Sexy Sci-Fi Action Series Bombshell Was in on the Joke

By Jonathan Klotz | Published 16 seconds ago

Go to any streaming service and start scrolling. In a minute, you’ll scroll past the shows you know, the shows you heard someone talking about at three tables at Olive Garden, and dive straight into an endless sea of ​​streaming series you can’t believe exist.

This is nothing new in the streaming age; in the early 2000s, this is what the syndicated television landscape looked like Hercules And Xena sign. This is why 90s sci-fi star Natasha Henstridge will forever be remembered Specieswas able to play in the years 2002 She-Spiesa show that was a pure joke, and unlike Everything is fairthe cast and crew knew it was a joke.

No budget, no problem

There was nothing original in the principle of She-Spies: Three criminals secretly work for the United States government in exchange for commuted sentences. There’s Shane the Fighter (Natasha Williams), DD the Hacker (Kristen Miller) and Cassie the Swindler (Natasha Henstridge), brought together by CIA agent Jack Wilde (Carlos Jacott, a ‘hey, it’s that guy’ actor). Working together, the three were able to overcome everything from an assassin posing as Jack to a criminal undergoing plastic surgery to pose as Cassie, and other similar storylines that could be filmed without a budget on up to three sets per week.

Season 1 used the show’s obviously cheap nature to its advantage with gags that included the trio rappelling through a skylight, except a window pane doesn’t give and DD gets stuck against the glass. Another gag included Cassie shouting, “Species is on TV! in order to distract a group of teenagers. One of the best, however, was the She-Spies action figures from “Three Women and a Baby,” a title that every syndicated show must be legally required to include, described as “you finish them, and they challenge you to find their timeslot.”

A success of a season that lasted two

She-Spies regularly broke the fourth wall, often taking aim at NBC, the network that only picked up the first four episodes before abandoning it in the wilds of syndication. Cassie even rolled the credits at one point, insisting that the bomb she had just swallowed would kill her before they finished. And sure, the show found every excuse it could to stuff the spies into tiny outfits and tie them up, but even then those moments ended up being interpreted as gags. For the first season at least, even the small nugget of fun to be found was dashed when the production company decided that Season 2 should be a serious spy show.

Contractually obligated to broadcast 20 episodes, She-Spies Season 2 was a slow car crash that no one stopped to watch. The cast tried, especially Natasha Henstridge, who has been making the rounds on late-night talk shows, to continue promoting the series, including a funny moment with Conan O’Brien where she put her head in her hands and laughed with the audience, insisting that “it’s a really good show.” Henstridge embraced the absurdist slapstick and meta-humor of the first season, both of which were absent from every episode of season 2.

Remember, the next time you can’t find anything to watch, there are hundreds of shows you forgot existed that look like they were created by a drunk AI chatbot. For at least one season, She-Spies was surprisingly enjoyable, which is why it’s a shame that it takes place with two people.