Light the Fuse: the Official Mission: Impossible Podcast releases a new episode every Tuesday- a day I usually have off from work, so I always catch it on Wednesday, which held true this (last) week as well even though I did work on Tuesday. I pop it in alongside my listening of the backlogs for the Unofficial podcast: Light the Fuse the unofficial Mission: Impossible podcast had over 200 episodes, chugging along weekly since 2018, and this year cutting whatever deal with Paramount to make them official in time for the release of Dead Reckoning Part I. Good for them.
Not sure how I feel about the podcast going official means they seemingly can't broach the subject of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, even though a lot of their schtick is to interview cast and crew members (crew members they can interview all they want of course; save for WGA writers, those guys aren't on strike.) It feels like an elephant in the room but it's not like they ever talk about Tom Cruise's Scientology or anything either which always feels doubly so, so ??? whatever. Going official also discontinued their Patreon at the same time, with its own hundreds of subscriber-exclusive episodes now no longer available (?) anywhere (?) which is also unfortunate. Luckily it looks like their Tee Public store is still up! Though they don't advertise it anymore...
The unofficial podcast has been supplanted by the Official one on most podcast services, but the episodes do remain available on their website and on SoundCloud- thus, I make my way backward through them a chunk of downloaded episodes at a time, backwards because of the way I download them what with SoundCloud listing latest first. Out of the over 200 episodes (238 listed, with a few scattered unnumbered "bonus" episodes later on (including a whole subseries about Top Gun: Maverick, "Light the Fuselage")), I just passed the 175 mark. Episode 175 just so happens to kick off (though I think it's officially 178 that announces it) a late-2021 slate of episodes all focused around the ten-year anniversary of Ghost Protocol. That's cool because I could rewatch Ghost Protocol this weekend, which was next on my Mission: Impossible rotation anyway!
Bucket list: watch Ghost Protocol in IMAX, if they ever get around to doing another film festival thing or rerelease thing. There's supposed to be this format shift as Ethan swings out of the window at the Burj, the screen widening and opening up from 2.40:1 to IMAX 1.78:1; it sounds phenomenal.
Anyway.