UNDERCOVERS

Steven and Samantha Bloom are agents of the CIA.

Are and were is an accurate statement.

Over a half decade before the events of the recorded adventures take place, the two operatives met and fell in love. After falling in love they tried for a while to maintain a relationship while not actually working together but soon they decided they would rather spend their lives together peacefully so they both retired from the Agency to get married and start anew as civilians. After a time they decided to open a restaurant and catering business bringing in Samantha's younger sister, Lizzie, who knows nothing of either of their previous careers which is how the Blooms want it to stay.

When we first meet the Blooms, they have been happily out of the spy business for five years and, though their food service business is not making them rich, they have no desire to go back to their previous line of work.

That is when grumpy and perpetually acerbic Carlton Shaw comes to call. The Blooms and Shaw had never met before but Shaw is quick to present his credentials and to explain why he needs both to resume their old walk of life. Both refuse but after some quiet reflection and sleeping on it, Steven Bloom goes to Shaw's hotel room to tell him he is willing to come back for the one mission, on the condition his wife never learns about it. When Shaw opens his room door wider to let Steven in, there stood Samantha already volunteering.

Both Blooms are African-Americans. Steven is a mid-30's tall (6'4) very handsome man with a trimmed beard and shaved head. Samantha is a late 20's rather short (5'4) extremely attractive woman with shoulder-length hair. They are both very self-reliant but even though they did not work as a team in the field back in the day, the years spent together since then makes them a great partnership. Minus, however, the fact that each has secrets in their past they would like to keep buries.

In addition to each other and the never-really-friendly relationship they establish with their new handler, Shaw, they will be joined on occasion with fellow operative Leo Nash, a friend of Steven from their training days and a former partner and lover of Samantha.

And they will enjoy the useful but rather erratic help of Bill Hoyt, a computer geek who is in awe of the exploits of Steven and somewhat dismissive of Samantha (he respects her but seems a tad intimidated by her and besides, as good as he has heard she was, she is in his eyes no Mr. Bloom).

     Both my wife and I really enjoyed this series when it first came on. That is, unfortunately it seems for us, often a sentence of doom. It certainly was in this case. The show did not last very long at all and both of us really missed it. I have tracked down the missing episodes so I can enjoy them but have been revisiting pleasantly yet again the series from its beginning.

     I read a comment by show creator J.J. Abrams that the show was intended to be a bit frivolous but may have been too much so. If my brief research is accurate, the show was on a Friday night which considering the audience it should have attracted was a kiss of death. Just IMHO.

     Both stars were and remain excellent actors in both drama and light comedy and irascible Gerald McRaney is always a welcome.

     Too bad the show did not make it.