I like it, but it's Preposterous

Not sure if you're trying to be funny or what.

5) Rollin Hand, man of a million faces, and those preposterous rubber masks.
6) Success of plans depends on too many variables beyond the control of the team such as villians and innocent bystanders acting and reacting as expected.

If you want preposterious, try watching some of "Mission: Impossible's" contemporaries of the time namely "The Man From UNCLE" and "The Wild Wild West". Those shows were even more outlandish and went WAY overboard.

The key difference between "Mission" and most other spy shows of it's era is that it played it straight. Granted the show did leave the realm of believability from time to time but for the most part, it was well written and well planned.

Bruce Geller (the creator of the series) felt that in order for audiences to take the show seriously, the characters had to treat the assignments in the same way. If it was too tongue in cheek or the humour outweighed the drama, the series would fall flat and wouldn't succeed and he was right. Both "UNCLE" & "WWW" burnt themselves out after a few seasons but "M:I" lasted a respectable seven years and won back to back Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series.

1. It's a spy show, so they invented different ways of getting the tape (or record in some cases) to him. I do laugh at the ones where Phelps gets the tape, and then listens right in the middle of a public area, like a park or a boat dock.

2. Already talked about by others.

3. The accents are used simply as a device to show you they are in disguise. I suppose they could have used subtitles in English with the actors speaking some eastern European language, but viewers would probably have tired of that. It would probably have increase production costs as well, for not much gain.

Many of the episodes have elaborate methods of the IMF intercepting inquiries and verification requests about identities, or it is explained that the targets and the person being impersonated have never met before. Or, you have Rollin Hand or Paris in one of their disguises.

As for Barney Collier, you must remember the times. With the exception of Bill Cosby on "I Spy" and the guy who played Rochester on the "Jack Benny Program." There were NO main characters on American Television played by African Americans. I think there was a concerted effort to change that in the mid-1960's, with Ivan Dixon as TSG Kinchloe on "Hogan's Heroes" as another example. In fact, I have read that "I Spy" was not picked up by some network affiliates in the South because it had a black main character!

4. The idea was to create dissension in the enemy and have them shoot/execute each other, usually with some complicated deception, and only the one about to be killed had figured it out. I think this is when the show really worked well. Also, there was a Television Production Code that would not allow the "good guys" to shoot first, just like the production code in motion pictures from 1934 to 1964 or so. That is another reason why you see the villains on "Mission: Impossible" episodes killing each other, not IMF members doing the killing. Finally, the complex schemes that IMF devises is what draws you into the show and keeps you coming back. I think that is why a show like "Hogan's Heroes" also was popular during this same time.

Actually the silliest scene is the one between #1 and #2, where Jim is sitting on a couch going through his MI personnel, and guess what: he always picks exactly the same 4 people!

I've always wondered who were the reject pictures, whether it was some kind of in joke among the cast and crew.

Also, even though these countries have no black people in them, nobody ever notices Barney sneaking around in the electrical closets."

Thats false. There were thousands of African students, officials and military personal who lived and studied in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

Plus, the character wasn't that dark skinned and could have passed for a swarthy Caucasian(someone from the Caucasus mt. region), Central Asian or even Romani as long as he walked the walk and talked the talk.

1. It would be quite a short episode if they didn't accept the mission.

2. They have gov't connections, other spying missions have mapped out buildings in foreign countries.

3. One has to assume they speak with the correct accents & have very good fake IDs. People from African countries were in Eastern Europe as part of exchanges in the hope of proving communism the better system for the third world.

4. The plans are often not to kill but to discredit the villains. Killing him makes a martyr but discrediting him ruins the other side's plans. Some episodes do have the IMF set up a guy to get killed which makes you wonder why go to all that trouble.

Ayn Rand-the philosopher of the intellectually bankrupt.

They should have had just ONE episode where Jim listens to the tape and says: "Aw, hellllll naw!" and then the rest of the hour is just him sitting at a desk in an office drinking coffee.