History Series / ISpy

%%* ButNotTooBlack

* TheyFightCrime: One is a professional spy. The other is a professional tennis player that gets dragged into the spy stuff when he normally would just be the unassuming cover guy.

* AffectionateParody: The "Cosby" episode "My Spy" (1999) is this to ''I Spy'', even including a Shout Out to one of the crew members ("And a Fleet Southcott to you, too!"), and so is the ''Series/GetSmart'' episode, "Die Spy," including a {{Cameo}} by Robert Culp as a waiter. Magazine/{{Mad}} Magazine meanwhile had "Why Spy?"

* AffectionateParody: The "Cosby" episode "My Spy" (1999) is this to ''I Spy'', even including a Shout Out to one of the crew members ("And a Fleet Southcott to you, too!"), and so is the ''Series/GetSmart'' episode, "Die Spy", including a {{Cameo}} by Robert Culp as a waiter. Magazine/{{Mad}} Magazine meanwhile had "Why Spy?".
* AssholeVictim: Racist, double-crossing, obnoxious drug smuggler Danny Preston in "Danny was a Million Laughs". [[spoiler:Kelly and Scotty save him, but only so he can testify against his associates. Even then, they're tempted to let him get whacked.]]
%%* BadassBoast: Scott's "ostrich egg" speech in "The Warlord".

* GoneHorriblyRight: In "The Barter", Kelly and Scotty need information about a kidnapped girl from PunchClockVillain Merritt (Roger C. Carmel). So, they set it up so that Merritt's Russian bosses will think he's being paid off by the Americans, causing a scared Merritt to give up the information in return for undoing the frame. [[spoiler:It works, and Merritt agrees to talk, but the Russians kill him for disloyalty before he can say anything.]]
* {{Hallucinations}}: The General's "musical chairs" vision [[spoiler: as he is dying]] in "The Warlord".

%%* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: "The Name of the Game".

%%* KickTheDog: The first season episode "The Loser".

** In "Tigers of Heaven", Scotty tries to give one to a group of anti-American would-be samurai who are about to execute him and Kelly. But he gives up in disgust when he realizes they're too fanatical to listen.
** At the end of "Danny was a Million Laughs" Danny gets one from [[spoiler: Nancy, who's been hired to kill him. She tells him that he's such a lowlife sleazeball that her employers offered a pittance for his life...and she'd have happily killed him for even less.]]

* SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes: In "So Long Patrick Henry", Kelly is annoyed that Scotty hired a kid as a look out for them who keeps making [[Film/JamesBond 007]] references, having seen the then still-in-theatres movie ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'' 27 times.

* SpySchool: The Department has a training school on a military base in the UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco Bay Area, featured in the episodes "Anyplace I Hang Myself Is Home" and "Tag, You're It". While the name of the base is never stated, given its location, San Francisco Bay, it is probably "The Presidio" (the base was decommissioned in 1989 and became part of the National Park Service in 1994).

'''Not to be confused with [[Literature/ISpy a popular series of books]], [[WesternAnimation/ISpy the little known stop-motion cartoon based off said books]], or the [[SomethingThatBeginsWithBoring annoying game]].'''

A TV movie sequel, ''I Spy Returns'', was broadcast back in 1994 and a [[TheFilmOfTheSeries movie]] based on the series appeared in 2002 starring Creator/EddieMurphy and Owen Wilson. In it, Wilson plays the actual spy, while Murphy is a boxing champion taken along for the ride. It was critically lambasted and [[InNameOnly bears no resemblance at all to the original series]] (ironically, the film's dedicated to series creators Fine and Friedkin), though some still find it enjoyable. Arguably the best follow-up to ''I Spy'' was a 1999 episode of Cosby's sitcom titled, er, ''Cosby'', in which his character dreams that he is Alexander Scott and shares an adventure with Kelly Robinson - played once again by Robert Culp.

'''Not to be confused with [[Literature/ISpy a popular series of books]] or the [[SomethingThatBeginsWithBoring annoying game]].'''

''I Spy'' is an American spy series which aired from 1965 to 1968 on Creator/{{NBC}}, shepherded by [[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Sheldon Leonard]] and produced by Triple F Productions (named after the show's creators/showrunners[[note]]as such people were not called back then[[/note]] Mort Fine and David Friedkin, and cinematographer Fouad Said). In the series a white tennis pro, Kelly Robinson (played by Robert Culp (''Trackdown'', ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero'') and his black trainer, Alexander "Scotty" Scott (Creator/BillCosby) are really spies, saving the world approximately OnceAnEpisode.

* ShoutOut: When Robert Culp guest starred on an episode of ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' as an old friend of Cliff's (Cosby), his character was named Scott Kelly.

As of January, 2015, the series is being broadcast on CozyTV.

** At the end of "Danny was a Million Laughs" Danny gets one from [[spoiler: Nancy, who's been hired to kill him. She tells him that he's such a lowlife sleezeball that her employers offered a pittance for his life...and she'd have happily killed him for even less.]]

* CartoonBomb: Culp lights one and throws it at the camera in the opening credits.

* CigarFuseLighting: Culp lights a CartoonBomb off his cigarette in the opening credits.

%% ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

* SpyCam: Parodied in TheMovie. Alex Scott is complaining about the size of his supposed "spy camera" (about the size of an old-school studio camera) [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything in comparison with the "sexier" pocket-sized camera of rival super-spy Carlos]].

