Time to buckle up for our sixth season of MI adventures!
This season was to mark a turn away from doing a lot of foreign-set missions. From now on, the team will focus mainly on battling organized crime in the USA.
Lynda Day George joins as Casey, the newest IM force team member, and makes a fine addition. Notable in this episode:
Peter Graves' standout performance as a blind man; Peter Brown excels as a cocky young hood attracted to Casey; Tom Bosley proves he can play any kind of role; and, for MI buffs, Barney does something which is very rare in this series. Watch and find out!
4 Reviews
Casey
MissClassicTV7 July 2022
Growing up, Mission: Impossible was my favorite show. Lynda Day George joins in Season 6 as Casey. Not Lisa Casey. She will always be Casey to me. The character's name is wrongly credited here.
This is how it came to pass. The first run of this show ended in 1973. Fifteen years later, the 1988 writers' strike led to a revival of Mission: Impossible. Actress Terry Markwell played a character also named Casey. She only lasted a single season before being killed off. But when Lynda Day George made a guest star appearance in 1989, on the episode 'Reprisal,' they decided to rename her Lisa Casey so as not to confuse viewers of the revival series who knew Terry Markwell as Casey.
It was a total mistake.
This is how it came to pass. The first run of this show ended in 1973. Fifteen years later, the 1988 writers' strike led to a revival of Mission: Impossible. Actress Terry Markwell played a character also named Casey. She only lasted a single season before being killed off. But when Lynda Day George made a guest star appearance in 1989, on the episode 'Reprisal,' they decided to rename her Lisa Casey so as not to confuse viewers of the revival series who knew Terry Markwell as Casey.
It was a total mistake.
Nice episode
Guad4214 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Peter Graves is in the spotlight for this season's opener. He plays a blind bitter ex-federal agent who is down on his luck so will sell out his former employers for money to a crime outfit lead by John Lawton (Harold J Stone). Stone has two assistants, of which one Henry Matula (Tom Bosley) works under cover for the good guys while the other, Carl Deetrich (Jason Evers) is really bad. Johnny Brown (Peter Brown) is Deetrich's muscle. Barney ends up being Matula's muscleman.
Graves really goes blind by having shields put over his eyes. Graves sells out one agent to prove he is on the level and then Lawton asks him to name an informer that Lawton suspects is in his operation. Deetrich and Brown visit Graves and convinces him to name Matula. The IM team records the conversation and gives it to Matula. Matula takes it to Lawton and the two visit Deetrich. A gunfight ensues. Deetrich is killed and Matula and Lawton wounded. In a rare event, Barney ends up killing Brown. Supposedly, Barney kills Graves as Lawton and Matula are leaving. Matula is now in Lawton's good graces and all the loose ends taken care of.
This is the first episode for Lynda Day George and it starts well. There is not much for her to do here but we know that will change in the near future. She is a much better fit than Lesley Ann Warren. One thing puzzles me with her character. As a kid, I watched the show during it original run. The team members always called Lynda's character "Casey", even when talking to her directly. Since it was well established that team members always call each other by their first names, I assumed her first name was Casey. Years later I see her listed as "Lisa Casey". I can't remember one time anyone called her "Lisa" during the show's run. Maybe in the Australian reboot in the late 80s during her one episode appearance. I have never seen that. Seems odd they would use her last name while calling each other by first names. It is clear to me that Casey was meant to be her first name and somehow it got changed along the way. Again, just an oddity.
The cast is all good here. Evers has played a thousand bad guys who get their just desserts in the end. See him in all his Mannix appearances. Peter Brown (post Laredo) is a good henchman. Stone can play the tough crime boss in his sleep. Tom Bosley does well too.
A fine start to season 6 as the team switches to fighting crime and leaving foreign adventures to the CIA. Do see this.
Graves really goes blind by having shields put over his eyes. Graves sells out one agent to prove he is on the level and then Lawton asks him to name an informer that Lawton suspects is in his operation. Deetrich and Brown visit Graves and convinces him to name Matula. The IM team records the conversation and gives it to Matula. Matula takes it to Lawton and the two visit Deetrich. A gunfight ensues. Deetrich is killed and Matula and Lawton wounded. In a rare event, Barney ends up killing Brown. Supposedly, Barney kills Graves as Lawton and Matula are leaving. Matula is now in Lawton's good graces and all the loose ends taken care of.
This is the first episode for Lynda Day George and it starts well. There is not much for her to do here but we know that will change in the near future. She is a much better fit than Lesley Ann Warren. One thing puzzles me with her character. As a kid, I watched the show during it original run. The team members always called Lynda's character "Casey", even when talking to her directly. Since it was well established that team members always call each other by their first names, I assumed her first name was Casey. Years later I see her listed as "Lisa Casey". I can't remember one time anyone called her "Lisa" during the show's run. Maybe in the Australian reboot in the late 80s during her one episode appearance. I have never seen that. Seems odd they would use her last name while calling each other by first names. It is clear to me that Casey was meant to be her first name and somehow it got changed along the way. Again, just an oddity.
The cast is all good here. Evers has played a thousand bad guys who get their just desserts in the end. See him in all his Mannix appearances. Peter Brown (post Laredo) is a good henchman. Stone can play the tough crime boss in his sleep. Tom Bosley does well too.
A fine start to season 6 as the team switches to fighting crime and leaving foreign adventures to the CIA. Do see this.
Great Episode
aramis-112-80488018 September 2022
"Blind" is one of my top ten "Mission: Impossible" episodes.
In the Sixth season it's good-bye to Leslie Warren and Leonard Nimoy. Though a promising replacement for the much-missed Martin Landau, Nimoy proved himself to be one of those actors who gets a role other actors would kill for then whines about it. But then, he basically had an identical role to Landau, right down to his dossier headshot. It reminds me of the story of another perpetual whiner, James Garner. When he left "Maverick" in a huff Roger Moore took his place. The "Maverick" people told Moore not to think of himself just as James Garner's replacement but when he got his costume it had Jim Garner written in it.
In with Lynda Day George, slow to start but good once she got revved up. Prettier than Cinnamon, a better actress than Warren, and certainly easier to cope with than season 4's revolving door of actresses, talented as they all were.
Phelps gets himself blinded to pretend he's a bitter ex-undercover agent with a drinking problem. He has to get rid of a the henchman (frequent guest star Jason Evers, who has a knack for showing up in some of the better episodes) of a mobster ("I'm Spartacus!" Harold J. Stone) while preserving the cover of the government's inside man (rolly-polly Tom Bosley). And they have to side-step Evers' vicious sidekick (Peter Brown) who is happy to steal a quarter from a blind man. How mean can you get!
Once again Jim, Barney, Willy and Casey go their separate ways to work their magic and slowly come together to blind-side (no pun intended) the bad guys. And the viewers. Very tricky this time!
One great thing about M:I is that it would be so easy to write muscle-bound Willy off as the cliched lunkhead, but he's clearly got it upstairs as well as everywhere else.
If this episode has a problem, it's with Bosley. He's not to blame, but it's difficult, in retrospect, to separate him from Richie Cunningham's father and every time I see him I smile as if he's about to say something disparaging about the Fonze.
It's also great to have the old theme back. Some things should not be monkeyed with. The "M:I" theme quickly became one of the most instantly recognizable sig tunes in TV history and changing it was nuts. Throw season five in an ash can and recover the old formula.
It's difficult to get used to the "teasers." But perhaps they were necessary in the early 1970s to draw in viewers who might have switched channels from a show beginning its sixth year and just coming off its worst.
And this was a strong episode to kick off the sixth season and get a good season off to a good start.
In the Sixth season it's good-bye to Leslie Warren and Leonard Nimoy. Though a promising replacement for the much-missed Martin Landau, Nimoy proved himself to be one of those actors who gets a role other actors would kill for then whines about it. But then, he basically had an identical role to Landau, right down to his dossier headshot. It reminds me of the story of another perpetual whiner, James Garner. When he left "Maverick" in a huff Roger Moore took his place. The "Maverick" people told Moore not to think of himself just as James Garner's replacement but when he got his costume it had Jim Garner written in it.
In with Lynda Day George, slow to start but good once she got revved up. Prettier than Cinnamon, a better actress than Warren, and certainly easier to cope with than season 4's revolving door of actresses, talented as they all were.
Phelps gets himself blinded to pretend he's a bitter ex-undercover agent with a drinking problem. He has to get rid of a the henchman (frequent guest star Jason Evers, who has a knack for showing up in some of the better episodes) of a mobster ("I'm Spartacus!" Harold J. Stone) while preserving the cover of the government's inside man (rolly-polly Tom Bosley). And they have to side-step Evers' vicious sidekick (Peter Brown) who is happy to steal a quarter from a blind man. How mean can you get!
Once again Jim, Barney, Willy and Casey go their separate ways to work their magic and slowly come together to blind-side (no pun intended) the bad guys. And the viewers. Very tricky this time!
One great thing about M:I is that it would be so easy to write muscle-bound Willy off as the cliched lunkhead, but he's clearly got it upstairs as well as everywhere else.
If this episode has a problem, it's with Bosley. He's not to blame, but it's difficult, in retrospect, to separate him from Richie Cunningham's father and every time I see him I smile as if he's about to say something disparaging about the Fonze.
It's also great to have the old theme back. Some things should not be monkeyed with. The "M:I" theme quickly became one of the most instantly recognizable sig tunes in TV history and changing it was nuts. Throw season five in an ash can and recover the old formula.
It's difficult to get used to the "teasers." But perhaps they were necessary in the early 1970s to draw in viewers who might have switched channels from a show beginning its sixth year and just coming off its worst.
And this was a strong episode to kick off the sixth season and get a good season off to a good start.
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