riding the echo down

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 3/5

the plot is pretty straightforward: he plays a lawyer for a mobster that the group are trying to take down and the group decides to exploit the lawyer's resentful wife as a weak link by forcing her into rehab and impersonating her.

there's no cold war wackiness in this one (meaning the obligatory xenophobia is also lacking, though there is one very strange racist exchange during one of the therapy scenes) but there's plenty of other absurdities that make this fun to watch - magical rubber masks, for example, and truly bizarre cutting-edge 1970s "group therapy" sessions - and the main actress, elizabeth ashley, who you might recognize from her later role in the nic cage feature vampire's kiss, gives us just the right amount of melodrama called for by the premise. honestly she carries this episode by playing dane's alcoholic wife - dane does a solid job, and his approach to method acting really shows in some places, but he's a bit hamstrung by the vague accent he's putting on. generic "american tough guy", i think, and it's not usually distracting but there's a couple scenes where it doesn't do his delivery any favors. shame, because dane really has what it takes to play sympathetic bad guys/antagonists. so this doesn't rate as highly as his commandante episode but he gets to do much more here than just looking cute in the survivors, and the stuff with ashley's character is compelling enough to make sitting through the other dane-less scenes worth it. unfortunately (or fortunately) dane isn't in any of the therapy scenes.

it probably is worth warning for domestic violence, however - there's one scene where he slaps her without any warning and both of them do a great job with it but that might make it harder to watch for some. and then she's forcibly manhandled by a few different people, sometimes for restraint or forced institutionalization and sometimes as part of the really strange therapy sessions lol, and there's a scene or two where she throws and breaks things.

yeah yeah i called dane's character sympathetic but he's a wifebeater, cancel me, etc. my policy is generally "if someone lays hands on you irl then leave them asap" but in fiction it can be a little different. what i mean is that you can see the conflict in his eyes and dane sells him as someone who was a good husband, once, but the narrative has decided he's irredeemable. this makes the ending more upsetting to me than i think they intended, honestly, because yeah he dies (not really a spoiler with his track record let's be real) and she has no idea, she's just being forced back into rehab when he gets murdered and the mission impossible crew doesn't seem to really be thinking about her psychological welfare at all. what kind of support is she going to have when she gets out? could he have been a good husband again, if they'd been able to escape the mob he'd gotten involved with? we're not asked to consider that at all but i really feel as though dane plays him as though he had the potential. how much of that is his performance and how much is me just being biased because it's dane, idk, but it makes the story of this more interesting than a lot of mission impossible episodes (imo).


highlight: going through these caps made me realize he has a scar on the right side of his upper lip, almost like my oc....

i'm not positive whether it's REALLY good makeup or an actual scar - it's hard to tell if he had it in the 1967 episode since that one's pretty dark. a damn shame the film quality for rituals is what it is because i could compare some of those lovely closeups.... i didn't adjust the color/light on this or any of the following screencaps btw


( 'she's muh WAHFE' and he's my wife. mwah )

if i had to rank his three mission impossible episodes in terms of rewatchability, i think it'd go commandante, the survivors, then this one. not because his performance is lesser (in the survivors he's mostly standing around being adorable lol) but because it's a little hard to watch just for fun. granted, the imperialist gaslighting in commandante is also a boner kill, but he's having so much fun with the role it's easier to ignore the upsetting aspects of that episode. that said, if you chose to watch only two i'd insist you skip the survivors and watch this one along with commandante. you get to see him do way more here and regardless of whether you think he does a good job or not the rest of the episode is quite the experience.

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: 2/5
most of his role is just standing around and looking pretty, though he does do a damn good job of it. comparatively few lines of note and you can see that he's still refining his approach to acting. his turn in s06e07 is much better and more significant in terms of the script. still, the big bad (played by albert paulsen) is one of the better actors of the episode and enjoyable to watch as well so it's not too boring overall. put this one on for the occasional eye candy while you're folding laundry. at least he doesn't die in this one!

the plot: shrugs, your average cold war hijinks. some creative theatrics with the staging of a fake earthquake but honestly the episode with leonard nimoy in the fake submarine was more interesting to me in that regard. when i read this episode's description i was hoping dane's character was one of the scientists being kidnapped but alas he just plays one of the heavies. he's very talented at smirking sexily though so it's no wonder people always wanted him for that.

But by 1971 he had grown tired of being dispatched by every square-jawed television hero.

-- "The face is familiar but you can't place the name? It's Dane, Larry Dane" by Ron Base for Macleans magazine, 1976

highlight:
HE'S TOO FUCKING TALL FOR THE STOOL LOOK AT HIS LEGSSSSSSSSS

( lotta good noses in this episode )