Line #41 Series/ScarecrowAndMrsKing


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/smk_5554.jpg]]
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7	''Scarecrow and Mrs. King'' is a UsefulNotes/ColdWar-era spy series that aired on Creator/{{CBS}} from 1983–87, 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 (Creator/BruceBoxleitner), and Amanda King (Creator/KateJackson) as they fall in love and eventually get secretly married.
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9	As of early 2013, all four seasons have been released on DVD.
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12	!!Tropes featured include:
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14	* ActionMom: Amanda. She's no trained agent, but she has no fear about putting herself in the middle of a situation.
15	* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: IFF, Amanda's house, Lee's apartment, the bad guys are everywhere.
16	* AlmostKiss: Multiple times, such as in "Sour Grapes", when they are interrupted by Amanda's mother.
17	%%* AmicableExes: Amanda and Joe King, for the most part.
18	* ArabOilSheikh: "Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth" features an Arab prince who grew up in an LonelyAtTheTop household, is wooed for drilling rights to his country's oil by a FalseFriend, is married to an American woman who befriends Amanda, and is said to be one of the last stabilizing factors in the Middle East.
19	%%* BadassUnintentional: Amanda King.
20	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Amanda is ''very'' nice -- until she is provoked into being less so. She can [[TapOnTheHead clomp 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 [[StayInTheKitchen the kitchen]], but right now of course she has to maim enemy agents, alas.
21	* BloodlessCarnage: This series is considerably light in violence by SpyFiction standards, as any villains who get killed by gunfire don't have visible injuries.
22	* BoundAndGagged: Amanda frequently finds herself in a very tight bind on many missions.
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24	%%** Francine in an episode near the end of the series.
25	* CassandraTruth: In "Service Above and Beyond," when a villain who has caught Amanda spying threatens to poison her unless she tells him who she is, she ruefully asks if he'd believe that she's a suburbanite with two kids and isn't too surprised when he says no.
26	* CatchPhrase: For Amanda: "Oh, my gosh!" It actually saves her life during a fight with an impostor.
27	%%* ChristmasEpisode: "The Long Christmas Eve".
28	* CityOfSpies: Set in 1980s Washington, D.C., which was very much a real-life example of this.
29	* CodeName: Scarecrow. The series eventually revealed that Lee's code name was part of a ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''-themed set which also included Dorothy and Tin Man.
30	* ConfessToALesserCrime: The usual dynamic is inverted in the second episode when the government agents confess to a lesser offense to the crooks who've just caught them spying. They claim to be corporate spies rather than official ones to make their CorruptCorporateExecutive captor less determined to kill them and lull him into a false sense of security before they escape.
31	%%* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Amanda
32	* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: 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 [[EurekaMoment coming up with a clue that solves the case]]).
33	* DaChief: Billy Melrose, Scarecrow and Amanda's superior at the Agency. He is generally stern, but can be willing to get along with his subordinate agents when the situation calls for it.
34	* DamselInDistress: Amanda often finds herself in many dangerous situations, kidnapped, tied up, or placed in a death trap. Francine also sees her share of danger and distress.
35	%%* DeadlyDelivery: Please sign for this snake-in-a-box.
36	%%* DeadpanSnarker: Francine
37	* DorkKnight: Yup. Boxleitner's stock in trade. Scarecrow is an ace of a secret agent and almost incorruptible despite his line of work, but he has a ''lot'' of blind spots when it comes to relating to people and non-spy life.
38	* DoubleTake: In the second episode, Lee is nearly stabbed with a flamingo lawn ornament, grabs another for self-defense, and then glances down at it in disbelief as he registers what he is fighting with.
39	* TheDreadedToiletDuty: Amanda and Francine pose as housemaids to snoop around a suspect's home. Amanda offers to take the more difficult downstairs rooms, while Francine takes the upstairs rooms, which includes a full-size bathroom. Francine's face drops as she's handed a bucket with sanitizer and a bowl brush, as she's never had to do this work before (she's had servants for that).
