Get Smart

The original, not the follow ups

Would you believe it if I told you Get Smart is universally considered the greatest television show ever, can you believe it, universally agreed on as the greatest ever? No? Would you believe it’s the best show about spies? Still no? How about number five on some random youtubers ‘ten old shows that are actually decent’ list?

[None of the youtube links in this article are mine, credit goes to the owners of the channels.]

Get Smart is about a spy known as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of the spy organization CONTROL. Despite his name, Smart isn’t smart. He’s an idiot actually, yet still one of CONTROL’s best agents by having blunders in just the right way. Thankfully his partner in both spying and romance, Agent 99, is there to balance him out with basic competence. Opposing them is the organization KAOS.

The other key character is The Chief of CONTROL, who usually has to suffer the comedic consequences of Max’s (lack of) intelligence. There are other recurring allies and enemies on varying basis depending on the season, like Larabee, one of the few men dumber than Smart, and Siegfried, a KAOS agent who is the closest thing the show has to a singular overarching villain by virtue of being the most frequently appearing one.

One of the enduring images of the show is Max’s shoe phone, at the time a device that belonged firmly in the ‘spy gadgets doing what modern consumer tech can’t’ category. Now the shoe phone seems quaint and outdated, it’s still comedic and disguising phones is useful for a spy, but it lost the touch of science fiction that let it be one of the main things people remembered about the show.

Being an older show there isn’t much continuity, aside from the development of Max and 99’s relationship, as they go from obvious love interests to getting married to becoming parents in the last season. If you like stupid guy and highly competent girl duos, Max and 99 are the peak of it. I’d say they’d invented it but that’s probably wrong.

And if you enjoy running gags, you’ll love Get Smart. Max has a good supply of common phrases he pulls out, like the one I riffed on in the first paragraph. There’s also the never functional cone of silence, and a fellow CONTROL agent who always has absurd hiding spots and demands money from Max (multiple actually, but never in the same episode).

Thanks to the loose continuity any episode works as a jumping on point, well, the second halves of the two parters probably aren’t ideal picks for a first episode. I actually started with season 5, where Max and 99 are still able to go on absurd spy missions together like they used to while also having a family together. Some superhero comics could learn a thing or two from that.

Some of you might ask if I’m a little young to be a fan of this show, and yes, yes I am. I grew up watching shows like Get Smart on DVD with my family, which is now dating in itself. I remember when portable DVD players were an envy inducing item, one with Get Smart DVDs kept me company while I was stuck in bed in the hospital.

For the people who stream everything, Get Smart is only on those services as something that has to be bought individually, like on Amazon. I do wish more people in my age range knew shows like Get Smart or Gilligan’s Island, but in a self fulfilling way, the absence of people my age into these shows is probably the reason why you can’t just pull them up on Netflix or the like.

While I think Gilligan’s Island and Green Acres will probably feel too dated to most people now anyway, I can see modern audiences getting Get Smart if they gave it a try. On the note of being dated, Get Smart’s pilot was in black and white, but the series itself was in color, letting you pinpoint the moment in television history it appeared in from that alone.

Also for a random aside, I have decided that the episode with the villain who wanted to blow up cities in the name of silence might be on to something, definitely a shoe in for at least an honorable mention on a ‘top ten villains who were ideologically valid’ list. Please tell me that episode wasn’t on one of the DVDs my family lost on a trip.

Anyway, there have been various attempts to follow up Get Smart, but I haven’t watched any aside from the reboot/remake/rewhatever movie. With the original cast/world there was a movie titled The Nude Bomb, a TV reunion movie titled Get Smart, Again, and a sequel show also called Get Smart with Max and 99’s son as the new protagonist. From what I’ve heard none of those are considered as good as the original, which to be fair is a tough act to beat.

Get Smart is great as it is, no real need to add on a sequel or reboot it. Instead, if you haven’t already you should watch an episode (feel free to look up best episode lists), then give in to the urge to watch more.

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Are there any works you like that are ‘before your time?’ Do you miss the age of DVDs? Let me know in the comments.