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Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987) is a Cold War-era spy show about a divorced housewife who, through a chance meeting, ends up working for a secret government agency. The series is built around the growing romantic relationship between secret agent Lee Stetson, a.k.a. Scarecrow (Bruce Boxleitner) and Amanda King (Kate Jackson) as they fall in love and eventually get secretly married.
As of 2011, the first two seasons have been released on DVD.
Tropes featured include:[]
- Almost Kiss
- Amicable Exes: Amanda and Joe King, for the most part
- Badass Unintentional: Amanda King
- Beware the Nice Ones: Amanda is very nice. Until she is provoked into being less so.
- She can smash people over the head with a piece of furniture and then shrug her shoulders and smile ever-so-demurely as if to say that she really wants to get back into the kitchen, but right now of course she has to maim enemy agents, alas.
- Catch Phrase: For Amanda, it's, "Oh, my God!" (Bonus: when a fight with an assassin hired to kill Lee left them both hanging over a rooftop, this is how Lee was able to figure out whom the real Amanda was. The fake fell to her death.)
- City of Spies: Set in 1980s Washington, D.C., which was very much a real-life example of this
- Code Name: Scarecrow. The series eventually revealed that Lee's codename was part of a The Wizard of Oz-themed set which also included Dorothy and Tin Man.
- Cold War: Late 80's, Pilot Episode had KGB agents stealing a package.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Amanda, often whether Lee and Francine want to admit it or not.
- Deadpan Snarker: Francine
- Front Organisation
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Apparently trained agents use these.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Amanda's stock in trade.
- Hot Mama: Amanda (and she has the t-shirt to prove it).
- I Have My Ways: From the episode "The First Time":
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Amanda: How did you find me? |
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- Improvised Weapon: Amanda often comes up with one.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Scarecrow
- Lighter and Softer: You would not realize this was the same genre John Le Carre or even Ian Fleming wrote in. Heck, Touched By an Angel is often Darker and Edgier than this.
- Mistaken for Badass: Amanda is one of the best examples. While not mistaken for it as such she slips into the spy game accidently.
- In one episode, she is even mistaken for Scarecrow by the Russians.
- Parental Obliviousness: Amanda's mother Dotty takes this to new levels
- Ruritania: There are two episodes in Germany and one in Austria that play upon this.
- Secret Relationship: How the series maintains the tension after They Do
- Spy Couple: The titular couple.
- Spy Fiction
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Amanda has a tendency to go off on long and spectacularly irrelevant-sounding rambles which have the other characters staring bemusedly (and which usually end with her coming up with a clue that solves the case).