Spie, pasticci & bugie

Beverly Rossmore (Linda Purl) is a school teacher and the wife of Alan (Ed Begley, Jr.) whose friend Freddie Fallon (Harry Anderson) is a CIA agent chasing a female assassin at the International Arms apartment building where the Rossmore's live in New York. Both Alan and Beverly are persuaded to help Freddie investigate the suspects.

Purl wears spectales and her hair in a frizzy style, and a form fitting yellow dress where she attempts to entice Gunter Muntz, a German transexual. Beverly's antipathy for Freddie is based on his dumping of her best friend, Evelyn (Wendy Crewson), so Purl gets to play snide. She shows some comic skill, given lines like `I said she was my best friend. I didn't say she had any brains', and in response to Freddie having changed his cologne `They must have discontinued jungle passion for men'. Only her scene with Muntz allows Purl to let Beverly have any charm.

The teleplay by Bill Self has Alan a translator for the United Nations so that we expect him to get confused and cause an uproar, the humor includes Muntz' room divided like East and West Germany, a dog eating Chinaman, a Ronald Reagan impersonator, and Anderson asked to perform his range of impressions. There is a funny line by a waiter `Are you Swiss, by any chance? Why yes, how did you know? I noticed your neutral approach to the canopes'.

Director James Frawley's comedy is rarely funny, relying upon a less than slight premise, and the attempt to present Anderson in a starring vehicle falls flat.