What happens when a safecracker breaks his hands? Willy (Peter Lupus) and Terry (Wally Cox) from the Mission: Impossible pilot episode.

We’re happy to debut a new podcast series in conjuction with the When It Was Cool network with the first episode of The Plot. What’s that, you ask? It’s going to be an examination of the spy/heist genre. It will look at film, television, comics, cartoons and whatever else that can fall under that umbrella.

First up, we go to the very top of the genre for me, the original Mission Impossible TV show, which ran on CBS from 1966 to 1975. Naturally, we start with the Pilot, which starred Steven Hill as Dan Briggs, the team leader, along with regulars Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, Martin Landau and guest star Wally Cox. We look at the background on the show and then some brief chat about the episode itself, where the team goes to a Caribbean country to stop a dictator from using newly-acquired nuclear warheads against the United States.

We also look at arguably the most-remembered episode of the show, Season 3’s The Execution. We have Peter Graves in his second year as Jim Phelps, the regular team and guest villains Vincent Gardenia, Val Avery and Lew Askew. The team needs to get the goods on a mobster trying to control food prices and must get a hitman to rat out his boss by making him believe he is days away from being killed in the gas chamber.

This episode was a little shorter than we planned, but didnt want to just add filler. It was the demo episode, so please forgive any hiccups or glitches. We’ll be back soon with another episode.

Thanks to Karl for the invitation. Make sure you sample the other shows on the When It Was Cool Network.