J Osborne
OK, Sony released the first season of a show call She Spies this week. I loved it. I thought it was great.
Some of the humor is surprisingly bold. Shane, the only black character, is enthusiastically introduced as "more than just a token African-American!"
People I talked to about it -- those who remembered it -- thought it was a Charlie�s Angels knock-off. It's not. It's parody that's well done about those types of action shows.
I suppose there's at least four ways to look at the show -- three if you like it. One as a Charlie's Angels rip-off, two as a a really, really dumb show with the occasional meta joke (such as: "What's going on?" "It's a flashback. If we were on TV, there'd be those fuzzy little edges all around the picture."). Thirdly, it could be a brilliant parody of a really dumb show, in which the characters sometimes stop the opening credits because they want to resolve the cliffhanger right away. Finally it might be Charlie's Angels as trained by the Keystone Kops.
Like Charlie's Angels, there are three relatively attractive young women, and a male handler (In Charlie�s Angels it was Bosley. Here it�s Duncan (Jamie Iglehart).
The show went to syndication pretty quickly (three seasons starting on NBC and then going the syndication route according to one Google web site) and consequently was moved from timeslot to timeslot. Unlike other shows in syndication with 3 main female stars, this witty action comedy doesn't fit the mold. The attractive stars wear -- most of the time -- normal quantities of clothing. And the actors can actually act.
One line I loved from a first season episode: "We have She Spies action figures."
"there are She Spies action figures?"
"yeah, you wind 'em up and they dare you to find their time-slot."
Or: after hitting a bad guy with a sled named Rosebud: "I just Kaned a Citizen. I love action quips."
Or: Shane: "You know what I hate"
Cassie: "The systemic anger and alienation in today�s younger generation?"
D.D.: "The rapidly increasing national debt and its effect on our health and welfare programs?"
Cassie: "Those tiny little hairs that grow on your earlobes�"
Shane: "Yeah, those are bad, but you know what I really hate�."
I laugh while I'm watching it. It's pure mindless entertainment, and pokes fun at everything in sight, including itself.
It's a fairly entertaining and somewhat goofy show. It's still campy, good fun. Sometimes the self-mockery is the biggest highlight. Each episode seems to contain dozens of pop-ups, scrolls, and slates which are part of the story. The producers/directors also add a touch of Mad Magazine to the mix, the whole thing -- funny, simetimes hilarious, at the start -- wears thin by the end of the set. Of course I did watch about 15 hours straight (900 minutes) of the show in two days, so it's just possible I might have overdosed on the show.
This show keeps hitting the viewer in the face every few minutes. If you like this type of fourth wall humor, and I do, you'll love this series -- just don't try to watch all 15 hours in one sitting.
She Spies is actually a well-written farce. You could tell that the writers and the actors had such a good time making fun of themselves and the premise of this show. Every episode made me laugh. The storylines were never very original, but the one-liners and jokes let you know that was the intention.
Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Kristen Miller, Natashia Williams, Carlos Jacott, Jamie Iglehart, Cameron Daddo
She Spies
Rating (**** out of *****)
Synopsis: (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Every once in a while, an elite crime fighting team emerges - a highly sophisticated covert ops, specially trained in global intelligence maneuvers. This is not one of those teams. They are 3 career criminals with one shot at freedom. Now they are working for the feds who put them away. These are the women of She Spies, bad girls gone good.
She Spies is an action series about three female ex-convicts with different specialized skills who fight crime as part of a government secret reform program, the Bureau of Allied Intelligence Tactics (B.A.I.T.)
The clandestine organization was formed to rid the world of evil-doers. What if the spies recruited for this covert organization were played by Natasha Henstridge (Cassie -- Commander In Chief -- is a con artist. She's the leader of the team by virtue of having starred in big-budget Hollywood films.), Kristen Miller ( DD is a hacker, and she's the cute, naive one.), and Natashia Williams ( Shane is the angry, butt-kicking one.)? What if there were no rhetorical questions in the world? Hard to imagine? Meet the felonious femmes fatale of �She Spies�.
Street Date: 3/14/2006
Rating: NR
Run Time: 1000 minutes
