Thursday, April 6, 2017

Mission: Impossible -- Episode 16: The Plague


To Watch: Click Here

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:
A weapons trader steals a deadly strain of bacteria from a Parisian lab, and the IMF team goes to her nightclub to recover it before it harms anyone.

Memorable Quote:
Stay calm, friend.  ~Phelps

Highlight:
Shannon does a good job as a nightclub singer, even if I wonder how she was able to get the gig.

Lowlight:
The subliminal messages were hard to take.  When I was a kid I remember watching what I thought was a cool video about advertisers using subliminal messages like spoken words underneath music in the grocery store telling you to buy expensive things, or a magazine advertisement with a hidden picture of Jesus in the corner.  I don't buy into that now that I'm older and wiser (or at least older), and I also don't buy into Catherine falling over at the sound of a subliminally received word.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:
  • Catherine is played by Swedish actress Maud Adams who starred in two Bond movies, The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy.
  • Max's role in this caper was unnecessary and another example in the series where they force the plot so that everyone is involved.  His association with Phelps appears to offer Phelps an opportunity to approach the club as the professor who developed the bacteria, but he could have made the same approach without Max.
  • 28:16 mark - Nicholas, why are you letting go of the joysticks because you heard a sound?! After he loses control of the robot and cracks the glass, Grant tells him he has 15 seconds to transfer the bacteria before it becomes virulent, and 50 seconds later Nicholas completes the task to everyone's relief.
  • 30:31 - Catherine takes the unusual step of removing her earring when talking on the phone, and Shannon must have known that would happen because she is right there and ready to switch the earring out with a fake.
  • Wouldn't they have someone supervising Nicholas in the lab especially considering they just met him?

Final Analysis:
While it's an improvement over last episode (which scarred me to the point that I haven't written a post in almost a month), I didn't much care for this one either -- it was pretty boring and a hard story to get into.  Ranking it 12 out of 16.

1 comment:

  1. I had to read your comments to remember many of the plot points from nearly a month ago when I watched it, but I liked this one better than you despite the plot holes with Max's pointless subplot and Catherine's ridiculously convenient earring removals. It was a pretty fun hour though, especially the ending, and it found it less boring than most. Maud Adams as the villainess was a nice catch for casting. A minor pleasure to be sure but I'll rank it 7th of the 16 so far.

    Sadly, the DVD Verdict website took down the former reviews by David Johnson, who reviewed six of seven "MacGyver" seasons and also reviewed both seasons of "Mission: Impossible" with a pretty wild context. His wife apparently grew up in some backwater in northern New Hampshire and the only TV station they got was the local ABC affiliate. She and her 13-year-old girlfriends were apparently obsessed with their favorite show..."Mission: Impossible" and spent the next morning at school talking about it for its entire run. His wife watched the DVDs as he reviewed them and even put in her own personal review. Watching this series in full, it's really hard to understand that level of attraction for teenage girls. Given that "MacGyver" was on ABC at the same point in time, it would make a lot more sense for them to be into that.

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