Customer Reviews

I Spy - Tag You're It

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first three episodes on this wonderful DVD are set in San Francisco. In "An American Empress", Robinson & Scott take a beautiful Chinese heiress (Frances Nuyen) on a tour of the city, only to discover that she plays an unwitting part in a plot to gain control of the government of China. The 2nd episode is one of the best of the entire series: "Anyplace I Hang Myself Is Home"; After Alexander Scott mysteriously tries to take his own life, a series of flashbacks show Scott & Robinson's early days in spy school, including their very first encounter with one another, in which both consider the other "helplessly square"!! In "Tag, you're It", our heroes return to spy school for a training exercise that goes badly wrong (look for our boys hiding out in the Haight-Ashbury district dressed as Hippies!); and in "A Few Miles West Of Nowhere", the pair investigate the killing of a fellow agent in a small town in which local vigilantes make them less than welcome.

This DVD contains my all-time favorite "I Spy" episode, "An American Empress," featuring France Nuyen, who was Robert Culp's wife at the time. I looked it up and it was originally broadcast on Christmas Day in 1967. I happened to catch the rerun in August just before the show was cancelled by NBC.

This episode was shot on location in San Francisco and includes Culp and Bill Cosby at their best in terms of the rapport between the two. There's also a catchy jazz theme throughout.

May be I am being a little unfair in my sweeping statement of these episodes. It is just so clear to me that Mr Culp and Mr Cosby were so in tune with each other and at the peak of their game that any woodeness which is natural with bit part players is exaserbated. Having said that I loved the episode An American Empress because the enigmatic France Nuyen was fantastic in it as she was brilliant and engaging in every episode that she starred in. As someone who has yet to see San Francisco these episodes are like a Tourist Brochure of where to go and what to see. Tag your it is a particular favourite of mine because of Scotty and Kelly's hippy disguise and the interaction with each other and the shop owner. On the whole these are definitely not the best I Spy episodes, but because the show was exceptional in every sense of the word this statement of mine is not an inditement on these four episodes which are still very entertaining.