Underwater

Frederick Hoffman (Jeremy Slate) has hidden underwater a body of a courier who was carrying 75 million worth of stolen gems. Hoffman's employer Berlinger ( Fritz Weaver) is torturing Hoffman to try to find the gems.

The IMF team must convince Hoffman to lead them to the gems. Firstly, they have Lisa Casey ( Linda Day George) losing a diamond ring that is cut like the ones in the suitcase underwater and soon it catches the attention of Berlinger's right hand man.

Meanwhile, Hoffman is taken out from his lair by Barney via a mask looking like another Berlinger's right hand man - Berlinger meets with Casey to ask about the diamond and she tells him that Phelps, under guise of a diving instructor, gave her the diamond ring ... he naturally seeks out Phelps, thinking he knows the location of the cache.

From here, it just continues briskly as before, twisting and turning smoothly. Good episode that moves away from the East/west and Iron Curtain espionage- there's some really good underwater shots, particularly liked the image of a man anchored down underwater holding a brief case. Quite eerie.

The story begins aboard a boat. Hoffman, in a diving suit, kills the man aboard the boat and tosses him overboard along with the briefcase handcuffed to him and an anchor. Hoffman's plan is to return later and take the briefcase...which contains many millions of dollar's worth of diamonds. He then blows up the boat some distance away. However, his boss (Fritz Weaver) realizes what happened and he has Hoffman tortured when he lies to them about what happened to the diamonds. The IM Force's job is to determine where the diamonds are, retrieve them and then bring everyone associated with this theft to justice.

This is an okay episode...though I wonder WHY would an organization like Phelps' get involved in a case like this. It sure seems like a police or FBI case. Regardless, it is entertaining and worth your time.

By the way, because I am a child of the 1960s, I laughed when Barney was making a latex face mask. The bottle he used was actually Creepy Crawler Goop...the stuff kids made rubber creatures with at home.

Even though Season 6 marked a turn towards nearly all US-based crime fighting by our team, instead of the globe-trotting espionage cases they had done before, there were still good episodes, such as this one.

For one thing, a significant part of the story takes place underwater, which gives a nice touch. Also, we are outdoors a lot: on the beach, on boats. MI fans will appreciate this, since so often our team is in a maze of high-rise offices, or big garages, etc. Fritz Weaver was a fine actor and does a good job as the villain here. Some fans tend to complain a lot about the Season 6 and 7 shows, because they found the US-based adventures less exciting; but, that is the direction the show went, so we should enjoy these shows for their good points.

Lynda Day George makes such a high-quality member of the MI team, it is always a pleasure to see her. All our regulars are good as usual. There are some scenes in this episode which are distinctly eerie; you'll know them when you see them. Well worth watching.