Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete First Season: DVD Review
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Page 1 of 3 Warner / 1983-1984 / 966 Minutes / Unrated / Street Date: March 9, 2010 
Like a suburban Remington Steele, Scarecrow and Mrs. King is indicative of popular television from the early 1980s: It's simultaneously occasionally smart and insanely one-note. Where Charlie's Angels took women's lib and turned it on its feathered-hair head, Scarecrow and Mrs. King looks for a minute like it might be a subversive, sassy melodrama - with maybe a bit of a globe-trotting espionage kick - but it ends up being just another crime/mystery/drama with each episode housing a few one-liners and some seriously dated fashion sense. In the show, Angels alum Kate Jackson plays Amanda King, a divorcee whose day is full just with raising her two sons (Paul Stout, Greg Morton) and dealing with the heavy-handed ways of her live-in mother-in-law (Beverly Garland). This all becomes minimized, of course, when at a Washington DC train station, a spy named Scarecrow (Bruce Boxleitner) hands her a box and asks for her discreet help. Thus begins the advent of a double-life for Mrs. King: Doting mama and suburbanite on one hand, ass-kicking superspy on the other. It goes without saying that Scarecrow and Mrs. King stays buoyant simply due to the push/pull chemistry of Jackson and Boxleitner. They're not exactly the hottest couple on the block, but as I swam through this Complete First Season box set, their interaction was always top-notch: Even when narratives within episodes seemed trite and unconvincing, their camaraderie was not. But this repartee is really all the show has going for it. Jackson's constructive wit has always been enchanting (Angels in Chains!), but in Scarecrow and Mrs. King - at least in its first season - it never quite germinates to its full potential. Well, there's always next season.... |
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