Mission Impossible - The Fifth TV Season

The hit series Mission: Impossible™ returns to DVD, featuring all 23 Season Five episodes! By the fifth season, the show's changing times meant changing crimes, as the emerging drug culture forced the IMF to spend more time in America, battling organized crime and drug czars. But the winning formula stayed the same: Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) gets his assignment, Barney Collier (Greg Morris) makes the required special effects, and Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus) supplies the muscle. And while Paris (Leonard Nimoy) has the makeup skills to become any character required, it's the team's newest member — the gorgeous Dana Lambert (Lesley Ann Warren) — who gives this season an added boost, and makes this set of Mission: Impossible™ the most thrilling DVD experience yet! Amazon.com

STILL AS GOOD - MISSION IMPOSSIBLE SEASON 5

SEASON FIVE OF MISSION IS STILL AS GOOD AS SEASONS ONE TO FOUR .
IT HAS A DIFFERENT FEEL TO IT AND FEELS MODERN .
THE SHOW HAD A LOT OF PROBLEMS THROUGHOUT ITS SEVEN YEAR RUN ,
ESPECIALLY DURING THIS SEASON . BUT DESPITE THAT IT STILL CAME OUT ON TOP . EXCITING AND FUN TOO . CAN'T WAIT FOR SEASONS SIX AND SEVEN . December 27, 2008

great

The dvd arrived much earlier than expected. I wish to thank Amazon for its swift service. December 27, 2008

good change of pace

some classic episodes from this season with lesley ann warren and leonard nimoy, a change of pace, well done. November 27, 2008

Mixed Bag-Some Very Good, Some Poor

I will always give a five-star rating to each of the 5 seasons of the original MI series, but, unfortunately, it was in season 5 that the show lost much of the luster it had in its first four seasons. (Please note-even a "poor" MI episode is heads and shoulder above almost everything else on television). Creator Bruce Geller was forced out of having anything to do with making the show, which led to changes the irrevocably changed the nature of the series. One was to make the show more attractive to a younger audience. This involved bringing Leslie Warren in as the regular female member of the team. Most of her performances were lackluster, with one notable exception. In addition, the theme song was made more "modern" and less gripping, in my opinion. Secondly, a number of experiments were made with the basic premise of the show, most of which were not successful. Among them was a scene in the episode "Blast" which is played for pure comedy (a house belonging to a well-to-do couple is taken over by terrorists, including IMF people pretending to go along with them, and the IMF people are forced to promise not to damage the furniture and to take good care of their dog!), another is an especially uninteresting episode where Jim goes back to his home town and gets involved in solving a murder which is a total waste of the IMF's talents and in which Paris quotes the the stupidest line ever from the series: "I dig old home towns!". On the positive side, there is a very good episode ("The Innocent") where Barney is injured and the IMF is forced to bring in a reluctant outsider to help them and in which the morality of what the team does is questioned.
It must be said there are numerous fine episodes that dealt with what were then current events such as nuclear weapons proliferation ("The Field"), apartheid in South Africa ("Kitara"), another episode in which Barney is injured in a white-ruled country in Africa which was a thinly disguised version of Rhodesia, and the famous hotel-switch episode with Robert Conrad ("The Killer").
As I noted above, Leslie Warren was just not the best person to take Barbara Bain's place on the team, being too young and not "serious" enough, however, she did put in a fine performance in "Flight" in which she is captured and at first seems to break down and cry claiming she was a fringe person innocently recruited into an intelligence operation without really knowing what is going on, then, she quickly changes persona, becomes cool as a cucumber and tells her interrogators that yes, she is working for American intelligence. However, this brief moment of glory for her and her character didn't last.
I happen to think Sam Elliott was a fine addition to the series, but I guess they didn't figure there was room for both him and Peter Lupus in the show. His best performance was in "Kitara" where he plays an Afrikaner army officer (he had the accent down pretty well) who is an expert in rooting out blacks pretending to be whites. Again, like Leslie Warren, he wasn't really given any other challenging roles.
This season was Leonard Nimoy's second as Paris, and he was very disappointed in the show and decided to leave it. He was not given that much to do, but he also put in some fine performances (although, on the whole, he is not the actor Martin Landau is), among them, "The Field" where he plays an American traitor who is arrested and accused of murder, which was not part of the original mission.
Finally, it was in this season that the decision was made to de-emphasize the episodes about international intrigue due to the unpopularity of the War in Vietnam, however there are still some good ones, particularly, "The Amateur" with Anthony Zerbe, one of MI best villains. After this season, these type of episodes were completely phased out with the Missions changed to battling organized crime, which quickly lead to the writers running out of ideas.

Having said all this, any fan of series will still enjoy these season 5 episodes. November 21, 2008

The last classic year of MI

Sadly, this review site has become a hang-out for disgruntled "Fugitive" fans with a never-ending grudge against CBS/Paramount. Get a life!
This 5th series of MI is one of my favorites. They finally grow there hair/sideburns a little and start swinging with the '70's! Really strong writing, and a good variation of plots. Too bad Leonard Nimoy wasn't happy with his role, but he is a team-member of equal importance, and really shines in several episodes. Sam Elliott as a doctor is not a good replacement for strongman Willie in 10 episodes, but he is not as bad as I expected, just generally useless. Lesley Anne Warren is very young and new to acting, but she is gorgeous and wears some incredible mini-dresses & mini-skirts (and never wore a bra). Yes, I admit, pure eye candy, but she is effective in the mod episodes where Barbara Bain would have seemed, well, out of place. The next years are good too, but this seems like the last classic team, and the least repetitive with plots. (I mean, how many Eastern European or South American jails do they have to infiltrate, then escape?) November 19, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...