Should you choose to accept it...

I escaped from the isolation ward a few times, mainly to get more tea and medicine, to check the mailbox for Netflix movies, and then stock up on DVDs at the video store . (Also, my sister briefly hijacked me on the way to the doctor's and forced me to drink her weird and very gross herbal concoction, but that's mere psychological trauma that the stack of movies quickly buried.) I could read, I suppose, but I rarely get to veg this much.

I really liked the first Mission Impossible. MI2 was okay. MI3 was okay, too. Nothing spectacular, and a little sketchy on some of the plot details.

In this one, Ethan gets married and isn't on active duty. Of course, he gets pulled back into the field for one last case, and then his wife gets kidnapped. Explosions and plot-hatching ensue. The fight scenes were decent, but not incredibly choreographed or anything. The coolest segment was breaking into the Vatican. But in the end, we don't even know what the "goods" were that were so critical to world security. They're not supposed to matter, though, because the main plot is really about Tom Cruise protecting his new white picket fence life.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was in it, that was a plus. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was good. And I like Ving Rhames' character in the M:I movies. Other than that, it was overrated.

So then I watched all of Season 4 of a better spy show, which was luckily available at the local independent video store. The clerk there was also a fan, so we gabbed for about 15 minutes about how good the show was.

I don't normally blog about TV shows, but MI-5 (aka Spooks) is too good not to mention. It has the best cliffhangers of any show I've ever watched. A friend introduced me to the show two years ago, and I've been addicted ever since.

It's a lot like 24 in that it's about a team of spies who work to foil terrorist attacks on domestic soil, so you're basically rooting for the agents of a government that is spying on citizens, breaking and entering, and trampling all over people's civil rights in the name of national security. But that's the nature of any spy flick. Unlike 24, it's not in "real time," and it's not a nuclear bomb threat every show. The characters are more complex, and there's no annoying duaghter who's the perpetual Pauline in peril. The only small quibble I have is that with all the American characters (feuds with American agents are an ongoing theme), the accents are so obviously, obviously fake. (The vowels are overdone.)

The problem with watching Season 4 is that I knew it wouldn't be out on DVD in the States for a while, so I read the episode synopses on the BBC's website and knew the big, horrible, drama-filled death-of-a-main-character in this season.

Still hugged the couch pillow while watching it, though.