Mystery Woman: At First Sight

7/10 - not necessarily my favorite Mystery Woman, but a worthy addition to the series

Mystery book store owner Kellie Martin we find out was adopted by the folks who raised her and are now deceased. She embarks on a search for her birth mother and when she finds her she finds the police in her town are about to arrest her. It seems that she came home and found a dead body in her house and he's a guy she had some really old history with.

Kathryn Harrold plays the mom and the dead guy was also shot with a gun owned by her husband John Aprea. Martin also discovers she has a half sister played by Christine Lakin.

One of the few in this series that Martin is without the help of her confidant Clarence Williams,III. But she's in another town and Williams has been contacted by Michael Cole an old secret agent buddy. He wants Williams to help him help another one of their friends who's in a nice jackpot. Of course back in the day Williams and Cole were 2/3 of LAPD's Mod Squad.

I think the solution was rather obvious from the start so as a mystery per se this film doesn't cut it. Still it was a nice insight into Kellie Martin's background.

The one thing that caught my attention is when she has her date with the eye doctor he makes a cute flirty joke and she calls it lame. She's actually pretty unfriendly most of the date considering she had stood him up on their previous date. The date scene which was supposed to give the happy ending to the story left you wondering if she liked the doctor or not.

This production had an attractive protagonist, a cozy middle class middle American setting, a small cast of journeymen actors, and two prime time television hours (minus commercials) to work with. Yet, in the end, I felt completely let down.

First of all, a significant portion of production resources were diverted into a totally meaningless sub-plot involving Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole, who starred together in "The Mod Squad", back in 1968. I kept expecting Peggy Lipton to show up, but I gather she has been able to find work on her own.

In this episode, Samantha Kinsey ventures out to explore her own roots. Of course, the "Mystery Woman" lives up to her moniker by the end of the two-hour drama, at which point we expect her to explain it all to us. But there is no revelation of "family ties", no exploration of "family values", no knitting together of loose ends, and no answers to pertinent questions. In fact, the most obvious questions about Samantha's roots are not even asked. She simply walks away.

Even if the writers had devoted 100% of their budget to the main plot line, it is not clear that they would have known what to do with these characters. It seems they had not started out with the first requirement, a good story that would involve an audience in the lives of well-drawn characters.

I was left with the feeling that this entire production crew had frittered away a great deal of time, money, and effort, and I had just wasted two hours of a Tuesday night.

Contrary to another review, just because a storyline seems meaningless, doesn't mean it is.

Most good stories have at least one subplot. In this episode the subplot provided some comic relief to an otherwise very serious episode. I was in stitches!

The fact that it reunited a couple of dear old friends made it much more special - especially to us fans of The Mod Squad. Because The Mod Squad was a very serious show. To have it's two male stars (Clarence Williams III as series regular Philby, and Michael Cole as Desmond) in a more comical situation was a treat to me!

In this episode, while Samantha is off looking for her birth mother, a silly, but fun little subplot has a couple of old spies (Philby & Desmond) get together to free a Russian spy who landed in the local jail.

Philby decides to get himself arrested, so he can tell the Russian spy how he's going to be busted out.

It's the 'how' that is hysterical. The police chief, who has a semi-adversarial relationship with Samantha and Philby, is befuddled when he has to arrest Philby for breaking a window.

Desmond then, comes in 'under cover' to help break both Philby & the Russian spy out of jail. What ensues is like The Keystone Cops. It is hysterical, and so much fun!