Get Smart

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.

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" is one those 1960's sitcoms that was all about really crazy predicaments and blowing peoples' minds (think "Bewitched", "Gilligan's Island" and "I Dream of Jeannie"). It follows Maxwell Smart (Don Adams), an inept spy with the organization CONTROL who always has to foil the plans of the dastardly rival organization KAOS. With him are Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) and The Chief (Edward Platt). Even if you know nothing about espionage or such things, the whole show is still a laugh riot. Whether it's the Cone of Silence (which always proves to be a Cone of Destruction) or Max's shoe-telephone, things always go completely wacky, forcing Max to say "Sorry about that, Chief." It's too bad that currently, no channel is rerunning "Get Smart", but hopefully, it will soon come out on DVD. You'll love it!

I can safely say that in my eyes, there are only four true supers pies: James Bond, Derek Flynt, Harry Palmer and Maxwell Smart. This show is absolutely magnificent...and hilarious.

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.

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!