This Might Be Mission Impossible For Me

I was reading a little bit about "Mission Impossible," the TV show yesterday, for reasons that had nothing to do with Peter Graves dying the other day. It was strictly a coincidence.

I was with a guy who was showing me some of the TV shows he has downloads of, and he happened to have a number of episodes of "MI." The natural question came up, how many episodes were made, as we wanted to determine how many he'd need to have them all. He had around 20 and at first thought maybe that's all they were. I had no idea how many there were, but I knew it had to be more than 20 some.

It turns out -- a big thanks goes out to the bean counters at Wikipedia -- that there were 171 episodes and the pilot episode. And that the show went on for seven seasons, at 20 some per. So this guy had the first season out of what was virtually an endless run. 171 missions that seemed impossible but turned out not to live up to their billing, actually being not only possible but done.

I was thinking, What if I had the entire series? There's so many of them that it might turn out to be Mission Impossible for me to watch them all.

OK, there's no commercials. That knocks them down to about 46-48 minutes each. Still, even if I watched one a day, that's virtually an hour for 171 days. That's a pretty good chunk of time, not even counting whether I'd be interested in one impossible adventure after another for that long. I'd probably lose interest and it'd all fizzle out.

That was a great show. But who knows if it'd be great enough to watch the whole thing now?

He and I watched part of the pilot episode. They had a phonograph record instead of the little tape recorder. And it decomposed after the guy listened to it. Then Martin Landau, the man of a thousand faces, was going to have the mission of disguising himself to impersonate a guy he himself was playing as a second character! Looking at the guy's picture, then seeing Martin Landau, it didn't look all that hard, frankly.

President Obama On Letterman

I didn't get to see the whole show, just the tiny clip they had on CBS this morning.

But President Obama looked great and did great with the little banter they had going there. He's impressive. It was nice to see the audience give him a good welcome. But Dave said they had cleared the place of Republican Congressmen, so there weren't any disruptions.

Dave was also saying some things about the tight security, and I'll bet it was! That's a good thing, knowing how many absolute wackos there are in this country who would harm the president. I wonder why some of the wackos who carry their guns to Obama rallies weren't there, demanding entrance.

Seeing the president on TV quite a bit lately, it's renewing my confidence. Anyone who says President Obama is overexposed is either lying or jealous ... or, more likely, partisan. I say when you got it going on like he does, there's no reason to stay home.

We have these other cretins, like Peggy Noonan, saying the president on TV is being "boorish." Nonsense. He's as refined as they come. If by some fluke he could've been a Republican, of course she'd be singing a different tune. I wonder if she ever called Bush "boorish," because I don't know ... maybe Bush could've been "boorish," if he worked real hard, he might've climbed up to that status. He was "ultra sub boorish."

I get a kick out of watching this charming guy -- President Obama -- on TV. And I guess I get a kick out of the fact that we have all these true wackos sitting at home, seething about everything he does. Maybe when he thinks of them, he puts forth an extra grin. He's a beautiful guy.

The Edwards Affair

Back in the '60s, there was a TV show on called "The Man From U.N.C.L.E," which we watched, us kids anyway. All the episode titles had the word "Affair" in them, like "The Green Opal Affair." And I remember asking my mom, "What's an affair?" Nervous laughter ... "Uh, it's like a 'plan.'" So the Green Opal Plan? I still don't get it, what she meant by 'plan.'

These days we have plenty of other Affairs, some planned, maybe some not. It'd be nice to know, in the case of John Edwards' affair, whether he had a roving eye all along and was just waiting to bed down to pretty thing along the trail.

I met him a couple times in 2004, once way up close. I could've asked him anything since it was kind of a cozy little group. I should've asked him, "Are you planning ever to have an affair along the campaign trail?" It didn't occur to me. Too bad I didn't have on a wizard hat and could see off in the future. I might've dropped a few clues to one who proved so clueless, like, "Keep your zipper zipped, Stupid."

Each of the times I saw him, he came into the room like Mr. Charisma. Maybe he had his eye out even then. "The better I look, the better it's gonna go if SHE is here." He entered a room like we were all his best friends in the entire world. Little did we know how friendly he would prove to be! Nitwit.

Now there's another big story about John-Boy, son of a mill worker. Son of something else, too. If you're going to have a big affair, don't keep the campaign going in 2008. We could be suffering under President John McCain at this point.

