She Spies S01E03-06 Review

So it's another weekend where I dig into my collection of DVDs, before the fall season kicks in. She Spies had an odd history: it premiered on NBC in 2002. But after four episodes it switched to syndication back when late-night first-run syndication was still booming.

The show was basically a TV version of the Charlie's Angels 2000 movie. It featured three female convicts who are paroled from prison by a mysterious Agency and can earn their freedom by doing spy-type jobs for the government. Said jobs involve them typically wearing scanty outfits, fighting men, and other Charlie's Angels-esque stuff.

The show had Natasha Henstridge, Cassie McBain, as the big-name star, with relatively smaller-named actresses Kristen Miller and Natashia Williams as D.D. Cummings and Shane Phillips, respectively. Rounding out the first season cast was Carlos Jacott as Jack Wilde, the She Spies' hapless and long-suffering government supervisor.

The fun thing about She Spies in its first season was that it not only broke the fourth wall, it trod all over it and tore big gaping hunks out of it. The characters poked fun at pretty much every TV spy trope they could find and a few more to boot. The show was arguably too future-looking for its own good: Chuck came along in 2007 and did something similar although a little more seriously. The approach pretty much bombed in the first season rating-wise, so the creative team retooled the show, ditched Jacott, and divided up his role between a more serious supervisor (Cameron Daddo) and a nerdy technical guy (Jamie Inglehart). That didn’t work any better, and the show crashed-and-burned at the end of its second season.

She Spies had the off-the-wall comedy you find in many comedy shows. At least one bad guy had a theme song, caption cards appeared helpfully identifying the bad guys as "Bad Guy", advertisements occasionally appeared onscreen--"Illegal Listening Device - $49.95 (with coupon)", and the characters themselves would comment on the lunacy while winking at the audience. They liked reminding everyone they were part of a "secret clandestine agency", someone would point out how stupid it sounded, and everyone would shrug while looking at the camera and then moving on with the plot. Or they've be driving down Exposition Street while providing exposition, then go off on a tangent as they turned onto Tangent Avenue, then go on with the story as they turned onto Story Street.

Characters would continually undermine the seriousness of the situation. The Spies would be talking about how Jack preferred to operate low-key, and he'd show up in a cowboy outfit from where he was rehearsing for Annie Get Your Gun. The show was filled with running gags, like one of the Spies saying something was bothering her, and the other two would chip in with a list of real-world problems (like "flesh-eating ebola") before the first Spy would talk about her personal issue of the week.

Let's start with S01E03, "Poster Girl', which is the most insanely nuttiest of the four I watched in one binge. After rescuing a kidnapped girl from an art museum, with a kidnapper (Zack Ward) who is a parody of Crispin Glover's character from Charlie's Angels, the Spies are assigned to take down a pair of brothers (played by real-life brothers Costas and Louis Mandylor) who are using a children's hospital as a charity scam to buy and smuggle out diamonds.

One of the funniest parts is Michael Des Barres (Murdoc on the original MacGyver, among others), who plays an evil doctor named Dr. Zirby at the children's hospital. He's the guy who has the aforementioned theme song, "Evil Doctor", which briefly plays every time that he shows up. When his character dies of an induced heart attack, the theme song switches to "Dying Doctor" and then "Dead Doctor".

At the end, we're helpfully informed via one of the show's caption cards that "The song "Evil Doctor" is currently #3 in Japan. All royalties are donated to the Dr. Zirby fund for young evil doctors."

In the end, the Spies discover the young wheelchair-bound girl the brothers have been using for their scam is actually their sister, who suffers from an anti-aging disease that has left her looking like a ten-year-old girl for decades. They take down the family and their bad-guy henchman Joshua (Shaun Toub). And we get another caption card saying that after prison, the brothers were surgically attached at the hip and then toured state fairs as conjoined twins.

S01E04, "Daddy's Girl", is the least funny of the four episodes because it actually takes itself seriously in spots. We do get actors Ray Wise and Sam Witwer: She Spies was always good at getting relative second-tier actors. And the show has more self-referential humor: the Spies assigned to guard a teenage girl who is the daughter of Wise, whose character is an American negotiator. The teenager, Ashley, advises them to reserve their hairstyle for the late night action adventure shows.

But the show drags a bit with a subplot of Cassie griping about her estranged father. And the fact the whole thing boils down to Wise playing along with his daughter's abduction by a group of incompetent coffee-house anarchists by sending his chauffeur and a team of mercenaries to abduct her so it will prove he really does love her. Or something. It's a bit mixed up. Although it does give us a funny scene where the unmasked chauffeur tries to deny he's the chauffeur the Spies saw earlier, by claiming he's his own evil twin brother.

S01E05, "Fondles", is more in the styles of the third episode. Cassie and Shane have to go undercover as minor league cheerleaders at a singles complex, the aforetitled "Fondles". Named after the owner, Charles Fondles. This is the one where Jack shows up in a cowboy outfit at the beginning. There's an Icelandic spy working out of the complex, so D.D. works for the Icelandic landlord, Live Schrieber (Keith Szarabajka). We get a mention of Icelandic Intelligence, which leads to the obvious joke. "Never heard of them". "Which tells you how good they are."

There's also an off-the-wall bit where D.D. is chasing a suspect and runs past a guy drinking skim milk. And a caption card comes up with a "She Spies Fun Fact" about how skim milk goes sour at the same rate that human skin decomposes. Why? Who knows?

D.D. ends up tutoring the Icelandic maintenance staff in English. Cassie and Shane immediately get hit on by various guys, including Masi Oka from Heroes. It turns out that the activities director is the spy. He drives off, goes to what appears to be a hardware store where a bunch of ninja are waiting with immigrant workers, hires the ninja, drives back to the Spies, and a fight ensues. The Spies win, of course, and shut down the spy.

The final episode is "Ice Man", which drags a bit. In part because we get a "serious" subplot where another agent shows up and doesn't think much of the She Spies program. It turns out his assistant is actually the "Ice Man", an assassin who has the owner of a comedy club launder her money. Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham gets a lot of screen time as an unnamed ventriloquist. He's also an Elvis impersonator, and his dummy is Little Elvis. So if you're a Dunham fan, this episode is for you. If it's not, then you'll be bored given how often the camera focuses on him.

The Spies eventually learn the microchip with the vital information is hid in the crown of the ventriloquist's tooth, and it's all connected to a dental office. It turns out Jack went to dental school, but the Ice Man shows up, accidentally knocks a tank of nitrous oxide open, and we get an overly long scene of everyone bursting out into laughter. They finally manage to knock out the killer. There's also a subplot about it being Shane's birthday and she's feeling like she's never made a difference.

A lot of the episodes are available on Youtube, and the first season DVD came out a few years back. The second season didn't, but you can probably give that a pass. The creative team mostly did, at any rate. The first season DVD also has liner notes written by someone who "got" the show. With descriptions like "A comedy club that launders money. An assassin who preys on Spies. What's next? An Elvis-impersonating ventriloquist? A post-modern birthday cake? A musical tribute to accountants? Oh, well, OK."

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?