Simon & Simon (TV Series) Double Entry (1982) User Reviews

Double entry

[coltras35 · 6/10 · 29 August 2023]

A woman hires Rick and AJ to find out if her husband is having an affair with the company accountant, but their investigation reveals what the accountant is really up to, and end up in the middle of a kidnapping scheme- the husband is kidnapped by environmental activists and the brothers are pitched into a burning dilemma.

As a kid Simon and Simon didn't impress me too much as there's not much car flipping in sight, but now I think it's a relaxing, low key show with some intelligence and light talk between the brothers, sort of reminds me of Remington Steele - there's that similar air of subtlety and focus on private detective work. This episode was watchable, had a nice twist of a kidnapping scheme used as a cover up for embezzlement.

The Owl and The Pussycat Went To Sea

[JasonDanielBaker · 30 December 2018]

Private detectives the Simon Brothers - Rick (Gerald McCraney) and A.J. (Jameson Parker) are hard up for work and doing repossessions.

A jealous wife (Lynette Mettey) hires them to spy on her property developer husband Kyle (Richard Herd) whom she suspects is cheating on her with his gorgeous work colleague (Sondra Currie).

The brothers try to talk her out of it and give her every conceivable way to back out. But she is determined they proceed, and then appears to enjoy their status reports.

The Simons tell her that the man isn't cheating. But privately they can't rule out that he is up to something because they sense so strongly that he is. He has worked almost non-stop during their surveillance of him. The work colleague he is suspected of cheating with is working almost non-stop too on the same thing...Whatever it is...Which might be nothing.

The Simons know something is up and it is driving them crazy trying to figure out what it is. If they had an idea of what to look for they would be able to find it sooner. But looking for a possible affair yields them nothing and in fact impedes their interpretation of what they see. Still, it's her dime. They keep looking hoping they'll eventually know it when they see it.

When Kyle is kidnapped by environmental terrorist group "Sons of the Beach" (Think about it) and held for hefty ransom things get even more puzzling.

The mystery depicted is one of the better ones of the debut season because there is a greater complexity and subtlety to it. We see that the Simon Brothers are great detectives but do not identify precisely what they see when they clue in that something is amiss.

Because of it the characters have credibility with the audience. They are detectives and we aren't. If they see things that we all see then any idiot can be a private investigator and who cares who this guy and his brother are? Mysteries where the resolution is too obvious make audiences and TV detectives look dumb.

This episode shows us what environmentalists were seen as at a certain point in North American society. At one point, and I remember it, the environment was a fringe cause filled with activists who had as much credibility as manic street preachers shouting "The world will end tomorrow!".

That changed dramatically with global warming science in the late 1980s. At some point before that the prime concern was acid rain. So much so that it was what most of us heard about in conjunction with the environment on TV news and was viewed as the defining environmental issue.