Written by Jennifer
March 09, 2010
Twenty-odd years after its debut, it's a concept that still seems strangely progressive.
Unless you’ve kept up with reruns over the years, revisiting a favorite show from childhood is always a questionable proposition. There’s something exceedingly unreliable about a child’s memory, and the things it loves can range from the abysmal to sheer genius. Though I have always regarded Scarecrow and Mrs. King with fondness, I couldn’t have told you much of anything about it. I remember only that Bruce Boxleitner was cute and that mysteries were solved. Usually what I block out is that a show is also mindless and hokey. Amazingly, this time I blocked out the fact that the show is refreshingly smart.
Kate Jackson stars as Mrs. King, a recently divorced mother of two embarking on life as a single parent in a suburb of Washington DC. She lives with her lovely mother, played by Beverly Garland, and she dates a faceless weatherman named Dean. She’s the sort of lady with enough spunk to throw an overcoat over her nightgown and drive her boyfriend to the train station, and somehow she’s just cute enough to pull it off. This is exactly what she’s doing when she meets Scarecrow (Bruce Boxleitner), a government spy in a tight situation.
Desperate, Scarecrow entrusts Mrs. King with a top secret package, and asks that she deliver it to the man in the red hat, ride the train to the next stop, then carry on with her life. Unfortunately the train is full of men in red hats, and their chance meeting turns into an unlikely partnership. Though Scarecrow is a self-proclaimed loner, he can’t deny that Mrs. King is helpful. She’s so helpful that it would be annoying... if it weren’t so damn useful.
And so the unlikely duo are drawn together. Mrs. King enjoys the excitement of life as a spy (she needed a job anyway), and Scarecrow realizes that he works quite well with this particular partner. Though neither enters the relationship with any expectations, there’s an instant connection, a sort of simpatico bond. Before they can wonder if they’re attracted to one another or whether they even like one another, they find themselves in life or death situations that demand quick thinking and cooperation. What makes the show work, beyond the simple charm of its stars, is its intelligence. It dares to allow Mrs. King to be a real woman who uses common sense and critical thinking to solve the same problems the feds are working on. She’s not a smart aleck. She’s not an irritating genius. She just uses her head.
Though the plot lines vary in quality, the series remains enjoyable because of its characters and the budding relationship between them. Though there are hints of romance from the get go, they work together as partners even before they become friends. Twenty-odd years after its debut, it's a concept that still seems strangely progressive.
