Mission: Impossible (TV Series) Nitro (1969) User Reviews

An OK episode; some good action scenes

[shakspryn · 7/10 · 23 February 2023]

Every TV series is going to have plenty of episodes that are entertaining to their fans, though not especially memorable; what you might call average type episodes. This is one of those. Why isn't it better? I think there are two main reasons. First, the villains: our MI teams is at their best when they are contending against one or more brilliant and ruthless adversaries. When the bad guys are rather dull and plodding, as they are here, it holds down the potential of the story. The two main villains here are definitely the plodding type! Mark Lenard, who is also a bad guy, was a very good actor, but he doesn't have much to do here in his bad guy persona.

The other reason that the episode isn't as interesting, has to do with Cinnamon's role in this adventure. When the plot calls for her to be enticing or seductive, there's just nobody better than Barbara Bain in giving provocative, subtle glances and innocuous-seeming remarks, usually directed at a villain, that are loaded with under-the-surface flirtatiousness. This quality of Barbara's adds a lot of spice to many of the episodes that feature her in seasons 1 to 3. Here, the story just doesn't call for that, and the character Cinnamon is playing comes off as not particularly interesting. That, along with the bland villains, reduces the energy of the story.

Those two big drawbacks aside, this is a typical MI episode, which means it will be fairly or moderately enjoyable to fans who are always glad to see Jim Phelps and his ace team doing their thing. So, it's worth watching, but you probably aren't going to be in any hurry to watch it again.

Not With a Bang but a Whimper

[GaryPeterson67 · 7/10 · 27 March 2022]

The third season has been consistently strong, with winning episodes like "Live Bait" and the two-part "Bunker" building momentum sufficient to send Martin Landau and Barbara Bain off at the crest of the wave. But crash! Then came "Nitro," a dud in more ways than one. Not necessarily bad, but a letdown in the wake of the impossible missions that preceded it.

The first misstep was the script. Laurence Heath's story struggled to fill fifty minutes of screen time, so it was padded out with endless scenes of Barney typing code and replacing on spools the same computer tapes, or of Rollin tooling around on the forklift. I can hear the editor, "We're still down three minutes. I know! Splice in about a dozen cutaway shots to the brake line leaking!"

The second misstep was in casting. Where were the familiar faces of the era's best character actors we've come to expect? Yes, it was great to see Mark Lenard in his third of four series appearances, but he spent the lion's share of his screentime unconscious! Compare his tepid and underutilized appearance here to his outsized and commanding role in "Trek." The featured guest players were Titos Vandis and Sandor Szabo, and neither was especially compelling. Okay, admittedly Szabo's sweating and dissembling as he lay paralyzed watching the truck out the window was entertaining!

Good points were seeing Landau employ his real-life talents as a cartoonist in creating from scratch the face of the legendary agitator he would portray. It was also fun to see Jim and Willy paired as a reporter and photographer. Barney and Cinnamon dutifully did their jobs with little to distinguish them this time out. The dossier scene was also a welcome sight.

One theme I found prescient was the role of the media. When the television cameras stopped, King Said paused his press conference. Even with assembled journalists attending in person, if it isn't being televised, why go on? General Zek takes to the television airwaves to announce his (premature) victory after he was earlier duped by the "fake news" he heard over the radio. "Trust but verify," as Reagan later said, which sage counsel would have saved Zek from the egg on his face (and much worse, it's safe to assume).

The quip about "Mr. Connery" was a nice touch. I took Barney's line about Connery being "on another assignment" as a reference to the actor's abandoning the spy game after quitting (for one movie, anyway) the role of Bond. When ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE came out later in this year of 1969, I'm sure many fans were saying the same thing: "I specifically asked for Mr. Connery!"

Third season MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE was a well-oiled machine and the bar of expectations is set high. These early episodes boasting Landau and Bain stand head and shoulders above the later JV teams Phelps cobbled together (Mimi, Dana, Doug et al.), which teams were reduced to upending the penny-ante plots of two-bit mobsters instead of coup-plotting Muslim-nation military leaders as in this episode. But "Nitro" proved itself a dud despite some flashes and glimmers. In the end, there was a lot of buildup for very little payoff.