel had an apparently earth-shattering moment on Monday night; I won't reveal it if you're watching the series and haven't seen this episode yet, but let's just say it's brought the series (a prequel to the movie Psycho set in current times) full circle to the movie. I've never seen Bates Motel, but I've read enough of the weekly reviews at the AV Club to get the gist of it, and if the new series has changed some of the canonical detail, it's gotten enough of it right that it seems to have pleased most Psycho fans. One of the things the creators did which was absolutely spot-on was to update the series to modern day; by doing this, viewers were tipped off right away that they were not to expect a seamless transition between the series and the movie, that there were things that would, by definition, be different between the two. It's a neat way of disarming would-be critics from the get-go, and from everything I've read, it's proven to be quite effective.

Not all reboots can boast such success, though. Again, this is just my opinion, but the new Hawaii Five-0 has little in common with its illustrious predecessor. Whereas Jack Lord's Five-O men solved their cases through hard work and a bit of good fortune, the new series is pretty much indistinguishable from other procedurals/action shoot 'em ups that grace CBS' schedule these days. In particular, an episode that involved the new McGarrett journeying to North Korea (!) to exact revenge for the death of a former colleague reeked of the kind of "lone cowboy" adventure that the classic McGarrett would never have countenanced, either from himself or any members of the team. Aside from cashing in on the good name of Hawaii's best-known and most-loved police drama, I can't really see any reason for its resurrection.

One of the trademarks of a reboot seems to be the introduction of "depth" to characters that previously might have been seen as one-dimensional by today's standards. I've made this point many times in the past, but dramatic programs of the '50s and '60s (and early '70s) were often free from the soap opera elements that their heavily serialized offspring seem to love. On the face of it this can make sense; the cops from those classic shows, for example, seldom seem to show any residual effect from killing so many bad guys, and unless you're Mike Hammer, this kind of sounds doubtful. However, when you mix it in with the "sensitive, introspective" characterizations that themselves have become stereotypical today, you start to lose track of the fact that the characters exist in the first place to serve the investigative element of the show. I'd contend it's like the difference between Ben Casey and General Hospital. They're both set in hospitals, both feature doctors, and that's about where the similarity ends.

A show that for the most part has balanced the old and the new effectively is the BBC's revival of Doctor Who. Note that I use the word "revival" rather than "reboot," because the new series is in fact a continuation, rather than a reimagination, of the classic version. The entire history of the old show has been incorporated into the new, up to and including flashbacks to old episodes and the appearance of old and familiar characters, played by the original actors. Unlike Hawaii Five-0, it's not just borrowed the name of the series and characters; unlike Mission: Impossible, it hasn't violated the integrity of the existing characters; unlike Bates Motel it hasn't made a timeshift or otherwise altered things. No, it's tried to do the most difficult thing of all: it expects you to be able to watch the entire series, from the debut in 1963, through the TV movie of 1996 and to the new series starting in 2005, and see it all as part of the same creation, with one storyline that has run interrupted for more than 50 years. While the new Who has dramatically upgraded its special effects and has given The Doctor some of those very elements that I've just criticized, it's managed to do it all within the spirit of the original series. There are some things about it that I don't like, and I'll always prefer the original, but some of the new episodes have been outstanding, many more have been riveting, and I'm much happier having the new stories than having had the series end way back in 1988. I think I can speak for most Whovians in that regard.

This kind of thing isn't easy, though; for every movie like Harrison Ford's big screen version of The Fugitive that succeeds spectacularly in bringing the original TV series to life in a new and bold way, there must be a hundred small-screen to big-screen adaptations that stink. (Remember Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in The Avengers?) Attempts to resurrect successful series of the past in a present day format are just as problematic, as reboots of Perry Mason, Sea Hunt and Route 66 will testify. The rebirth of The Prisoner as a limited series was a disappointing attempt to explain the unexplainable to most viewers; fans didn't think it measured up to the original, and newcomers probably wouldn't have been attracted to it in the first place.* The new Untouchables was really more a TV version of the Kevin Costner movie** than it was a reboot of the Robert Stack classic. Even the movie versions of Perry Mason starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale were far from an unqualified success; many Mason fans don't consider them part of the series canon despite having two of the original stars, and I'm inclined to agree.

*Although Sir Ian McKellen did make a dandy Number Two, I thought.

**And there's that name again, Brian DePalma. But the movie version of The Untouchables really didn't try to link itself with the TV series, except for the title and the lead cop and criminals. It succeeds very well on its own merits, apart from the original series.

Of all the TV series that sought to be resurrected, the Star Trek sequels are probably the most successful; my dislike of them shouldn't be construed as anything other than personal preference. Reboots of anthology series from The Twilight Zone to The Outer Limits are hit-and-miss themselves, with good episodes and bad; at least the new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents had the advantage of the original Hitchcock introductions, colorized though they might have been. For shows like these, you're simply going to have to argue out whether or not the writing and acting of the past is superior or inferior to that of the present, and if you can have Zone without Rod Serling.

But most of the time it seems to me that a reboot of a classic show is really one of two things: 1) an attempt to cash in on a venerable, proven name; or 2) a sign of laziness on the part of those who are paid to come up with new ideas. And in such cases, I think it's probably best to paraphrase that old cliche about sleeping dogs: let old TV classics lie, or at least leave them to be reborn on DVD, rather than remaking them altogether. For that you will have my eternal gratitude.

The brilliantly clever, ethically dubious world of Mission: Impossible

A couple of years ago I took on the task of listing my ten favorite shows of all time.  It proved a popular feature, so I've decided that this summer's project should be a look at the shows that make up my weekly viewing habits.  It's not exactly like it's the full broadcast schedule of the Hadley Television Network, but it's a pretty fair representation of what our household watches.  Note that not all of the Top Ten shows are represented in the current schedule, and many of the shows that are didn't appear in the Top Ten.  It just goes to show there are a lot of fun programs out there; not every night has to be filled with Golden Age programming.  

As each issue of TV Guide opened with Saturday, so we'll also start our night-by-night look with the best night of the week, and one of the best shows of its era. 

Has there ever been a show cleverer, with more intricate moving parts, than Mission: Impossible?  I don’t see much current television so I can’t say if any of the newer shows top it, but I certainly can’t think of anything since its debut that can compare to it.  Each week the IMF team would, on short notice, assemble a plan that required split-second timing, perfect execution, quick thinking in case something went wrong, and a willingness to put one’s life on the line for the success of the mission.  Oh, and it also depended on people reacting in the way it was anticipated they’d react, which meant an incredible amount of background information on the main participants in the mission.

All this was done with a team that put the mission before all else.  There were no soap opera elements to Mission: Impossible, no secondary stories to compete with the main thread.  The nearest you got to a glimpse of anyone’s personal life was the obligatory shot of Jim Phelps’ apartment* at the beginning of each episode, when the team got together to go over details of the mission.  Oh, there were hints that Jim and Rollin were personal friends, for example, but if the storyline didn’t advance the plot, forget about it.  No quirkbots needed, no room for padded stories.  Even the stars were replicable; only two of them made it through the entire series, and none of them were in every single episode.  No wonder I’m a fan.

*Or Dan Briggs, in the first season.

In the years since, the “sting” element of M:I has often been copied, but never matched.  Think of Leverage, for example.  It shared many elements of the intricate M:I plot, but there were significant differences as well, most notably the intrusive personal angle that would have been more at home in a serialized daytime drama.  As well, there were always little elements of the plot that were held back from viewers until they were sprung at an appropriate time, making them seem more like Saturday cliffhangers where you’re left thinking to yourself, “Hey, where did Commando Cody get that parachute from?  I didn’t see that when the plane crashed last week!”*  There were also similarities to be found in shows such as The A-Team, but they (rightfully) didn’t take themselves seriously enough to be real competition.

*Speaking of cliffhangers, Leverage had the annoying habit, which so many shows have nowadays, of ending the season with a faux cliffhanger, one that tries to convince us is full of suspense while we know damn well that Timothy Hutton isn’t going to be killed off when he just signed a contract for another year.  M:I handles this much better; we aren't supposed to believe the cliffhanger before the commercial is a “will they escape or not” moment – in fact, what appears to be a threat often turns out to be a critical part of the plan.

No, when it comes to developing a story that was all but unbelievable – except for the fact that someone actually had thought it up – , nothing can compare to Mission: Impossible.  It’s too bad that so many people know the title now through those awful Tom Cruise movies.  Well, actually, maybe they aren’t that bad, as long as you don’t try to pretend that it’s really Mission: Impossible.  Just leave that name off and go by the subtitle, and you’re probably all right.