Operation Repo

I was reporting on one of my blogs a month or so ago that I was seriously watching a show on TV called "Operation Repo." It's on Tru TV. I thought it was a great show and was regular in seeing it.

Then I made the mistake of looking it up on the internet and found lots of people's assertions that it was fake. Or maybe not fake. But what they were saying was that it was re-creations of events that took place, repo jobs.

Ahhh, that's no good. I don't want something on TV on a channel that says "Actuality" that's a re-creation. And they do have a disclaimer at the beginning that says something about the events being "based on" real events. Anyway, to me that takes all the fun out of it. I don't want to watch a bunch of actors pretending to be angry. I want actual anger.

So I dropped it from my schedule, totally. And I don't miss it.

But another show I'd like to see, but I have forgotten more times than I've remembered, and that's "Bait Car." As far as I know -- and I'm pretty sure this has to be true -- this is a show of actual incidences, not re-creations.

The Addams Family — Crisis In The Addams Family

This is the second episode on the Volume 2 DVD set, The Addams Family show from the '60s. Original airdate, March 12, 1965.

Wednesday, Pugsley, Mamma are nowhere to be found in this episode.

The whole set-up involves Gomez and Fester's activities in cannon-shooting and being pirates, admirals on the high seas. They have a picture of a boat on the wall, which gets shot and then becomes a boat split in half with water coming from the plumbing behind.

They need to file an insurance claim. We cut to their insurance agents, who have gotten lots of claims from the Addams Family. They want out of the policy, and find that if they pay off another little claim the policy will be cancelled. In the meantime, Fester wants to get a job, and gets one at the insurance agency. He sells Gomez a million dollar policy, which Gomez actually talks himself into buying since Fester is a poor salesman.

Gomez is fabulously wealthy, which detail I had forgotten. And it turns out that he has some controlling interest in the insurance company. So any problem from this point on, is covered by insurance, but since he owns the company, it's really his responsibility.

On this episode I was keying in on John Austin's very punchy portrayal of Gomez. He was very dynamic and exaggerated, great things going on with the eyes, gestures. He really seemed to relish the part. It's good in a role like this, not that there are that many, to really overplay it. And that striped suit always looks pretty good, which he even wore when he was parachute jumping. Also, I like Carolyn Jones' very demur, confident tone for Morticia. Very pretty and nice.

Lurch had some appearances. He takes the hats from the insurance agents, and has that scary look when they show up. And he's bringing tea to Fester's room when he's not feeling well. It's a very crisp looking show, the plots are exaggerated nonsense but still delightful anyway in their own way.

Fester is always a treasured portrayal. He looks ridiculous, yet weirdly iconic, sitting with the normal people in the insurance office. I'd like to take the gawkers by the scruff and say, "Hey, that's Fester! He's going to be well-known long after you're gone!"

The Addams Family — Thing Is Missing

I got the volume 2 of the Addams Family show on the DVD the other day. I usually like to start with volume 1 and keep all my ducks in a row, but it couldn't be helped.

First episode continues from season one, out of two seasons total. Only two seasons, huh? But back then they made more shows in a season. I used to watch it on reruns and don't remember a lot of repetition, but it was never a big priority to focus on it.

When I get them on DVD, of course you're going in sequence and it all seems so TV-scholarly, like on TV Land when they tell the episode number and all that.

The first episode on this set is "Thing Is Missing," which involves one of the most famous hands of the '60s. Fester and the family have apparently made Thing feel like he's taken for granted, not appreciated, not valued as much as he should be. So he disappears and there's a ransom to be paid to get him back, which Gomez is glad to pay.

It's only been a couple days since I saw it and I've already forgotten the details. I was thinking more about what Thing is supposed to be and whether he lives in a small box or a box that goes way down. One of the characters shouted into the box and got a pretty serious echo back. If he's in a regular box on the table, and they open it, wouldn't he have to be laying there. Or is he a creature down below who only sticks up his hand. If that were the case, they wouldn't refer to him as only a hand when describing his disappearance. And in the movie, which I saw part of, it seems like he was nothing more than a hand walking around. But in the show, doesn't he come up in various boxes around the house? So he would need passage ways below the furniture, the floors, to get from one box to another. So, I'm worried more about stuff like that, and I forget the other details.

As an episode it was OK. I can imagine how it'd be to write the episodes. You need to feature the different characters, focus on them, and this seems like a natural enough one for a Thing that doesn't have much else to do.