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I Spy Season 1
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Comments from The I Spy Forum continued
The highlight of the show was the scene where Kelly shoots Sean, trusting in Scotty when Scotty tells Kelly to shoot him. Scotty knows about the vest, and Cosby has one of his best scenes haranguing Kelly into shooting Sean. Kelly fires at the chest (thankfully) and then looks bewildered at Scotty when Sean slumps over as if dead. The whole look in Kelly`s face says that he trusted Scotty on that one, and is confused because he thinks Sean is dead in spite of that trust.
The basement storgae room loks just like the basement in Maude Murdock, and the fight scene is not much better, but Cosby has another good scene unravelling the mystery and explaining the fake grenades and the whole plot to Christy and Tom Keith, the author. And then Kelly`s line about "I feel like a disgrace to this uniform" was a classic.
The tagline, with Sheldon Leonard, was terrific, especially when Leonard says "I`m `bout ta count ta tree".
Overall there were some good scenes, great scenery, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts. So I call it a C+ to B- episode. Which one next week?
I can`t say how glad I am to be doing this again, I have missed it in the past 2 months.
Author: Billy Bob Rover
Date: 11/15/01 3:56:02 PM
This discussion of CRUSADE TO LIMBO is especially interesting to me -- not because I think this is an exceptional episode at the level of writing, directing, or acting, but because, as some of you have noted, the middle sequence is so strong on location work that it made an indelible impression on me when I was a child, and I have never quite gotten over it.
And the thing that has most stuck with me all these years has been the extended MUSICAL backing to the sequence in which Kelly and Scotty hit all the scenic locations while appearing innocently not to notice the guys following them. The music starts with Earle Hagen`s Mexican music (entitled "Away We Go to Mexico" on the soundtrack album), then segues into a mellow jazz theme -- well, I`m sure all of you with the DVD can recall it. The entire musical number, as I`m sure our own resident musician Bobby Seville might agree, is one of the best in the series, and is perfectly integrated thematically with the visuals. This sequence by itself is worth the price of admission, as they say.
The whole bit about shooting Sean in the bullet-proof-vest is a bit incredible, but, as Benkovski has noted, Kelly immediately turns to Scotty as if to ask "what happend?" That salvaged, in my view, an otherwise implausible scene.
About the scene in the "beanery," in which Kelly is singing "You always hurt the one you love..." ("the sweetest person", he is in the middle of singing, before breaking off), yes, it`s a bit implausible too (what in the series isn`t?), but I like the narrative `economy` of having him drunkely mouth anti-Americanisms and then, seconds later, having it appear in the newspapers. Point made. Now we can proceed to the next seqeunce, and the plot can continue. Very economical.

It`s been some years (about 24) since I last saw it, so I had forgotten about the way the Mexican reporter Munoz licks the salt with his tequila. Nice observation, and one that makes me wish even more desperately that I had the DVD set. But as regards what Benkovski has called Kelly`s "dialectical monologue," (which I recall referring to the OAS, and NATO, which "couldn`t give a rat`s....nose" about what`s really important, I disagree that it was "not too convincing." I see it as dialogue not to be taken literally, but rather as `symbolically` in a way -- that is, as a brief bit of rhetoric meant to `suggest` Kelly`s supposed disaffection with US foreign policy (god, how timely this sounds!), but not necessarily to articulate it fully. That is, I see it as another example of TV writing meant to serve its purpose simply and, again, `economcially.` But, at the same time, I also agree with Benkovski that these things could be more convincingly written to reflect REAL geo-political realities.
Lastly, I want to suggest that the `backstory` of Sean Christy seems fairly clearly intended to refer to the life, career, and politics of Errol Flynn (whose son, a war correspondent, was also named `Sean`). Errol Flynn was, of course, Hollywood`s quintessential `swashbuckler` in earlier decades; in the late 50s he went to Cuba (when his career was in free-fall). Like the great sociologist C. Wright Mills, he became sympathetic to the popular revolt going on there, as well as to the whole ambience in which (to steal a line from Bob Dylan) "there was music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air." Ever attracted to young girls, Flynn, then 50, fell for a teenaged Cuban girl. He thus made his final screen appearance in "Cuban Rebel Girls," a negligible `docu-drama` of sorts that expressed outspoken support for Fidel Castro`s revolutionary struggle -- an unpopular stand in the US in those days (and still today).
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