Sunday, September 15, 2013

Get Smart: A Childhood taste I haven't outgrown

Agents 86 and 99 in Get Smart

It’s easy to get nostalgic while thinking about your childhood, remembering things as they seemed to be or recalling your childhood tastes.  I’ve been watching reruns since a kid.  Before I was old enough to realize it, I preferred the “old stuff.” As a kid, even the oldest reruns are new and exciting. My favorites were I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, The A-Team, The Rockford Files…and Get Smart. These are some of the childhood tastes I have not outgrown.

Even as an adult, sometimes you just want simple silly fun.  For that I turn to Get Smart—the 1960s spy show satirizing Bond-like spy movies. It came complete with elaborate gadgetry, excessive secrecy and caricaturized villains. Everything was exaggerated to the hilarious.
      
I love just how 1960s it is.  Everything in the show, from the cars to the fashion to the colors, is classic and stylish 1960s.  Most of it has remained appealing without becoming dated to the point of kitsch. Agent 99's wardrobe (often completed with the typical spy's overcoat) is a good example.

Don Adams and Barbara Feldon as Agents 86 and 99
The show chronicles the top secret cases of Agent 86 Maxwell Smart, “the world’s most well known secret agent,” as he defends America and all that is “good and niceness.” He works most closely with Agent 99 (her identity remains a secret), and together they are the two top spies in the business.

It is a family show, in the classic sense of the term, as it provides cartoon-like slapstick and sight gags for the children and satire and wordplay for the parents. It’s comforting and greatly enjoyable to watch an episode and again experience that old familiar brand of laughter.  It’s filled with reoccurring jokes and gags that don’t grow tiresome thanks to a tweaks in the writing or variations in the delivery. It’s amazing how constant the laughs can be and the how reliable the fun is from a simple situation (a clumsy spy saving the world)—very much like I Love Lucy.
 
The Cone of Silence, CONTROL's most malfunctioning gadget, as seen in the pilot--the only black-and-white episode.
Get Smart fans each have their own favorite reoccurring joke, and my favorite is the old “missed it by that much” joke. The joke usually occurs at the climax of an action sequence when someone (usually an evil agent) either falls/jumps or is pushed out the window of a tall building. As the onlookers gasp in fright Smart reminds them of the swimming pool just outside the window. He then looks out the window, makes a sad “yuck” face and holding out two fingers tells the others “missed it by that much.”

I also enjoy the way Smart and 99 interact with each other. Their chemistry is energetic and accommodating.  It shows like best friends pretending together. It’s reminiscent of childhood play-acting.  The show itself could be viewed as the imaginings of a boy and girl at play together.  He imputes the action while she creates the dialogue and relationship.  They are equally happy and confident in they’re jointly created and understood existence.