Crmen’s Favourite The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Episodes
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E is not the strongest spin-off ever and it suffers from some poor writing choices. For one, rather than make April competent and deadly as she should be, being UNCLE Northwest’s first female enforcement agent, they made her mainly a damsel with extra spy gadgets. Mark spends more time rescuing her than being her partner. Another thing is that for a so-called competent team, Mark and April weren’t really that great aside from a few select episodes. Also, there was some continuity issues in this ep with regards to which Sections everyone belonged to that bugged me so, so much.
This spin-off did have some good points though: more Waverly, April’s outfits, and some humour that really worked. Overall, I liked it as light-hearted television.
It is not surprising that this show did not even make a full season, particularly when there were shows with much more competent female spies around.
Anyway, onto my favourites of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.!
Hands down, the Mother Muffin Affair is the best episode of TGFU. It guest stars Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and also Boris Karloff in drag as the villainess Mother Muffin. That’s right, that same Boris Karloff that everyone recognises as Frankenstein’s monster. Speaking of Mother Muffin, she was a terrifying villain and a very good one. Mother Muffin makes Napoleon’s presence in this episode more of a handicap than anyone expects because it happens that Mother Muffin is Napoleon’s biggest fan.
Aside from Boris Karloff, though, the ep also is one of the best because of the dynamic between the two spies. Napoleon and April’s chemistry worked very well and they acted more like a team than April and Mark did for most of the season. It was probably helped, of course, by the fact that Napoleon treated April like an equal rather than someone he had to constantly worry over like an innocent.
This ep is really silly and it involves an amateur actor/jack-of-all-trades swallowing a bit of cheese containing some very important microdots for T.H.R.U.S.H. As a result, April and Mark need to save him before T.H.R.U.S.H. gets ahold of him and the contents of his stomach. This is amongst my favourites just for the innocent, Stanley Umlaut, because he ends up being the most useful person in the episode and you don’t expect that.
The Little John Doe Affair
April goes undercover as an ex-gambler’s secretary to protect him so he can inform on his bosses. In the process, she also has to protect him from being assassinated by Little John Doe, the best assassin in Murder Inc. I really enjoyed the dynamic between April and the gambler, Joey Celeste, because it’s a slow burn sort of romance and it’s so cute. Also, Little John Doe and the glimpses of his personal life really gave him some depth beyond that of an assassin. This episode had very good writing and it showcased April as a competent spy for once, which I am always a huge fan of.
This episode if pure silliness. April and Mark save a professor from the clutches of some villain that looks like a Dracula knock-off named Dr. Faustus (really named B. Elzie Bubb). It has some ridiculous slapstick and an entire action sequence where it’s just the villains and our heroes running around these rooms of varying extreme climates (blizzard, storm, etc). It was a funny episode and it did not take itself seriously, which is always A+ in my book. I mainly added this here for the villain, though, who is so ridiculous that I could not help, but be entertained.
The Double-O Nothing Affair
Ahhh! An episode where Mark and April showcase why they are one of U.N.C.L.E.’s best in enforcement! Mark infiltrates T.H.R.U.S.H. not once, but twice and makes a relatively clean break of it. April purposely uses herself as a decoy to try to save a very incompetent innocent, etc. Mark and April are on their A-Game in this episode and it is so, so good. I only wished there were more eps like this one earlier in the season. May have saved them from cancellation.
This final episode is just silly and absurd. It starts promisingly enough until Waverly inexplicably exposes one of his agents as the informant for a trial against a top T.H.R.U.S.H. man prematurely. Then it just gets sillier and sillier as Mark and April make a weekend trip down to a creepy English estate where they need to evade various plots against their life and the ghost of Mark’s ancestor. This ep kinda reminded me of Cluedo in its silliness and it keeps you guessing just how every player fits into this murder/would-be-murder mystery. Also be warned: one of the villains in this ep is played by the same guy that played the villain in the My Friend the Gorilla Episode and it was really distracting. I just liked this ep mainly bc it was hilarious watching two spies get spooked and then being so done with everything at every turn.
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