What do you call a TV show with six okay episodes and one very good one? Cancelled.
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Who did they think they were fooling? Did original series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry think the public would embrace a revival of one of the most popular sitcoms from the Sixties a quarter of a century later if they simply called it by the same name: "Get Smart"?
The original series starring Don Adams as bumbling agent Maxwell Smart and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 was a wonderful spy spoof that had people everywhere repeating Smart's catch-phrases--his "Sorry about that"s and his "Would you believe?"s. For five seasons fans giggled over Smart's Clouseau-like bane of his chief's existence and the accidental successes that this CONTROL agent had against evil KAOS operatives. But to try to recapture the magic of a show like for a new generation, without Edward Platt as The Chief? That's awfully optimistic, even if the writing were as crisp and original as it was the first time around--which it's not. This was a show whose time had passed.
Apparently it wasn't enough of a hint that the 1980 theatrical version, "The Nude Bomb," was a bit of a bomb itself--nominated for a Razzie as Worst Picture and grossing just under $15 million. And to give you some sense of how poor that is, "Arthur," an unpretentious little comedy released around the same time, raked in $95 million. It also apparently wasn't much of a yellow flag that a TV reunion movie, "Get Smart, Again!" received only a lukewarm reception when it aired in 1989.
But with Platt missing and Max Smart the new Chief, Agent 99 a Congresswoman, and their son (Andy Dick) a doofus who's teamed with a new female agent, 66 (Elaine Hendrix, "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion"), the show just goes off in a different direction. The focus is now on Dick and Hendrix rather than Adams and Feldon, KAOS is now an evil corporation bent on financial world domination, and the entrance to the triple-secret CONTROL headquarters is now a soda machine instead of a phone booth. Oh, sure Zach (Dick) has a sneaker phone, but it's not the same thing. Adams in his prime could pull off the gag, but Dick doesn't even come close. The lone highlight in this seven-episode debacle comes when Bernie Koppell ("The Love Boat") returns as evil CONTROL genius Siegfried. Though Brooks and Henry are listed among the writers, the gags just aren't remotely funny this time around. Even Agent 66's Fembot-style pointy metallic-looking bra that shoots seems a little tired.
But, DVDs are like Monopoly. Eventually, you land on every property, no matter how worthy it is of a second-chance audience. Purists and TV scholars will want to add this to their "Get Smart" collections because of the "Wurst Enemies" episode, but I can't imagine too many others knocking people over to get to this title.
The "complete series" constitutes seven half-hour episodes, which are included on a single-sided disc:
1) "Get Smart." In the '95 pilot, Zach gets promoted to Secret Agent and assigned to work with a reluctant partner, Agent 66 (Hendrix). Their mission: to go undercover at a fashion show to prevent KAOS from stealing a revolutionary new and indestructible fabric called Du-Tracalon. Like the rest of the episodes except for one, it sounds a lot more fun than it is.
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