DVD Review: Get Smart the Complete Series - Seasons 1-5 DVD Box Set

DVD Reviews

By April MacIntyre Jan 25, 2007, 0:52 GMT

Time Life has presented the most comprehensive and carefully assembled DVD set of one of the best American television comedies ever made, "Get Smart." This show is a classic in every sense of the word and this collection is so complete that I begin this review with its rating of 10 out of a possible 5 stars, and you must own it. This was the best DVD collection to date that I have ever been fortunate enough to own, watch with my own kids and enjoy all over again.

This was the best DVD collection to date that I have ever been fortunate enough to own, watch with my own kids and enjoy all over again.Get Smart: The Complete Collection includes 138 episodes on 25 DVDs. This set is now available on DVD for the very first time and offered exclusively by Time Life. These DVDs will not be sold in stores until Fall 2007. You get all 138 original Get Smart episodes, each re-mastered and restored for flawless clarity. In addition, there is more than 9 hours of bonus material including never-before-seen bloopers, interviews and commentaries, rare TV footage and much more.

Agents 99 & 86

Each season is color coded with geometric designs covering a clear slip case. Artwork is featured on the outside of each and includes characters such as 86, 99, Chief, Larabee, and Siegfried. A small booklet is included in each season as well with an episode list, insight from a crew or cast member, and great graphics. The packaging is a clever homage to the show's opening, featuring a special phone booth collector's box with photos and booklets for each season of Get Smart. The video and audio has been cleaned up and looks and sounds terrific. In 1965 Get Smart was a comedy series that was birthed by executive producer Leonard Stern, who credits Talent Associates producers Dan Melnick and David Susskind having the idea, and hiring comic geniuses Mel Brooks and Buck Henry to develop it. ABC rejected the initial pass, and the rewritten series was given a "lifeline" with NBC looking to place Don Adams in a vehicle. Tom Poston was the original intended Maxwell Smart, and the creative team behind Get Smart retooled to accommodate Adams as the CONTROL agent Maxwell. Stern gives a telling history of the whole series development and debut on the air. Stern praised Buck Henry's turn as Story Editor, and felt he was "adroit" in developing the story and characters. If you were watching television in the sixties and remember the impact this show had on modern culture, this collection of all the episodes is near perfect and the "funny" has weathered the test of time, it will not disappoint. It's a guaranteed antidote for any depression or melancholic mood. The audio restoration is excellent, with no hiss or distortion some older television shows have. "Get Smart" the collection should be a mandatory viewing for any aspiring television sitcom writer and be included as part of any film school's curriculum. I appreciated that the DVD producers gave top episode archivist and historian, Carl Birkmeyer, and some other insightful fans a chance to discuss their obsession at length. Get Smart starred Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Edward Platt. It was fashioned as a spoof on the spy genre and espionage themes that dominated films and television in the sixties. The show featured weekly attempts of the nefarious KAOS and its pas de deux with American secret agents of CONTROL. Agent 86 Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 are front and center in just about every episode with the brilliantly deadpanned Platt as the Chief, who outlines implausible sounding orders to save the world from certain destruction at the hands of some cockamamie KAOS plot, made believable by the Chief's serious briefing.

99, 86, chief

David Ketchum was cast as Agent 13, Smart's CONTROL aide de camp perpetually crammed in prop mailboxes and washing machines, who kvetched his way into our hearts. Dick Gautier was brilliant as CONTROL lovesick cyborg "Hymie," King Moody played Siegfried's sidekick "Starker," Ted Knight appeared several times as a KAOS agent, and my favorite villain from season one, Leonard Strong as the "Claw." Another actor of note was Stacy Keach Sr. who played Carlson, the "Q" based character who suffers Smart's mishandling of his ingenious gadgets, Keach did a wonderful job in this role. Fashionista Feldon as chic Agent 99 was a walking couture Mod mama perfectly coiffed and made up for the times, the brainy ex model was right at home fighting crime in Rudy Gernreich couture. Agent 99 became a role model for a generation of girls who emulated her non plussed charm and workplace maneuverings. Still beautiful and brainy, Feldon also does a good turn in voice-overs for most of the bonus features of this collection.

KAOS was frequently portrayed as a band of armed, blundering buffoons. The introduction of Siegfried, played by Bernie Kopell, was by far one of the best television villains created that resulted in the funniest episodes displaying the chemistry that existed with this cast. The Siegfried classic line, "Vee don't shush here" still kills. The bonus features comprise a total of nine audio commentaries, five interviews, six blooper reels, five featurettes, a collection of TV appearances, and great personal interviews with the producers and cast. There is also a private taped 75th birthday party roast at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion for Don Adams that had classic moments with James Caan and Don Rickles to name a few of the guests. Kudos to the DVD producers Paul Brownstein, Jeffrey Peisch, Angela Cella, and Sue Kesler and their entire team who made this boxed set. You will love the carefully ordered five seasons of Maxwell Smart, Agent 99, the Chief, Siegfried, Agent 13 and all the KAOS and CONTROL you can eat, it is a comedy smörgasbord. The Don Adams memorial featurette has son-in-law Jim Beaver who married Adam's predeceased daughter, Cecily, give a touching reveal of Don's World War II Guadalcanal service to his country as a Marine. Mace Neufeld, Don's manager and now a prolific producer, gives an interesting back story on Adams. Neufeld also appears in another featurette to tell Adams who was in character working on Smart that he just had a baby in 1965. Bernie Kopell dishes funny stuff on the Siegfried-Smart crack up scenes that made the blooper reels. Don Rickles also takes the stage again in a moving tribute that celebrated the Hitler and Abraham Lincoln history obsessed, closet intellectual New Yorker that was Adams, who also loved horses, card games and golf in no particular order. It will make you laugh and bawl your eyes out. In an interview with The Saturday Evening Post in 1966, Adams analyzed Smart: "He's not superhuman. But he believes in what he does and he wants to do his best. Maxwell Smart's charm lay in his utter humanness and absolute belief in his every infallible move, never deterred by whatever happened to him, the opposite of Smart's avatar James Bond and his unrealistic super competence.

Ed Platt as chief

Barbara Feldon was discovered by Stern and the producers, and Buck Henry notes he was thrilled Feldon, who he saw cast opposite the demanding George C. Scott in a previous show, had been cast as 99, a "beautiful woman who never had a name." Producer Stern recalls Don Adams expressed concern over her height. Ed Platt, who played the Chief, was Stern's pick after remembering his performance in "East of Eden." Stern realized he had an entertainer on his hands after their initial meeting. Bernie Kopell who Stern praised as the aristocratic Nazi Siegfried was a critical cast addition and was a perfect foil to Smart. Producer Leonard Stern realized his high school yearbook "pretentious" goal "to amuse the world" and gave us all a smile. For diehard fans, his interview as well as Barbara Feldon's on disc 5 of season 2 is must-see viewing. The Cone of Silence, a most favorite prop gimmick, was used throughout the series. Smart also drove around in a cool 1965 Sunbeam Tiger roadster which was the show's homage to Bond's Aston Martin. Prop master James Harris and Set Decorator Anthony D. Nealis outdid themselves decorating sets and creating the numerous crazy gadgets Smart needed to do his job. Many items also came and went in the show such as flavored suicide pills, the famous shoe phone, the classic wall of international phones that had the French phone colored pink, the Chinese phone sideways, and the German phone surrounded by a little wall. Season One
The first season of Get Smart began September 18, 1965 and consisted of 30 episodes. It is impossible to pick a favorite, like "Sophie's Choice" you would instantly regret not choosing another that comes to mind. My first favorite episode to mention from the season was the "Diplomat's Daughter" with the infamous "Craw" scene, the 'Craw" is a very un-pc take on Chinese villain speaking in pidgin "Engrish." "Too Many Chiefs" with 2 Chiefs running around in Max's apartment and "Shipment to Beirut" where KAOS is turning informants into mannequins, also great are "Kisses for KAOS" with the exploding paint too. "Our Man in Leotards" is awesome. The two part "Ship of Spies" is classic too. The first season was loaded with guest stars such as Johnny Carson on "Aboard the Orient Express", Leonard Nimoy in "The Dead Spy Scrawls" and Ted Knight in "Stakeout on Blue Mist Mountain". Dick Gautier's Hymie the CONTROL lovesick cyborg has great moments too. Episode Guide: Season 1:
Disc 1: "Mr. Big", "Diplomat's Daughter", "School Days", "Our Man in Toyland", "Now You See Him, Now You Don't", "Washington 4, Indians 3", "KAOS in Control", "The Day Smart Turned Chicken"
Disc 2: "Satan Place", "Our Man in Leotards", Too Many Chiefs", "My Nephew the Spy", "Aboard the Orient Express", "Weekend Vampire", "Survival of the Fattest", "Double Agent"
Disc 3: "Kisses for KAOS", "The Dead Spy Scrawls", "Back to the Old Drawing Board", "All in the Mind", "Dear Diary", "Smart, the Assassin", "I'm Only Human"
Disc 4: "Stakeout on Blue Mist Mountain", "The Amazing Harry Hoo", "Hubert's Unfinished Symphony", "Ship of Spies, Parts I & II", "Shipment to Beirut", "The Last One in Is a Rotten Spy"

Hymie from Season 2

Season 2:
The second season of Get Smart is my personal favorite of the entire series, and continues the trend of greatness in comedy writing with 30 episodes. It is Bernie Kopell's introduction of "Siegfried" into the cast that rocked my world. Siegfried was one of KAOS' top agents whose decision to turn to evil was spurred by his mum's sled denial as a child. Kopell creatively "ate" this character up and perfected his bitterly jealous superiority complex to a honed Teutonic polish. Notably, in "A Spy for a Spy". Siegfried comes up with a plan to kidnap the Chief and use him as ransom to get his hands on the plans for the top secret X11. