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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  A Game Of Chess
The Chess Computer   (8 of 10)

A world-famous chess champion plans to steal a supply of gold from the vault of the very hotel he's playing a competeition at, because the nearest bank it could have been stored at was recently destroyed.  The gold was stolen from the opposition forces in a Communist bloc country.  Jim's mission is to retrive the gold and return it to the opposition party!

NOTHING is ever easy with these guys.

Don Francks (HEAVY METAL) is "Nicholas Groat", the chess master, who winds up playing against Rollin-- not knowing (at first) that every move Rollin makes is being directed by a computer used by Barney.  When Groat loses, he practically throws a childish hissy-fit!  "NO ONE can make moves like THAT!"  Sure enough, he learns he's right... and, in classic con-man style, Jim winds up showing off their computer, and casually mentioning what it can do, effectively putting it into the mind of the baddie to use it to help him pull his heist, without Jim ever having to say so.

Chess masters must have had a bad reputation in Hollywood, as I was reminded a bit of the one Laurence Harvey played a few years later on COLUMBO in "The Most Dangerous Match" (1973).
   (2-28-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Condemned
Framed For Murder   (9 of 10)

A childhood friend of Jim's is falsely accused of killing a man in a Latin American country.  Jim decides to have the team perform a "personal" mission, to save him from being executed.

Kevin Hagen (LAND OF THE GIANTS) is "David Webster", who calls our hero "Jimbo", swears he never met the murdered man, and winds up spending several hours on his feet hiding behind a fake wall while the prison guards think he's mysteriously escaped with the aid of 2 men posing as priests (Rollin & Willy).

Marianna Hill (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) is Louisa Rojas, Webster's girlfriend, who, because she refused to give David an alibi, is immediately Jim's top suspect in whatever plan there was to frame David.

Peter Donat (THE CHINA SYNDROME) is "Arthur Warner" who in reality is the supposed murdered man "Robert Corley", who killed someone else and made sure the body would be mistaken for himself, then had plastic surgery done to hide his true face.  How twisted can you get?

Will Kuluva (the unaired pilot of THE MAN FROM UNCLE) is "Edmund Constantine", who engineered the theft of a priceless crown from a Greek museum with Corley, mistakes Jim for Corley's associate, and makes a deal with Jim to split the profit once the crown is recovered.

Nate Esformes (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) and Steven Marlo (THE TOWERING INFERNO) are Police Captain Vicente Barrera and his aide "Diego", who Jim approaches about recovering the crown. Because Jim seems less concerned with their seemingly-escaped prisoner, they bug his apartment, and quickly learn about the jewel thieves!  I was particularly impressed with how Diego figured out that a pair of reading glasses with a very unusual prescription matched the ones belonging to the "dead" man.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering, WHAT is Barney doing with that car?  When I suddenly figured it out near the climax, I found myself LAUGHING all the way through to the end of the story!

Definitely my FAVORITE episode so far.  This is what's known as "playing with the format".

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Counterfeiter
The Fake Pharmaceutical Racket   (6 of 10)

The owner of a chain of clinics is also running a counterfeit drug operation.  Jim's mission is to put him out of business.  As usual, the IMF takes the most complicated, confusing path to accomplish their goals.

Edmund O'Brien (FANTASTIC VOYAGE, where he played a military guy whose running gag could have been "Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up amphetamines") is "Raymond Halder".  The team manages to find a way to give him headaches and seizures, so that he believes his OWN life is in terrible danger, and the only cure is a certain pill-- except, HE knows the pill someone is trying to give him is FAKE and WORTHLESS!  What a way to coerce a confession out of strong-willed dirtbag.

Frank Campanella (526 episodes of FROM THESE ROOTS and countless other roles on TV) is "Eddie Burke", Halder's right-hand man.

Jon Lormer (3 episodes of STAR TREK) is "Charles Gant", a member of a board of drug manufacturers who are working to get ahead of the counterfeiters.

Among the fun in this story is seeing Jim pose as a Fed who's willingly on the take, Rollin as an equally-corrupt cop, and Cinnamon as a woman who is falsely accused of smuggling.  With all this going on around him, Halder didn't stand a chance.  More than usual, the team takes great pleasure in letting the baddie KNOW they were the ones who took him down at the end.
   (3-19-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Town
The Small Town Murder Conspiracy   (6 of 10)

While on vacation, Jim stumbles across a murder plot involving every single person in a small town. Rollin arrives, is told Jim had a stroke, but figures out thru Jim's use of blinking his eyes in Morse Code what's going on.  Rollin summons the team, who must rescue Jim, and, prevent the assassination of a Russian scientist in L.A. by a married pair of killers.

Boy, talk about "playing with the format"!

Will Geer (IN COLD BLOOD) is "Doc" (they couldn't even bothered giving him a name?) the man in charge of the conspiracy, who drugs Jim with curare to prevent him moving or speaking. As things progress, Rollin winds up impersonating him. It felt so good when the guy wound up bound, gagged and helpless.

Eddie Ryder (4 episodes of GET SMART) is "Williams", the gas station attendant & repairman, the #2 man in the group. I couldn't be sure at one point if he tampered with Barney's limo, or if Barney was just screwing with the guy.  Either way, I was waiting most of the episode to see HIM get clobbered.

William O'Connell (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) is the "Instructor", over-seeing the meeting of the towns-people as they learn what their various assignments are.  I generally DO NOT LIKE stories where every single person in some small town are all involved in a conspiracy, with the notable exception of that Clint Eastood film, mainly because, when Eastwood's "Stranger" arrives, he pretty much takes over and terrorizes everyone else!  So it's an interesting bit of type-casting to see O'Connell was in this, years before that film.  Like that film, before it's over, the towns-folk never knew what hit them!
   (2-19-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Killing
The Haunted Hitman   (8 of 10)

A man runs a murder-for-hire operation for organized crime, where the bodies are never found, but never does any of the killings himself.  Jim's mission is to provide evidence so he can be prosecuted, not just his hired hitmen.

Gerald S. O'Laughlin (THE ROOKIES) is "Bert Gordon", head of this show's equivalent of "Murder Inc." He's tough, smart, but his one weekness appears to be that he's also superstitious.  The team uses this against him to the max when they first convince him his neighbor's house is haunted, then has him involved in a killing, only to find the newly-dead man coming back from the grave to haunt HIM.

Roy Jenson (STAR TREK: The Omega Glory) is "Connie", Gordon's assassin, who not only bumps people off, but gets rid of the evidence by dumping their bodies into a furnace at a lumber yard.

While Jim and Rollin pose as brothers who are haunted by a dead sibling, and Cinnamon poses as an unhappy wife who wants her drunk of a husband dead, Barner & Willy knock out the hitman and spent an awful lot of time installing mysterious equipment in Gordon's house.  When we learn what it's all used for, that's when the episode becomes genuinely HILARIOUS.  Conning a hardened killer into believing in a haunting may not make much sense, but I don't recall any other episode of this show I had so much fun watching.

One of my favorite moments had to be when Jim, apparently shot dead in "self defense", is rescued from the furnace seconds before it really gets going.  Come to think of it, that was the 2nd time on this show I've seen that kind of thing happen (the previous time was at a mortuary crematorium).

Funny thing, it was checking the credits online just now that I suddenly realized all these years I was confusing 2 similar-looking actors:  McLauglin (who was on THE ROOKIES) and Tige Andrews (who played a similar role on THE MOD SQUAD).  It was Andrews, not McLaughlin, who once appeared on STAR TREK (as a Klingon).
   (3-27-2025)