* AssholeVictim: Racist, double-crossing, obnoxious drug smuggler Danny Preston in "Danny was a Million Laughs". [[spoiler: Kelly and Scotty save him, but only so he can testify against his associates. Even then, they're tempted to let him get whacked.]]

* GoneHorriblyRight: In "The Barter", Kelly and Scotty need information about a kidnapped girl from PunchClockVillain Merritt (Roger C. Carmel). So, they set it up so that Merritt's Russian bosses will think he's being paid off by the Americans, causing a scared Merritt to give up the information in return for undoing the frame. [[spoiler: It works, and Merritt agrees to talk, but the Russians kill him for disloyalty before he can say anything.]]

%%* {{Masquerade}}

* SpyCam: Parodied. Alex Scott is complaining about the size of his supposed "spy camera" (about the size of an old-school studio camera) [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything in comparison with the "sexier" pocket-sized camera of rival super-spy Carlos]].

%%* TheyFightCrime

%%* WittyBanter: One could almost drown in it with this show.

''I Spy'' is an American spy series which aired from 1965 to 1968 on Creator/{{NBC}}, shepherded by [[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Sheldon Leonard]] and produced by Triple F Productions (named after the show's creators/showrunners[[note]]as such people were not called back then[[/note]] Mort Fine and David Friedkin, and cinematographer Fouad Said). In the series a white tennis pro, Kelly Robinson (played by Robert Culp (''Trackdown'', ''TheGreatestAmericanHero'') and his black trainer, Alexander "Scotty" Scott (Creator/BillCosby) are really spies, saving the world approximately OnceAnEpisode.

* CaliforniaDoubling: Unlike just about every other spy series of the time, averted (although there was still some filming done in Hollywood, there was no "[[Series/TheManFromUncle Somewhere In (Insert Foreign Country Here)]]" cheating on this show).

''I Spy'' is an American spy series which aired from 1965 to 1968 on {{NBC}}, shepherded by [[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Sheldon Leonard]] and produced by Triple F Productions (named after the show's creators/showrunners[[note]]as such people were not called back then[[/note]] Mort Fine and David Friedkin, and cinematographer Fouad Said). In the series a white tennis pro, Kelly Robinson (played by Robert Culp (''Trackdown'', ''TheGreatestAmericanHero'') and his black trainer, Alexander "Scotty" Scott (Creator/BillCosby) are really spies, saving the world approximately OnceAnEpisode.

A TV movie sequel, ''I Spy Returns'', was broadcast back in 1994 and a [[TheFilmOfTheSeries movie]] based on the series appeared in 2002 starring EddieMurphy and Owen Wilson. In it, Wilson plays the actual spy, while Murphy is a boxing champion taken along for the ride. It was critically lambasted and [[InNameOnly bears no resemblance at all to the original series]] (ironically, the film's dedicated to series creators Fine and Friedkin), though some still find it enjoyable. Arguably the best follow-up to ''I Spy'' was a 1999 episode of Cosby's sitcom titled, er, ''Cosby'', in which his character dreams that he is Alexander Scott and shares an adventure with Kelly Robinson - played once again by Robert Culp.

'''Not to be confused with a popular series of books or the [[SomethingThatBeginsWithBoring annoying game]].'''

* ComicBookAdaptation: GoldKeyComics produced several issues of an ''I Spy'' comic book.

''I Spy'' is an American spy series which aired from 1965 to 1968 on {{NBC}}, shepherded by [[TheAndyGriffithShow Sheldon Leonard]] and produced by Triple F Productions (named after the show's creators/showrunners[[note]]as such people were not called back then[[/note]] Mort Fine and David Friedkin, and cinematographer Fouad Said). In the series a white tennis pro, Kelly Robinson (played by Robert Culp (''Trackdown'', ''TheGreatestAmericanHero'') and his black trainer, Alexander "Scotty" Scott (Creator/BillCosby) are really spies, saving the world approximately OnceAnEpisode.

* RecycledSoundtrack: Averted, unusually for the time but not for Sheldon Leonard - as he hated tracked-in music (he once equated it to "wearing someone else's underwear"), every episode of this and [[TheAndyGriffithShow his]] [[TheDickVanDykeShow other]] [[Series/GomerPyleUSMC shows]] had an original score written for it (Earle Hagen, who wrote the show's theme music and scored most of the episodes, won an Emmy for season three's "Laya").

* ActionSeries

* BadassBoast: Scott's "ostrich egg" speech in "The Warlord".
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: "It's All Done With Mirrors"
* BrokenPedestal: "A Cup of Kindness"
* ButNotTooBlack

* HeterosexualLifePartners: Cosby and Culp in RealLife.
* HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: "The Name of the Game".

* KickTheDog: The first season episode "The Loser".
* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard
* {{Masquerade}}

* ShoutOut: When Robert Culp guest starred on an episode of ''TheCosbyShow'' as an old friend of Cliff's (Cosby), his character was named Scott Kelly.
* SpyFiction: The "Stale Beer Flavored" type.

* TheTeetotaler: Scott.
* TheyFightCrime

* WhereDaWhiteWomenAt: Averted on Cosby's insistence.

* WittyBanter: One could almost drown in it with this show.