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Recap / The Wild Wild West S 4 E 10 "The Night of the Camera"

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Agents West and Jeremy Pike (Charles Aidman) are on the trail of an opium gang. They receive some dubious help from Bosley Cranston (Pat Paulsen), a meek and seemingly incompetent agent on his first field assignment. However, Cranston has some special talents that will prove invaluable.


Tropes present in this episode:

  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Jeremy Pike's pool game with Gideon Stix. If he wins, he gets $10,000. If he loses, he dies. And the whole thing is Jeremy's idea!
  • Bad Guys Play Pool: Gideon Stix is a pool aficionado.
  • Blind Without 'Em: Bosley breaks his glasses, endangering the plan until Jim turns a pair of opera glasses into a substitute.
  • Chekhov's Skill: Bosley Cranston's Photographic Memory.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Bosley Cranston, which is lampshaded by Jeremy admitting that he and Jim have underestimated this Badass Bookworm.
  • Faking the Dead: Bosley impersonates a corpse to be sneaked into the funeral parlor the villains are using as a front.
  • Idiot Ball: Jim grabs it. When Bosley Cranston accidentally kills the opium ring's courier, Jim simply leaves the body where it fell and makes no attempt to cover it up. Then he sends Jeremy Pike in to do a Dead Person Impersonation, which is blown before it even begins since the criminals already knew the courier was dead.
  • Naïve Newcomer: Cranston is an inexperienced Bookworm on his first field assignment.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Cranston suddenly knows Karate at the end, though this has not been set up at all.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Bosley introduces himself to Jim by "helping" him in the fight with the courier... by dropping a crate on the guy and killing him before Jim can get the information.
  • Photographic Memory: Bosley Cranston has one, which he demonstrates by memorizing a book he's never seen before after Jeremy flips the pages at him for a split second.
  • Rule of Funny: The only reason why, in the tag, the women Bosley set up a triple date with for him, Jim and Jeremy (the latter two make an excuse not to go, since "having a great personality" was code for "unattractive" even then) turn out to be stunners.
  • Yellow Peril: Downplayed Trope. The villains are a Chinese opium smuggling ring, but after the first act the focus shifts to the white Americans who are running the organization.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
    Jim: (looks at Bosley's badge) You're a Secret Service agent?
    Bosley: (nods)
    Jim: You gotta be kidding.

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