Review of Butterfly

This episode, still one of my favorites, had so many things going on behind the scenes.
First, it was critically considered one of the best of a bad 5th season (and beyond). At this point, the mortal wounds from the departures of Barbara Bain and Martin Landau were starting to take their toll. The IMF missions were pivoting away from escapades in faux Eastern European countries mimicking the real Cold War and, instead, frequently targeting "The Syndicate" (read WASPy Mafia) in the US.
Leonard Nimoy's role of Paris - magician, sleight-of-hand expert and master of disguise - did a passable effort to replace Landau's Rollin Hand, but the revolving group of co-stars (it was always alluded that the IMF contained a broader group of operatives beyond the show's regulars), including Lesley Ann Warren and Sam Elliott, never provided the same team chemistry as Bain and Landau.
Now, about the episode: this was Japan in 1970. As we are 50-plus years removed from the episode, it's hard to imagine 1970 Japan was 25 years removed from unleashing a global conflict that ended in the only war-time use of nuclear weapons and 6 years from their global reemergence in the 1964 Summer Olympics. American business was actively engaged in trade with this new, peaceful Japanese economy. But for some Japanese, bitter war memories are behind a push to discredit America and return Japan to an isolationist society.
The mission? The IMF force must exonerate an American businessman framed for the murder of his wife, a relative of an influential Japanese isolationist. And this is where the 5th season's issues become obvious. Production costs limited the Japan settings to filming in the Japanese Gardens park in Los Angeles. While the supporting cast was populated with respected Japanese-American actors such as James Shigeta, Khigh Dhiegh's role as bad guy Toshio Masaki was just a revisited version of his role as recurring Hawaii Five-O villain Wo Fat. Critics assailed Nimoy's Paris as a kabuki performer. Nimoy's features were too European to ever pass as an Oriental native. Even worse, Dhiegh (born in the U.S. as Kenneth Dickerson) wasn't even Japanese; he was of Egyptian and Sudanese ancestry! While I doubt even Landau's Rollin Hand could have passed as a kabuki performer, the show's earlier success allowed a degree of suspension of belief when it came to disguises and such (I mean, how stealthy could the IMF team have been with an African-American operative in Eastern Europe???)