40	* DrivingStick: Scarecrow has Amanda wait in his car at the wheel while he flushes out his prey. A hot pursuit is about to begin as the bad guy takes off … except that Amanda has never driven stick and stalls the car immediately.
41	* TheFaceless: Dean. So boring cameras can't record his face.
42	* FlatWhat: Amanda gives us a classic example in "Stemwinder".
43	* ForgotTheCall: Amanda forgets about being a spy after getting into a car accident in "I Am Not, Nor Have I Ever Been, a Spy", though she retains her memories of everything else.
44	%%* FrontOrganisation: IFF.
45	* GiftShake: In the first episode, Amanda's son Philip does this and saves the day. The present he shakes and "breaks" contained a secret message. Philip is able to tell his mom the message -- which makes no sense to the spies, but which Amanda figures out is recipes on a cooking show being used to send information to Soviet spies.
46	* GoodOldFisticuffs: Apparently, trained agents use these.
47	* HairpinLockpick: At the start of one episode, Lee is teaching Amanda [[ChekhovsSkill how to open handcuffs when your hands are cuffed behind your back]]. At the end of the episode, she has to do exactly that, using Lee's stickpin as a picklock.
48	* HeartIsAnAwesomePower: Amanda again.
49	* Housewife: Amanda, whose skills in domestic mastery and nurturing actually make her a surprisingly great agent.
50	* IHaveMyWays: From "The First Time":%%Quotes are not context.
51	%%-->'''Amanda''': How did you find me? \
52	%%'''Lee''': We have our ways.
53	* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Sam Melville, who played Kate Jackson's husband on Series/TheRookies, played Amanda's ex-husband, Joe King.
54	%%* ImprovisedWeapon: Amanda often comes up with one.%%Like?
55	* ItSeemedTrivial: Averted. Part of what makes Amanda so useful is that she has access to knowledge that loners like Scarecrow wouldn't. Such as, in the pilot, recognizing a certain TV chef's recipes.
56	%%* KnightInSourArmor: Scarecrow.
57	* LighterAndSofter: You would not realize this as the same genre Creator/JohnLeCarre or even Creator/IanFleming wrote in. Heck, ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel'' is often DarkerAndEdgier than this.
58	%%* MeetCute
59	* MistakenForBadass: Amanda is one of the best examples. While not mistaken exactly, she slips into the spy game accidentally. In one episode, she is even mistaken for ''Scarecrow'' by the Russians.
60	* NoodleIncident: Scarecrow and Francine constantly reference previous missions we know nothing about. Billy gets in on the action occasionally too. "Remember Grenada?"
61	%%* OutsideRide: Multiple times per season.
62	%%* ParentalObliviousness: Amanda's mother Dotty takes this to new levels
63	* {{Ruritania}}: There are two episodes in Germany and one in Austria that play upon this.
64	%%* SecretRelationship: How the series maintains the tension after the RelationshipUpgrade.
65	* SpotTheImposter: When Amanda and her double slip off a rooftop during a fight and find themselves hanging on for their lives, she instinctively screams her CatchPhrase. Upon which Lee pulls her to safety, and the impostor, dressed exactly like her, falls to her death.
66	* TheSpook: "Reach for the Sky" revolves around Cyclops, a secret criminal organization made entirely of these. The Agency is mostly convinced that Cyclops is a myth, but Billy sees them as responsible for the murder of a friend of his, and are behind a fraudulous banking scheme.
67	%%* SpyFiction
68	* ThereIsOnlyOneBed: In the first season episode "Weekend", Lee and Amanda are sent to a resort as a married couple. After giving Amanda a hard time about junior agents having to take the couch, Lee explains he will be staking out the room of a potential kidnapping target all night.
69	%%* TriggerPhrase: Listen to the duck, Lee.
70	%%* UndercoverAsLovers
71	%%* WunzaPlot

Context Series / ScarecrowAndMrsKing