Watching them on DVD over the last couple of years, I’ve come to an even greater appreciation of the acting and writing talent involved in the series*, which is why it will always remain one of my favorites.  There’s something else though, something I hadn’t noticed during the initial viewing.  Had it not been for my reading of Steven Stark’s Glued to the Set, I might not have thought about it at all.  On the other hand, given how American foreign policy has gone the last few years, I might have been all over it right away.

*In particular, Martin Landeau as Rollin Hand.  He has a ruthless edge to him that makes him the man I'd least want to run into in a dark alley - somewhat surprising, given his "regular" occupation as an illusionist.  When he and his then-wife Barbara Bain (Cinnamon Carter) left M:I, something vital left with them.

Often, IMF missions are concerned with events of great importance to national security.  Just this last weekend, I saw an episode where the team has 48 hours to find out the location of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States.  Otherwise, boom. If that’s not acting in the national interest, I don’t know what is.  But then there’s the first season episode in which they're charged with preventing the leader of a hostile government from rigging an election to stay in power.  And it’s this kind of episode that troubles me, because there is no overriding national security interest evident here.  Oh, I suppose the continued existence of this hostile government could result in one, but that’s hardly justification for a preemptive act against a sovereign foreign country, a direct intervention in their internal affairs in order to influence the outcome of an election – a rigged one, yes, but nevertheless one that is clearly a domestic issue.  In other words, something the United States has no business getting involved in.

That’s one example, but there are others, where the IMF is clearly overstepping what I would consider the appropriate bounds of American foreign policy.  A terrific episode from a few weeks ago involved making sure that the right man was chosen as security chief of another hostile government.  This involved discrediting his two opponents through means that were, at the very least, deceptive: everything from playing mind games to temporarily drugging one of them.  It makes for terrific television, but the morality of such action is dubious at best.

At times such as these, I tend to revert to the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas on patriotism.  Aquinas felt that patriotism, i.e. love of one’s country, when rightly ordered, was one of the cardinal virtues.  It’s why treason is such an act of treachery.  It’s also, though, why no citizen is bound to obey the unjust dictates of an unjust government – because love of homeland implies love of a particular code that represents the nation, one that an unjust law is betraying.*  However, paramount in Aquinas’ teaching is that the love which others have for their country must be respected as well.  That means a couple of things; for example, in expecting an immigrant to conform to the cultural norms of their new country, one shouldn’t seek to have them disregard everything from their own cultural heritage.  Second, it gives us guidelines as to how we should look at intervention in foreign affairs.  To meddle in such sovereign domestic situations, there ought to be an overriding national security question involved.  That isn’t always the case in Mission: Impossible, and it’s something to which I’ve become increasingly sensitive over the years.

*Not to mention God’s laws, to which, as Aquinas points out, every nation is bound as well.

This blog will not self-destruct in five seconds.

As always, we have to put M:I in context when we talk about something like this.  The show was created and came of age during the Vietnam War, a time of very muscular American foreign policy, with the Cold War demanding an active American involvement in the internal affairs of other nations, usually nations hostile to the United States.  The ends of that foreign policy often justified the means, which meant the IMF frequently was involved in setting up foreign officials to appear as if they were betraying their own country, involved in some nefarious act, or otherwise untrustworthy – even if they were simply doing their job, even if their suspicions were correct.  I think it’s that which bothers me the most, the idea that the ruthless security chief might be absolutely correct in his diagnosis of the situation, but will be set up by the team in such a way that he gets shot for his troubles even though he’s an “innocent” party, so to speak.  (Fortunately, none of the enemy agents are “innocent” enough to warrant our feeling sorry for them; they deserve whatever happens to them, just because they’re on the wrong side.)  And while they never applied the kind of torture that we’ve seen in real life over the past few years, the mind games they’ve inflicted on some people can certainly push the envelope.

As the war became more and more problematic at home, the muscular foreign policy became more of a liability, so it’s no surprise that later M:I plots would turn inward, toward such domestic fare as the fight against organized crime.  Whether or not such stories were as exciting, they were less controversial, which made all the difference.*

*One other type of plot I haven’t discussed much here is the one involving an tyrannical dictator, one who wasn’t freely elected and spends much of his time looting the national treasury and oppressing his people.  I’m a little more lenient in these cases; it’s much harder to claim the involvement of a sovereign national government, and often the mission itself involves something like tricking the despot out of the loot he was earmarking for the purchase of weapons which would then be used to crush the legal opposition.  It’s one thing to manipulate an entire country; scamming a tinhorn bully seems just a little more justified.

