Scarecrow & Mrs. King: 40 Years Later
By Eric Grigs | October 25, 2023
Earlier this year, somehow I convinced my husband that it’d be a good idea to attend the Scarecrow and Mrs. King reunion in Los Angeles. (Or he convinced me it would be a good idea to take a vacation to California, it’s hard to say which came first.) Then all of a sudden it was October, and there we were joining with a crowd of other fans celebrating the show’s 40th anniversary since its debut in the fall of 1983. In the months leading up to the event, “Mrs. Grigs” binged his way through all four seasons for fear of being found out as an imposter fan. But to my surprise, by the time he finished the finale just days before we boarded the plane for the west coast, he actually was hooked and wanted more.
If you didn’t become a super-fan like me from watching syndicated reruns on the Family Channel, yet you grew up in the 1980s, chances are still high you have some recollection of this Top 20 CBS series. Particularly if your mom watched. (Scarecrow and Mrs. King devotees skew female, as you might expect for shows built on a “will they or won’t they fall in love” premise.)
But layered on top of that multi-season dance of romance are weekly spy adventures featuring charming, fish-out-of-water characters. Civilian Amanda King (played by Kate Jackson of Charlie’s Angels), a divorced housewife and mother of two young boys, routinely gets pulled into a world of espionage. Over several years, she somehow develops an impressive track record of taking down Russian spy rings and international crooks. The flip side of the secret agent equation: undercover operative Lee Stetson (codename Scarecrow, played by Bruce Boxleitner of TRON). He similarly gets pushed out of his comfort zone each time he’s dragged through the suburbs of Virginia to take down the bad guys.
It’s no exaggeration to say the pilot (“The First Time”), written by Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming (Supernatural, Lois and Clark), is one of the most brilliant hours of ’80s television you’ll ever watch. In a Hitchcock-like chance encounter at a commuter rail station, Mrs. King is handed a mysterious package by a hunted Scarecrow. He pleads with her to board the train and give the MacGuffin to a man in a red hat—setting up all the dominoes that will satisfyingly cascade in these character’s lives over four years.
Leaning into both comedy and drama, the housewife/spy dynamic gets a boost from a great supporting cast that includes Beverly Garland (My Three Sons), Mel Stewart (All in the Family), Martha Smith (Animal House), Greg Morton, and Paul Stout. Half the fun of the show is seeing how the two leads, who come from completely opposite worlds, will be thrown together in dangerous situations each episode.
At the reunion’s Q&A panel, creators Buckner and Ross-Leming noted how stealthily groundbreaking the characters were for the time. They not only showed a heroic lead capable of navigating just about any circumstance thrown her way, but also one that looked a lot like American women living in the suburbs at the time: a housewife, also a mother, with a live-in parent, often divorced in middle-age, and taking on any job to make ends meet. The creators noted it might not be what you’d traditionally think of as a feminist role, but like everything in the spy world, appearances can be deceiving. As Boxleitner admits in the newly released Ultimate Fan’s Guide to Scarecrow and Mrs. King, a lesser actor might have felt his manhood threatened by repeatedly losing his gun or missing his shot and needing to be helped out of high-stakes jams by the PTA mom. In addition, Kate Jackson owned a 51% stake in the show, allowing more control in shaping the ongoing growth of Mrs. King from the unemployed housewife of season one to agent in training in later episodes.
The 40th celebration wouldn’t be complete without a stop to see Mrs. King’s house—complete with the “Amandamobile” waiting in the driveway.
I’m also struck at how underground this show feels for one of CBS’s biggest hits at the time. Yet, like any good Gen X hipster, if you’re in the know, you’ll spot some pop culture reverberations in the years since the show left the air. Later Chuck succeeded with a gender-flipped, mirror-image of Scarecrow’s setup (which also includes an easter egg of Yvonne Strahovski’s character Sarah’s dream house being the same house Amanda King occupied on 4247 Maplewood Drive). Another reference point: if you’ve ever watched True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, you’ve got a pretty good idea from its story beats and characters what Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Movie would look like.
Although, I don’t expect we’ll ever see a straight-up remake of this classic show. In many ways, that’s for the best. I love Scarecrow and Mrs. King for being that perfect jewel-box type of a show—how its earnestness places it inside a time capsule. The spirit of nonpartisan American patriotism and duty to country that motivated Amanda back then feels impossible now—as unachievable as ’80s permed hair and big shoulder-pad fashion making a comeback any time soon.
On the other hand, it’s more topical than ever. Russians are all over the headlines today as America’s adversaries—like it’s suddenly the Cold War again. Social media bots influencing online opinions. War with our allies. Election meddling. Computer ransomware attacks.
So who can handle our 21st century problems? Maybe it’s time to look toward Mrs. King for advice on how to juggle it all. Unless you know of any other foreign intelligence agents who can load the family station wagon with groceries, drop off the kids at Little League, avert nuclear war, and still make it home in time for dinner.
Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.