Alan Oppenheimer

There were so many amazing guest stars on I Spy, but I have to say Alan Oppenheimer's turn as Col. Ivan Benkovsky is just my favorite. He fits perfectly into the sometimes serious, sometimes silly tone of the show. One of my favorite silly scenes is in "A Gift from Alexander" when Benkovsky insists the Leningrad Losers, not the Philadelphia Phillies, won the third game of the World Series in 1936. His character also nicely captures the blurry lines between friend/foe and professional/personal that seem such a part of the spy business. I love In "Blackout", how he spends most of the episode threatening to turn Kelly in for the murder of ballerina Zili Markova, yet when all is resovled, he wants to go to the movies with Kelly and Scotty. Even though he's kind of (sometimes) a bad guy, he's just a cutie!

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