I’ve written before about my concerns regarding the ability of television series to influence public opinion through the actions of the regular cast.  When viewers see the stars of shows such as NCIS breaching an individual’s privacy with impunity, they learn to accept it as long as the suspect is guilty.  After all, we’re assured, the government only does this to guilty people, so if you’re innocent you have nothing to worry about.  Even today, I think there’s that tendency with Mission: Impossible, to want to excuse some of the more dubious missions because those are the East Germans or the Soviets or the Cubans we’re dealing with, and the Commies deserve whatever they get.  It doesn’t get in the way of my immense pleasure watching the show, but it does make me think, and sometimes the subsequent discussions with my wife about whether or not a mission is justified can be as entertaining as the program itself.

So when it comes to judging those iffy moments in Mission: Impossible, it’s best to remember that the show is a product of the Cold War, and to let that become food for thought.   Under no circumstances should it be allowed to interfere with the enjoyment of one of the best shows of its type – for that matter, one of the most enjoyable shows that TV had to offer in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.  Its presence on my Saturday night lineup should come as no surprise. TV

Next time:  a show that proved talking back to the television could be not only fun but profitable!

Around the dial

This week David at Comfort TV says what I've believed for a long time:  Mission: Impossible is TV for smart people.  Not only does it not refuse to pander to the audience by providing them with emotional soap opera ("the focus is always on the mission, not the operatives who carried it out."), it forces you to try and keep up with its frenetic pace and intricate plots.  The producers assumed their audience was smart enough to do so; if you couldn't, too bad for you.  Spot on, David.

And spot on to Cult TV as well, for another incisive look at the use of allegory in The Prisoner.  This week it's the episode "Free For All," which is rich in allegory and symbolism.  Pretty soon it's going to be time for me to start through the cycle again, beginning with Danger Man and proceeding through to The Prisoner - I'll be reading through these again as I watch.  And I can't wait to read your theories on The Butler as Number 1!

There can be no doubt that Made for TV Mayhem is dealing in mayhem of the highest order today: a look at small screen scream queens (say that five times fast).  Let's see, do I recognize any of these names?  Diane Baker, who always cut a lovely figure on television; Anne Francis, who didn't do much screaming in Honey West but changed her tune in the '70; Vera Miles, who always looks great.  Yeah, I recognize them.

I touch on old-time radio (OTR) from time to time, and since we've gotten Sirius I've gained an even greater appreciation for some of the shows that really forced the imagination to work; How Sweet It Was takes us through a collection of shows celebrating the 4th of July.  When you have some time, really check these out; they're a delight to listen to.  And yes, I'd buy war bonds from Cyd Charisse, or anything else she cares to sell.

Not a TV piece per se, but Terry Teachout writes this week about the limits of nostalgia, and there's no doubt that nostalgia plays a major role for many of us in gravitating toward classic television.  I really should devote a piece of its own to this article, but since you'll probably get sick of waiting for it, I'd urge you to read the whole thing now.  I particularly appreciate this quote, cribbed from Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

And finally, yours truly appeared this week at Christmas TV History's Christmas in July feature.  There's a new post up every day, with some absolutely wonderful memories and recommendations from writers all over the blogosphere, so you should make it part of your daily routine.

As a side note, one of Joanna's questions was "Name one Christmas program/movie you enjoy watching all year round."  I didn't think of it at the time (you'll have to read it to find out what I did say), but it struck me on the way home: it has to be Bing Crosby's 1977 Christmas show - you know, the one with the Bing/Bowie duet?  There's another segment to that program, though, a truly awful attempt to interject David Bowie into a second appearance without him actually being there.  While Bing and one of the kids are going through a box of memories in the attic, they get on the subject of heroes, which leads to a cut of Bowie's video for his song "Heroes".  Now, Bowie is a great performer and "Heroes" is one of his great songs - but it has nothing to do with Christmas, and it's absolutely painful to see it wedged into this show just to make it relevant.  Having said that, though, I'll listen to "Heroes" at any time of the year - like now.


By the way, another of the questions was to "Send us to three places on the Internet."  I chose my three, but in reality I'd readily recommend any of the blogs I've featured in this piece today or on the sideboard.  Your blogs are the best at keeping classic TV alive, and the pleasure you give me in reading your pieces is equal to the pleasure I get in writing about them.  You guys are the greatest! TV