Get Smart [TV Show] The Complete Series (DVD)
APPROX. 3950 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1965 - MPA RATING: NR
" One of the best TV-on-DVD sets I've seen.
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Box sets are in demand for holiday giving, but they often dip way below the consumer radar other times of the year--especially those sets "not available in stores." Perhaps that's why Time Life is once again promoting it's award-winning TV-on-DVD boxed set "Get Smart," which was released last year right before Christmas. The bad news for fans of the show is that all five seasons of the original show are still only available in this pricey ($199.96) boxed set from Time Life (Have your credit card handy; our operators are standing by). But the good news is that it's a great set, with all sorts of surprising bonus features and high-quality transfers. It's one of the best TV-on-DVD sets I've seen. DVD producer Paul Brownstein ("The Dick Van Dyke Show") really outdid himself with this sumptuous set.
"Get Smart" is quite the package to review, though, with 138 original episodes on 25 DVDS and some nine hours of bonus features, for a total of roughly 3950 minutes, or 65 hours of viewing time! And would you believe I watched all 65 hours?
Would you believe 12 hours?
What about 12 episodes, a serious skim through the bonus features, and a half-hour daydream involving me and Agent 99?
"Get Smart" debuted on NBC on September 18, 1965 right after "I Dream of Jeannie," and by the end of the year it became the #12-watched show in America, making stars of Don Adams and Barbara Feldon in the process. Almost overnight, Agent Maxwell Smart, a.k.a. "86," had people all across the country mimicking his three trademark catch-phrases: his "would you believe" gags, the "sorry about that" which followed every major goof-up, and "missed it by THAT much" to show how close he usually wasn't.
Max was the anti-Bond, a bumbling and slow-on-the-uptake CONTROL agent who still somehow managed to get the best of his evil counterparts from the secret organization called KAOS. If the Bond films were tongue-in-cheek action dramas, and two other popular TV shows--"I Spy" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."--were mostly campy, "Get Smart" was a full-blown parody created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. It was silly, but it was also right-on.
There's a fun site out in cyberland called Jumptheshark.com, where fans can vote when their favorite TV shows took a turn for the worst. Though a majority (284 votes) think that the show never "jumped," I'm with those who think it went downhill when Max and his sidekick, Agent 99 (Feldon) got married in the fourth season. The show dropped to #22 its second year, and fell completely out of the Nielsen Top-30 it's third, which put the studio in panic mode. What do you do when a show skids? You schedule a wedding or have someone get pregnant. In this case, both things happened, when the big-wigs should have just let this show continue to be the hilarious send-up of spy caper films that it was. Not only did fans have to watch Agents 86 and 99 get married the fourth season, but they had to endure 99's twins the following year. Those two seasons are weaker than the first three, but even so, there are still funny episodes to be found.
It's appropriate that Time Life is marketing this set. While they're not exactly the Norman Rockwell Institute, the Time Life folks do have a reputation for selling family-friendly sets of books over the years. My kids had never heard of "Get Smart," but they laughed as heartily as I did at some of the gags.
Example? When Max is being outfitted with the latest spy gadgets, the Chief (Edward Platt) explains that KAOS agents have a way of making people talk, and that the big pill in his spy-kit will bring a painless death in just 20 seconds. Any questions? he asks. "Just one," Smart says. "How do I get them to take it?"
The fear, when you revisit a beloved TV show, is that you might have outgrown it or that society has changed so much that the old show is now so excessively dated that it's unrecognizable. Not so, heree, I'm happy to say. "Get Smart" still plays in Peoria (and Bloomington).
After a black-and-white pilot that's a little worse for wear, the show looks great in color. I'd forgotten how funny it was, and, yes, how dumb. But the writers, directors, and producers were a detail-oriented bunch, and it's recognizing spy clichés and conventions in every episode that make it almost as much fun as the star cameos that catch you by surprise every now and then. Bob Hope as a waiter? "I Spy" star Robert Culp turning up in an episode titled "Die Spy"? James Caan in "To Sire, with Love"? Ted Knight ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show") in "Pussycats Galore"? Comedian Bill Dana in "Ice Station Siegfried"? You never know what you're going to get, and that made for a highly entertaining series. And who could forget "Love Boat"'s Bernie Kopell as a KAOS leader Siegfried?
