Yeah, it definitely was more of a Scarecrow and Mr. King riff than True Lies, per se. But now CBS has canceled it after just the one season. It was their lowest-rated show by far.

I saw only sporadic episodes of Scarecrow and Mrs. King during its original four-season run. (Little things like trans-ocean deployments got in the way.) But recently, I binge-watched the show on Roku.

For those who came in late, the premise of Scarecrow and Mrs. King kicks off when an espionage agent, fleeing from enemy agents, is forced to rely on an ordinary housewife to complete his mission. This opens the door for the housewife, Amanda King, a divorced single mom (hence. the “Mrs. King”), to get involved in future operations.

In watching the show over a month, I noted a few things which the series True Lies seems to lack. The chemistry between Scarecrow‘s two leads, Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner, is undeniable.

Most interesting, the show developed logical thematic arcs over its course. For the first fifteen episodes or so, Mrs. King is a housewife but with keen intuition whom the espionage agency turns to when the agent, Lee “Scarecrow” Stetson, needs a simple cover (e.g., he posing as a suburban husband and needs a wife), and the agency knows it can trust Amanda.

If the scripts kept doing this, it would stretch belief. Instead, over the course of the series, she grows into her new rôle. The agency hires her as a civilian administrative assistant. She receives training in basic espionage skills. By the third season, she’s an apprentice agent, and by the last season. she’s a full-fledged, if inexperienced, operative. Her evolution is handled subtly and believably—a progression evidently missing from the True Lies series.

In fairness, sometimes the drama in Scarecrow ran a little thin—especially during the period when Juanita Bartlett was the executive producer and she tried to turn the show into another Rockford Files. But many times, the missions in which Mrs. King was embroiled were legitimately serious with realistic danger. Especially the first eight or ten episodes. The show walked a fine tightrope between spy drama and fish-out-of-water comedy. Sometimes, it slipped. But, mostly it stayed in the wire.

(The other arc—in which agent Stetson goes from being irritated with having a civilian involved, to worrying about her safety, to gradually admiring her, to falling in love with her, and marrying her—also evolves naturally. But it has no parallel in True Lies.)

I’m tempted to doubt True Lies will go for four seasons (without serious overhaul), but the modern television audience loves stuff that I couldn’t sit through five minutes of. So, what do I know?

It’s also why Mr. and Mrs. Smith works better, because they’re BOTH lying to each other.

Creating a tv series that just rehashed the movie plot, but worse, was always a weird, unsustainable choice.

Yeah, the leads definitely were completely devoid of chemistry.