Continuing my reviews of African-Americans in film and television for Black History Month in chronological order, we're now at 1965 with the second episode of "I Spy", A Cup of Kindness. In this one, Kelly Robinson's (Robert Culp) former mentor (David Friedkin) comes to his old pupil in Hong Kong for help in getting a component for him to avoid getting killed. Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby) lends a hand in helping Kelly distract some hotel proprietors from the safe that Scott and the former mentor are trying to steal from...It takes a while but there are some good action scenes and some humorous ones concerning Culp and a lady (Irene Tsu) that I found pretty amusing. Cosby doesn't really do much here except some small talk and setting up some explosives but does show some charisma for a person whose main profession at the time was stand-up. And there is one cute scene where he talks to a little Hong Kong girl (Robin Lee) in her language. "I Spy" marked the first time that a man of color shared a starring role in series television with his white counterpart. This particular episode I watched on the Net Nights section of the From the Archives blog. I've seen at least 4 more episodes on DVD that I checked from the library years ago. One with Don Rickles and one with Wally Cox from there were pretty funny. I'd have to see a few more episodes to really judge how good "I Spy" was but I liked what I saw so far. By the way, vintage commercials of the time were inserted between the scenes when I watched this.
