Wayback Wednesday takes us back to a con man pretending to be the world’s greatest detective in Remington Steele. Returning for its Second Season, the show saw some major shakeup to it supporting characters with the off-screen departures of both Murphy Michaels (James Read) and Bernice Fox (Janet DeMay). Rather than recast both characters individually, Michael Gleason decided to create a new character to fill both roles offering us the introduction of Mildred Krebs (Doris Roberts), an agent of the IRS on the scent of tax evasion who will follow Remington Steele (Pierce Brosnan) to Acapulco but ultimately end up on his side in a mystery involving diamond smuggling and murder. While I miss the mostly underutilized Janet DeMay, Read’s character had outlived his usefulness at this point, and Roberts makes a great addition to the cast adding a completely different kind of energy to the show.
Along with the tax evasion plot, the episode centers around the death of a man on Laura‘s (Stephanie Zimbalist) doorstep leading her to Mexico with Steele, fearing for her safety and fleeing from Krebs’ investigation, would soon follow. With the removal of Murphy to act as a wet blanket between the pair, the will-they/won’t-they dynamic heats up a little more in Acapulco, although circumstances certainly get in the way such as the continuing trust issues between the pair, Laura’s kidnapping, and the past of the con man now living a life of Remington Steele offering a roadblock to the current case.
There’s plenty of madcap action in the episode including the police chasing Steele through the luxury resort and some shenanigans by the detectives to get into the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Despite the cast changes, we still get Steele’s movie references as it seems there is no case he can’t be presented with that won’t remind him of at least one classic film. By the end of the episode things return to a new status quo with Krebs hired on as the new office major (still under the mistaken understanding that Steele is the boss).
