The Family (Or most of them)

The Family (Or most of them)
The Family

June 19, 2008

Sorry about that, Chief...

I don't know if there was any one TV show or cultural phenomenon aside from the Beatles and rock n' roll that so left an impression on me growing up in the 1960's as the comedy TV show Get Smart.

Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, actor Don Adams, was the good guy special agent working for CONTROL to counteract the evil spy group known as KAOS.

He was a bumbling but lovable, incredibly funny fool.

He worked in concert with the lovely Agent 99, his sidekick in slapstick.

He had a shoe phone, for you neophytes who weren't around then.

There was something called the Cone of Silence that he insisted on using with the Chief (top pic, that's the portable version) to discuss top-secret assignments. The Chief and Max didn't get along.

Max screwed up so much, one of his best lines used almost every episode was "Sorry about that, Chief." His voice was ridiculously humourous in its nasal uniqueness.

He was the complete opposite of what you would have believed a debonaire top-secret agent to be.

He was James Bond gone wild and with absolutely no sex appeal like 007, but Agent 99 was still crazy about him.

I couldn't miss an episode. I never laughed at anything more and still have rarely laughed more.

I have died a thousand slow deaths waiting for Get Smart to start appearing in syndication again, but I haven't been able to find it.

So I've had to settle for watching Family Guy and a few other current shows I find funny.

But now, FINALLY, someone has figured it out. Get Smart is FUNNY. So they've made a movie starring Steve Carrel in the lead role of Maxwell Smart.

I never go to newly released movies. In fact, I don't watch many movies at all until I can buy them for $9.99 at the video store. But this movie, I will want to go to see.


While I loved Max and the Chief, my favourite character in the 1960's version of Get Smart was the robot special agent Hymie.

I haven't done a lot of reading up on the plot for the new movie, but I hope he's in it.


When I was a bingo caller (yep, a bingo caller) in my late teens for a charity group I volunteered for, I received two nicknames.
One of them was Basil and the other was Hymie.
I can't tell you how honoured I felt.