Mission: Impossible. Nicole, Part 2 - Lots of Hurty Jim

Well, most of the second part of this episode consists of Jim being hurt and being betrayed. It's probably an episode that appeals more to women than men. I could have done with a little less of the blurry-running-through-a-set-pretending-to-be-a-forest shots, but it's one of those rare episodes that gives you a hint of Jim as a vulnerable, feeling person rather than an efficient thinking machine. It must be hard when all the women you meet on the job are either on the wrong side or liable to always be in danger.

Poor bloody and bruised Jim wakes up in a cell, just in time to see Nicole coming down the stairs dressed quite hideously in a bob wig and a pink shirt.

Her clothes really are hideous, but Jim doesn’t care about that. He’s besotted with her and she’s rescuing him – all good from his point of view.

This is where he should say, ‘Bugger,’ as chin-strap man comes in and discovers the rescue. You can tell he’s wounded because he was standing up, but he sits down almost immediately once he realises they can’t escape.

Poor Jim…

Jim chest. Rarr.

Dirty, nasty, double-crossing bitch.  *ahem. Sorry.* She implicates Sparrow as a double agent, making Jim think he’s been betrayed by someone he trusts. If only he knew…

Meanwhile, Rollin is passing on the list, and insisting he has to get back to Jim. I like his suavity and his elbow patches here, but it seems a bit unprofessional that after all the code exchanges to be sure he’s meeting the right person, they go on to discuss the thing quite loudly with two people just a few yards away down the corridor.

Poor Jim. He feigns death to lure the guard in…

But as soon as the guard comes to check his pulse he punches him in the face, and then throws his jacket at him for good measure.

From now on there is a lot of hurty-Jim running through bushes, doubled over a little.

Sexy boots there, Jim.

This bit is hard to cap, because there’s a lot of this going on – blurry shots with foliage and shots of the moon overlaying them running. Seriously, this goes on for about a minute, which is a long time in the film world. It's all about obscuring the vision, not seeing things as they really are. It has been since Nicole entered the episode.

Rollin is watching from the bushes as the people in the house start to organise a search for the escaped prisoners.

Jim is exhausted and falls to his knees. By the looks of it the trees are exhausted too. They’re all limp and shiny.

He tries to persuade Nicole to leave him, because he’s slowing her down.

They take refuge for a while in a barn.

See the hard face of betrayal once she thinks that he’s unconscious.

We see her through evil-guy’s glass as she joins him in the car. There she is, distorted by the glass, a traitor through and through.

See the brandy-glass-distortion-of-evil.

While Jim is unconscious they send in a doctor to administer a stimulant.

But Rollin is watching, and knows the bitch is a traitor.

Jim comes round, and looks as pretty as ever.

He notices she looks distressed. And don’t his shoulders look broad in that jacket?

Distressed Nicole. Obviously she’s not all evil. She is also a woman.

Thanks to his 60-a-day habit he goes rummaging in her handbag.

And notices that her matches are shorter than the matchbox. Being a spy, he knows what this means.

This is the face of the betrayed.

If Jim came home from war, wounded, I’d be his nurse. (Although I know nothing about nursing. I’d give it a shot.)

Yay for Rollin!

There’s a bit more running through the Paramount studios when Jim collapses momentarily. Cleaning up after this must be a bitch. I mean, do they keep the substrate and only use that studio for simulating the outdoors? Or do that have to sweep it all up each time? Do they throw it away, or do they have big barrels marked ‘earth’?

Jim is getting desperate, knowing that Nicole is not on his side after all. He pushes himself so hard that he collapses again.

He tries to struggle on – and this is when Nicole confesses the whole plan, that the escape was arranged.

It slowly dawns on him that she doesn’t know that the match box was bugged.

Caught at last… (there was a lot more running through bushes before this, but this time they were being chased by dogs.)

Rollin to the rescue!!

Jim is back in control!

Unfortunately Rollin wasn’t watching hard enough and didn’t see that the evil guy didn’t drop his pistol…

And Nicole is shot. (Really this proves that the evil guy is an idiot, for shooting the unarmed woman instead of one of the men with guns. He dies for that piece of idiocy as Rollin shoots him.)

Nice little intimate scene as Jim lays her on the ground with his lips close to hers as if he wants to kiss her, but never quite touching.

(On an aside, why do they never make bullet holes in the costumes, or at least dab a bit of something black in the middle of the blood stain so it looks like a bullet hole?)

Rollin has the look of someone who feels his friend’s pain, but also wants to get the hell out of there.

