Mission: Impossible -- Episode 15: The Devils

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Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:

The team heads to an English estate where a House of Lords member is leading secret Satanic rites ceremonies and performing human sacrifices.

Memorable Quote:
What does it prophet a man if he gained the whole world?  ~Nicholas
And lose his immortal soul.  ~Phelps

Highlight:

Shannon's capture and threatened sacrifice adds some gravity to the final scene, not that it was enough to redeem it.

Lowlight:

I'm generally fine with Grant's role as an electronic genius and gadget man, but the scene where his contraption saw moving pictures from inside another person's brain was a bridge too far to say the least. In fact, it's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen on television.

A more minor critique of the scene is that Jim and Grant don't seem at all concerned for the poor guy's welfare as he passes out from the stress of the memories that they induced.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• What in the world was up with the dozens of hippies hanging out on the field outside the manor? Why would Lord Holman put up with them? And when he rides up on his horse and threatens them if they misbehave, wouldn't at least a few of the hippies start spouting off?
• Speaking of Holman, he looks like Lucius Malfoy crossed with Howard Dean.
• What's the point of Grant posing as an American policeman?
• The scene where Jim and Max surprise Holman in his study and pretend to be devils is tremendous.  As in tremendously atrocious.  In any other episode not involving a machine that can take pictures of other people's thoughts, this part would have been the lowlight.  Not only is the whole bit with the red eyes incredibly cheesy, but Holman's blasé reaction kills the scene. Either he should have believed them and been scared to death (which also would have been cheesy, don't get me wrong), or else he should have not believed them at all and defiantly gotten rid of them.  Instead he takes this weird middle ground where he kind of doesn't believe them but then he kind of does, and if he does then shouldn't he be a little more disturbed about the fact that Lucifer himself is standing there talking to him?  Instead he is catatonic for most of the scene.
• Somehow the whole IMF team is able to walk around this house undetected for most of the episode.
• Whoa, Grant's dumping kerosene in the stream?!  Call Toberman!
• Their plan is cutting it pretty close with Shannon at the end.  Once Holman has the knife raised above her, I'd say it's time to move in.

Final Analysis:

My goodness.  It's hard to put into words how bad this one was.  I'll just settle for very, very bad. Ranking it 15 out of 15, and hopefully we won't see any more episodes worse than this one.