Why the original 'Get Smart' still resonates

[Janice]

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2008/06/26/2008-06-26_why_the_original_get_smart_still_resonat.html

Why the original 'Get Smart' still resonates


Barbara Feldon and Don Adams in 'Get Smart'

Now that "Get Smart" has launched again, this time as a big-screen movie dolled up with an $80 million budget and two major stars in Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, naturally the nostalgia juices are flowing for the original.

So here's another example of how impressive an impact one silly TV sitcom can make on a nation.

Most of today's television-watching America wasn't born when NBC unveiled the original "Get Smart," with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon as Agent Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, on Sept. 18, 1965.

But through the miracle of reruns, it's almost as if old Max had never left. Don Adams's death on Sept. 25, 2002, at the age of 82, only spurred another wave of cravings to see Maxwell Smart say, "Would you believe?" one more time.

For the last half of the 1960s, the entire country walked around saying, "Would you believe?" But to paraphrase Ilsa's remark about Sam and "As Time Goes By," no one could do it like Don Adams.

The conventional wisdom about the original "Get Smart," perpetrated by people like Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, who are entitled to address the subject because they created the show, is that it was designed as a satire on slick spy epics like the James Bond movies.

Personally, I've never thought that's all there was to it.

"Get Smart" was unquestionably a satire on Bond-type characters, the kind who might be swinging on the Riviera one day and lying in a Bombay alley next day.

Smart, whose very name dripped overconfidence, was dull where Bond was sharp, dense where Bond was perceptive, cloddish where Bond was nimble and so on.

But me, I think one of the reasons "Get Smart" was such a hit - it was the No. 12 show of the 1965-66 season, edging out "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," which was working the same side of the street - is that it was also a satire on television.

TV sitcoms of the early 1960s tended to fall into one of two categories: wholesome and hip or wholesome and goofy.

There were both good and bad sitcoms in both categories, and a few that somehow had a foot in both camps, like "The Andy Griffith Show" and "McHale's Navy."

But generally speaking, the hip programs like "The Dick Van Dyke Show" were outnumbered by "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Gomer Pyle," "Bewitched," "My Favorite Martian," or that category's most sure-fire Hall of Famer, "Gilligan's Island."

That doesn't mean they were bad shows. Just that their jokes were often pretty obvious, owing more to vaudeville than to subtler practitioners of TV humor like Ernie Kovacs or "Maverick."

This was still an era, too, when virtually all TV comedy, and TV in general, had to be suitable for all ages. So anything even mildly risqué was off-limits, which would leave some of today's sitcoms with 22 minutes of dead air.

Compounding the problem for early 1960s writers, the "family" sitcom waters had been overfished in the previous years, in shows from "I Love Lucy" to "Leave It Beaver" and "The Danny Thomas Show."

Many new sitcoms, then, opted instead to build themselves around a gimmick, like "The Munsters" or "Batman."

This was a tradeoff. Gimmick shows tend to have a much shorter lifespan than a good family or relationship comedy. But they can hit with a strong burst and make everybody some money before we get bored.

"Get Smart" was positively sodden with gimmicks, from the sneaker phone to the Cone Of Silence, and what made them funnier was that we knew Maxwell Smart knew it.

His "Would you believe?" shtik was funny because we all knew that he knew he was lying.

The Cleaver family never thought anything they said was funny. In "Get Smart," as in "Batman," the characters never thought anything they said was serious.

Which told us that Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and maybe even NBC, understood that the times were a-changin', making it only a matter of time before TV, one way or the other, would change with them.

Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan were discouraged from singing political songs on TV. But "That Was the Week That Was" managed to slip in a little edge, even if Tom Lehrer's sharpest songs didn't have a chance. TV wasn't quite ready for "The Vatican Rag."

But the Smothers Brothers were around the corner, ready to chip away at a few more barriers, and while we still had several years of "The Flying Nun" ahead of us, "All in the Family" was also in the wings, confirming that as music moved into the Rolling Stones and the movies moved into "Midnight Cowboy," TV couldn't stick with Ozzie and Harriet forever.

The original "Get Smart," in its own way, pointed up the dumb and sophomoric side of TV by being so blatantly sophomoric and obvious itself. That's how satire works.

It sent the message that even when this sort of humor still entertained us, we were onto it, which meant we would soon be wanting something more.

Again, none of this means that some of the early sitcoms weren't great television, or that they don't stand up today. They were, and they do. But sitcoms in the broader sense, like all popular culture and like sharks, must keep moving to survive.

"Get Smart," in addition to making the anti-James Bond funny, also helped show us that TV had ridden some of the old horses about as far as they were gonna go.

[Mr. Television]

Give me sitcoms like Get Smart over sitcoms of today anyday.

[ph1l]

Originally Posted by Janice

Why the original 'Get Smart' still resonates



Now that "Get Smart" has launched again, this time as a big-screen movie dolled up with an $80 million budget and two major stars in Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, naturally the nostalgia juices are flowing for the original.

So here's another example of how impressive an impact one silly TV sitcom can make on a nation.

I stopped reading here. Really poor choice of a word.

[ClassicTVGal]

Don Adams died in 2005, NOT 2002! That's just one thing that got wrong.

[ClassicTVGal]

Originally Posted by ph1l

I stopped reading here.

I didn't read the rest, either, lol.

[Janice]

Good grief, it had one typo. It was a flattering piece on Get Smart.

[Ireneparalegal]

Originally Posted by ph1l

I stopped reading here. Really poor choice of a word.

Anyways, I don't get WHY!!!! movies are made of classic sitcoms. THEY ARE HORRIBLE!!

[Mikado]

They called it a "sneaker phone" !!! 0.o