Poor Jim. He doesn’t give trust easily, and look where it got him.

He takes a last look at her on the ground.

And off they go, with sad music, and a thunderstorm.

You get the feeling that he will never be quite the same again.

Mission: Impossible. Nicole, Part 1 - Jim's incredibly hot uniform.

Season 3, episode 22 of Mission: Impossible is Nicole, where something happens that rarely happens - an MI plot goes all wrong. It's an episode that feels like it goes on forever, not in a bad way, but just in that a lot is packed into 48 and a half minutes, and because it doesn't stick to the usual 'Mission' script you're not quite sure what's going to happen next. Jim is shot and captured and helped to escape by the beautiful Nicole (Joan Collins) with whom he has fallen in love, or lust, or something. Don't expect in depth analysis here. Expect pretty, besotted and hurty Jim.

Jim, you always have blue cars – and this one looks like a boat after watching the Corvette in Route 66 so much.

Also, Jim, you look sexy as you run up the stairs.

Jim knows that this one is serious because it involves a villain with his chin in a surgical support. Those types are always mad as a badger.

Now, here’s some interesting fashion choices. It’s not a briefing in Jim’s apartment, so they’re not wearing all black and grey. The guy in the middle (code named Sparrow) has a very red shirt. Rollin has a red tie. A hint of danger, perhaps. (Also I’m loving the camera panning down until it’s shooting up through the underside of a glass table. Funnily enough I just came out of a Peter Graves Route 66 episode where he was shot a couple of times through the underside of a glass table.)

Jim looks pretty through the table.

Rollin looks pretty and serious as he sets fire to Sparrow’s telephone number. You have to be serious when you’re burning things you’re holding in your fingers.

Rollin does an exemplary turn as the crabby old general, with Jim as his unwelcome nursemaid.

This guy (Logan Ramsey) always plays weird evil mad people. He did in Star Trek and he did in Route 66 too.

Jim has just caught sight of Nicole. Even when she turns round, the fact that she has the eyes of a hammerhead shark doesn’t bother him. (Sorry, Joan Collins. I don’t really mean that.)

Let’s just have a shot of his lovely eyes. He does look like he’s been up all night, though.

This is the local meeting place for Freaky Evil Guys Anonymous. The guy on the left (Jon Lormer) was in Star Trek too, but I can’t remember whether it was in Errand of Mercy or Mirror Mirror. (Actually I’ve just discovered that he was in Star Trek three times, none of them in the episodes I thought. He was Tamar in The Return of the Archons, an old man in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, and Dr Theodore Haskins in The Cage.) The guy at the back is an odd faced man, Dal Jenkins, who makes up for his rather effeminate face with a deceptively deep voice.

Lots of nice filming in this scene, shooting past odd looking statues, and then this view of creepy-guy in the mirror.

Lovely images here of Jim and Nicole circling the room as the crowd mill between them and they never quite get a full glimpse of each other. I could take a hundred screencaps (but won't).

Gazing...

Rollin, meanwhile, is playing the lecherous old general to perfection, talking about breastworks and such.

There is a lot of circling the room and eye-sex going on.

Rollin has two blondes in his harem…

While Jim is being told about how disgusting Rollin’s behaviour is by an old woman, he’s so busy ogling Nicole he doesn’t listen to what she’s saying.

Finally they meet, as Nicole rescues him from the old lady. Someone – cameraman, director of photography – had a field day with all these sparkling candlelight and chandelier shots. It gives their meeting a feeling of intimacy in the crowd.

Real, genuine Jim-smile. Aww.

Some Nicole for good measure – but we don’t want too much of that, do we?

Jim is essentially being reduced to a giggling schoolgirl, he’s so besotted. (I know he's not giggling here, but you know what I mean.) They’re even talking star signs. He’s Pisces. She’s a Gemini – unsurprisingly.

And she touches him. I think he swoons a little. She touches his fingers first and he looks like he wants to dive into bed with her.

I love Rollin’s drunk scene. Jim is trying to get him back to his room and he doesn't want to go. It’s all a ploy so he’s free to go and rob the safe.

I’m saying nothing.

Nothing at all…
They exchange fun banter about how much totty each of them racked up.

Smitten. Oh, Jim, this is unlike you.

Not so far gone he can’t keep track of the time, though. The watch is all important in Mission: Impossible. I'm surprised they didn't have some kind of watch sponsorship.

Masterful Jim is going to Rollin’s rescue after Rollin set off the alarm.

This is Jim’s ‘Oh f**k I’ve been shot’ moment. This is what happens when you get distracted by women. Oh, Jim...