'GET SMART' LET WORLD LAUGH AT BIG-TIME SPIES.Byline: Phil Perrier IT was one of the first TV shows I can remember watching. The theme music blasted from the black-and-white set like a siren, ``Bah bah interj. Used to express impatient rejection or contempt. bah interj an expression of contempt or disgust , bah, bah...BAH!'' Special agent Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) marched forward down an imposing vault-like corridor, heavy steel doors slamming behind him. An opening so deathly death·ly adj. 1. Of, resembling, or characteristic of death: a deathly silence. 2. Causing death; fatal. adv. 1. In the manner of death. 2. serious it was absurd. Absurdity came fast and furious from then on. The show was an homage to the then-red hot spy genre. It answered the question, ``What if James Bond was a total moron mo·ron n. A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. ?'' Bond was slick, perfect, invulnerable in·vul·ner·a·ble adj. 1. Immune to attack; impregnable. 2. Impossible to damage, injure, or wound. [French invulnérable, from Old French, from Latin . Smart was bumbling, clumsy, prone to FEMA-esque incompetence. The brilliant writing team of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry showed Smart's stupidity in clever ways, like Smart kneeling to pick up the hand-scribbled note of a dying man, then reading aloud, ``Get your knee off my chest!'' The gags came at warp speed. ``Get Smart'' was the perfect preamble to Mel Brooks' early classic films, most notably ``The Producers,'' ``Blazing Saddles'' and ``Young Frankenstein.'' The sitcom was also the linear predecessor of an entire new type of comedy. Films like ``Airplane'' and the ``Naked Gun'' series owe much of their irreverent, machine-gun gag style to ``Get Smart.'' Most of all, ``Get Smart'' was the perfect showcase for the comedy of Don Adams. A veteran nightclub comic, Adams brought his crisp delivery and lines like the trademark ``Would you believe...'' ready-formed to the show. In fact, the character was so complete that Adams would become typecast by it for the rest of his career. ``Get Smart'' was an absurdist's dream, a 30-minute vacation from reality. Complete with a shoe that doubled as a telephone and a trained killer robot named ``Hymie'' (brilliantly played by comedian Dick Gautier). The constant Brooks-ian undertone of Borscht Belt humor was a wonderful backdrop to the self-importantly Goyishe world of big-time espionage. The gags positively reeked of Chinese takeout and gefilte fish. It is no coincidence that the show was popular at precisely the same time that the Johnson administration was hopelessly mired mire n. 1. An area of wet, soggy, muddy ground; a bog. 2. Deep slimy soil or mud. 3. A disadvantageous or difficult condition or situation: the mire of poverty. v. in Vietnam. ``Get Smart'' gave a horrified hor·ri·fy tr.v. hor·ri·fied, hor·ri·fy·ing, hor·ri·fies 1. To cause to feel horror. See Synonyms at dismay. 2. To cause unpleasant surprise to; shock. nation a nonsensical, hapless government bureaucracy it could laugh at. And laugh at abstractly. Laugh we did. Every week my brother and my mom and I would sit, transfixed, laughing hard as we entered the weird world in which Agent 86 and his lovely sidekick, Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) held the forces of evil and their nemesis, ``KAOS KAOS - Kent Applicative Operating System ,'' at bay. At the end, the theme music would fade and the credits would give way to a hammer pounding a Roman numeral numeral, symbol denoting anumber. The symbol is a member of a family of marks, such as letters, figures, or words, which alone or in a group represent the members of a numeration system. into lead. Then, as if waking from a wonderful dream, we returned to reality for another week. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Don Adams |
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