Max la menace

I have always been a fan of Get Smart not only because it was a parody of the secret agent genre of film and television series, but because it was a perfect time capsule for the era of the 1960's. Just check out the episodes featuring characters such as The Groovy Guru or Jarvis "The Mad Pharmacist" Pym. The sixties were a wild era and no show captured that spirit as much as this film.

Also, let's not forget the ensemble cast that displayed such a great chemistry with each other. Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, Edward Platt, Dick Gautier, King Moody, Robert Karvelas and, of course, Bernie Kopell all made this show a great viewing experience.

Its writers/creators included Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

'Nuff said.

But, since IMDb won't let me get away with saying just that, I'll just have to write more.

How can you go wrong with something by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry? It's obvious that the actors are thoroughly enjoying themselves in this show, and this enthusiasm was infectious. I was a very little girl in 1965, and I used to sit up with my father to watch TV after dinner and the nightly installment of whatever book he was reading to us. We sat together and watched Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, McHale's Navy, among others, all of which are now considered classics. Why? Because, while the shows themselves were very topical (Get Smart was about the Cold War - as is Bullwinkle -- and Hogan and McHale fought in WWII which had ended barely 20 years earlier), the humor itself did not rely on specific current events. They were just out-and-out funny.

They still are.

The funniest but rarest episodes were those that involved Hymie the robot who delivered wacky lines deadpan like....er...a robot. He fell in love with another robot - a soda vending machine and his wooing line was: "I like you so much because.....you are so simple." How about The Claw, the FuManChu-like or Dr. No doppleganger, who was about as inept as Maxwell himself. He tells his factotum to show the captive Smart the bamboo under the fingernails torture and starts screaming "Aaaaa! Not on me, you fool!."

At one time, Smart was assigned to solve a case of a spate of kidnappings of blond young women. It turns out that The Claw was just after one blond woman. He explains to Smart: "Unfortunately to us orientals, all blond women look alike."

Unfortunately, the movies were not as funny as the original season episodes.

Get Smart stands as the single most brilliant television comedy EVER. Before Hot Shots!, before Frank Drebin, before Airplane!, before Kentucky Fried Movie, before Young Frankenstein, and before Blazing Saddles, there was Get Smart, the creation of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. This show, which would go on to inspire Police Squad!, arguably the second most brilliant television comedy ever, presented in Maxwell Smart the most completely asanine leading man thus far in television history, and as a result provided for more stupid jokes than ever before. Perhaps the first moment in television where comedy did not require a laugh track (though it did USE one, it would have flown fine without one), this show would inspire nearly every film by Mel Brooks and Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Can we really imagine Hedley Lamaar from Blazing Saddles without Maxwell Smart having preceded him? Can we really imagine Frank Drebin without Maxwell Smart having preceded him? The answer to these questions MUST be "no." Get Smart was a rare moment in television comedy history, and it has given us a truly rich comedic tradition ever since. Thank you, Buck, Don, and Barbara!

I haven't seen an episode of this show in more than 10 years and yet all the scenes described above remain fresh...This show has to stand as one of the greatest of all time. It's hard to compare it to All In The Family, Cheers, or Seinfeld, but it's never been duplicated. Every time I hear "Not Craw, Craw" I have to smile. No one's mentioned the "Coughing Code" - when the cone of silence breaks down - always ending with Max's line - "you should do something about that cold Chief" The casting of the show was perfect. What made the show so great was that the creative plots were intertwined with crazy little sidebars - it's been years but I still remember one episode where 99 was doing a commercial in a tub, and was called away - and the producer/director of the commercial tries to coax his elderly mother in the tub - hilarious...

I wish these episodes were available on DVD...