Mission: Impossible (TV Series) The Exchange (1969) User Reviews

This episode contains so many of the plot elements fans love...and a twist.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 16 August 2015]

This is an unusual episode because it begins with a mission already in progress. Soon you see an accident occur...and Cinnamon is captured. The IM Force must get her back, but how?

During most of the show, the baddies are trying to break Cinnamon to learn who she's working for and her mission. At the same time, the IM team must break a captured enemy agent so that they can exchange him for Cinnamon. But Kurtz (this means 'little' in German...and the guy is awfully small by the way) hasn't talked in the last year while in custody, so the team naturally needs to concoct an ingenious and complicated (and cool) plan to fool the guy into talking. Can the team break him in time and can Cinnamon hold out until the exchange?

This episode offers many twists--more than usual. It also offers more than its share of cool gadgetry. Overall, aside from missing bullet holes at the end during the exchange, a really neat episode.

An offbeat episode

[searchanddestroy-1 · 8/10 · 16 March 2018]

I won't repeat word for word that the other guys have already done, but yes, this episode is not like the others, except the simulation scheme, as we have seen in the previous episodes and will see in the future, I am dead sure of that. It begins without the tape and mission delivery information sequence, OK, but the most surprising, and I would say outrageous, is that SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS at the end the evil bad guy, the real heavy gets away with the spy exchanged against Cinamon.

One of the best shows of the series

[shakspryn · 10/10 · 23 December 2021]

Wow, our IM team has a tense and super-exciting situation this time! Cinnamon has been captured and the rest of the team must get her back. It's not the usual kind of mission, but the team (minus captive Cinnamon, of course) displays their usual adroitness in pulling off a very complex and difficult rescue plan.

The MI team for season 3 and 4 was the best the show ever had: Jim, Barney, Willy, and Roland and Cinnamon. I think these are the best roles that Martin Landau and Barbara Bain ever had: they were brilliant and so compelling! Peter Graves was the ideal team leader; he's a man who inspires confidence, plus, I think viewers just like him. I know I do! Jim Phelps comes across as a very good, moral person, who cares about his team and about helping innocent people in desperate trouble, as our MI team so often does. Cinnamon is certainly in terrible danger in this episode; good thing the rest of the team is on the job!

Vehicle simulation ride and room reproduction among this episode's highlights

[CCsito · 8/10 · 17 June 2013]

*SPOILER ALERT*

This episode starts with an ongoing mission involving Cinnamon, Rollin, and Jim. This was one of those episodes that did not begin with a recorded mission similar to "The Condemned" episode from Season 2. For some reason, I found the episodes that did not start with a recorded message to be more fascinating. This episode could have been a two part with Cinnamon being caught as the cliffhanger for the end of the first part (this would mean the Secretary would have to disavow any knowledge of the team's actions). Cinnamon has to photograph certain documents inside a government building, but is caught when an alarm is set off by a bird. She manages to pass off what she photographed to the team members outside the building. You get to see Cinnamon in her undergarments as she is strip searched by a female guard after her capture. Her captors then try to interrogate her and get more information on who was behind the mission. They try to break her down and finds out that she is claustrophobic. The other members of her team try to obtain her release by offering up a captured suspected spy from that country. They send Rollin to impersonate a lawyer visiting the jailed spy and replaces him with a inflated dummy. However, before the prisoner exchange swap can be done, they need to get the information from the jailed spy first. The episode then brings in a somewhat complex setup where the spy is put inside a crate that is mounted on equipment meant to simulate the motions of a moving vehicle. Inside the crate, the spy feels the movements and sounds of a vehicle in motion (with the border crossing sounds too). Then the crate is moved to a room that is duplicated to look like one of the spy's superior's office building. The spy is tricked into believing that his superior officer was replaced and gives up his information to the IMF team. With this information, the team takes the spy to the border crossing for the prisoner exchange. The spy realizes that he has been duped, but cannot reveal the truth of what happened to his countrymen. Cinnamon, who was on the brink of going bonkers, is given up for the exchange of the spy. The prisoners go past each other, but the spy's commanding officer decides to take out both Cinnamon and Jim as they walk away. The IMF team takes some precaution to save Jim and Cinnamon (note a small plot hole at the end - the coats do not appear to have bullet holes).

Tantalizing Strip Search episode

[caroltj · 8/10 · 17 November 2020]

The Exchange is an excellent episode of Mission Impossible TV as so many are but this one is a bit different with Cinnamon Carter, played by Barbara Bain, getting caught as a spy and undergoing interrogation and torture while the team plan her release. Prior to interrogation her clothes are removed by a tall female guard while two men are standing nearby watching. We first see her blue blouse removed assisted by the female guard exposing the straps of her brassiere. Then the men are in the camera view while we see the tantalizing shadow on the wall of the female guard undressing Cinnamon as the men look on. The tall female guard towers over Cinnamon and unfastens her skirt and then we see Cinnamon taking off the skirt which is then taken by the female guard so she's left in a half-slip, it appears from the shadow on the wall. Then it seems she's grabbing at her waist, at the slip to remove it as the camera turns to a man's eyes watching her undressing and implying that the rest of her clothes, her underwear comes off as the men look on. How humiliating!