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.

   

The Burns and Allen Show

"If I say the right thing, please excuse me." Gracie Allen

Being a fan of old things I love classic television, and one of my favorites is The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show starring the greatest husband and wife comedy team. Burns played straight man to Allen’s dizzy dame. They started in vaudeville, became hits; moved to radio, became hits there; and then moved to television to become hits all over again.

George playing straight to Grace's "illogical logic."


The Burns and Allen Show has lots of appeal for modern television audiences. It was quite advanced for its day and it remains freshly unique from modern television trends. George’s character had the power to walk through the fourth wall to directly converse with and comment to the “live” audience. For fans of The Office this will feel similar to Jim Halpert’s sly smirks and stares, but it works out very differently.

In the Burns and Allen Show it allows George to step out of scene to monologue (with impeccable timing famously punctuated by his cigar) and occasionally manipulate plot towards a more entertaining ends.

The show’s unique stage set aids George’s comical flaunting of the fourth wall. It consists of two homes with partially-built walls (including front doors) facing the audience—unlike other shows which have no fourth wall and the ends of the joining walls are hidden to disguise the wall’s absence. George could walk through the walls to eavesdrop on Gracie’s scheming, keeping him ahead of his co-characters’ actions (although not always).

Gracie brings home a trimmed Christmas tree

But the most drawing feature of the Burns and Allen Show is Gracie’s lovably confused character with her loopy conversations and silly schemes. George Burns once described her character as “the American poster child of confusion and misunderstanding.” The real genius of the character is that, for Gracie, it is never really Gracie who is confused but those around her, and it is up to her to patiently set them straight. To do that she uses her unique brand of “illogical logic”--the things she says always have the strictest appearance of being logical.

"I was so surprised at being born that I didn't speak for a year and a half." Gracie Allen

Gracie’s character is very charming, loving and sweet. Her mix-ups frequently involve her earnest attempts to help her friends, and nearly everyone is a friend. Unlike Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy, Gracie is rarely driven by selfish and self-serving motives.

Those closest to her learn to wade through the misunderstandings and George encourages it (after all, this is how he makes his living as a comedian). Strangers become confused beyond natural sense often leaving their hats while fleeing Gracie’s presence. She then thoughtfully stores the forgotten hats after labeling them with names and personal descriptions (one of my favorite running gags of the show). George keeps a bottle of aspirin on the coffee table, for guests. When someone attempts to ask George why he stays with such a … he cuts them short, answering: “I happen to love her, that’s why.”


The show’s a blast of old-time charm, spiraling dialogue, innovative formatting, clever narration, and ambiguous boundaries that could only be made in the earliest days of television. In those early days television was new and the rules were not yet made.

Much like in early film and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, when rules and trends are unmade or unknown it allows creative talent to use fresh ideas and styles that are independent from the influence of previous trends and practices.  The result is an exciting and lasting originality.

A few samples:

Gracie's Checking Account- This is a very funny episode early in the series. It runs 30 minutes.
Lamb Chops- This is an eight minute film of one of their vaudeville routines. 


*Orson Welles had complete creative control and a very limited understanding of film-making when he made Citizen Kane, his first film. He had a strong theater and radio background.