Mission Impossible & Secret Origin of a Cable Network

Sorry it’s been way too long since I’ve written you all, and our summer vacation is wasting away before our eyes. I hope you all have been making the most out of every single moment! Don’t worry if you haven’t, Halloween season is right around the corner, and we plan on having just as much fun with that as we did during our summer vacation event!

Speaking of making the most out of every moment, as you probably heard on our podcast, Enchantress and I went to see Mission Impossible: Fallout on Saturday night. We made the 20 minute drive up north to Becky’s Drive-in, which has two screens. The double feature pair was MI:6/Skyscraper and Teen Titans Go/Hotel Transylvania 3. I’m not going to lie, there were a few times during MI:6 that I was seeing what was happening during Titans out of the corner of my eye, and I was tempted to tune it in for a few minutes. The thing is though, Fallout was so fucking fun and exciting that there wasn’t a lull at any point to do just that.

This was our second trip to the second drive-in movie theater in our area, and the second time I’ve been to the drive-in movies in probably 15 years. I learned something about myself, I LOVE DRIVE-IN MOVIE THEATERS!. They’re so much fun. We packed some beer and wine *not allowed at Becky’s but we’re rule breakers, totally allowed and Shankweilers* We got some hotdogs, pirogies and popcorn of course at the concession stand. We took in the sights and the movie started. Leaving the movie, I was riding a high! The movie kicked ass and the overall environment was such a fantastic experience. It got me thinking about Mission Impossible, and I realized, it’s a very “Rad Years” subject. The first movie in this series came out 22 years ago in 1996. I remember seeing it with my friend down the street and his mom and we left knowing it was awesome but both thoroughly confused. It was hard to follow for a 13 year old at the time, and I’m sure it’s hard to follow now, but I definitely want to go back and watch that and all of them over again.

look at that computer! looks so old and outdated now!

I got

into the original Mission Impossible show by way of ’66 Batman.

Back in 1994, the FX network launched and it looked NOTHING like FX of today. They played retro shows that Fox had the rights to and had a backbone of live programming that they did from a studio “loft apartment” in NYC. There was a morning show called Breakfast Time. It was a morning talk show hosted by the guy who hosts Dancing with the Stars and a wiseass puppet named Bob. Yes, a puppet host! I was obsessed with the desire to watch this show. The following statement is not a fib or fabrication whatsoever. Remember those “Sunbolt” caffeinated Gatorades I wrote about here? That summer in 1994 when FX launched, I would go to my local Texaco Mini-Mart and buy a Sunbolt, throw it in the fridge so I can wake up early and watch Breakfast Time. Something about it felt so adult and sophisticated at the time. The Sunbolt being my proxy coffee and me waking up and watching a morning talk show. Nothing has changed much in 24 years for me, except Monster and Rockstar are my proxy coffee drinks and Howard Stern on Sirius is my morning show.

There was an antiques show like “Antique Roadshow” called Personal FX (word play!) and a pet show called Pet Space, and what I considered the crown jewel of the network “Sound FX” a live, interactive Music Video show that was better than anything MTV was airing. This show was hosted by Karen and OJ- you might know OJ as Orlando Jones from Mad TV and Karen as Karen Bryant, she how hosts the UFC show on Fox Sports 1, but she’s been all over since.

I loved these shows, but NEVER missed Sound FX. The channel aired tons of syndicated Fox shows like Batman, Wonder Woman, the Green Hornet, Vega$, and Mission Impossible. It was during this time I fell in love with the missions of Jim Phelps and his crew. The theatricality of the masks and the gimmicks, I loved it all.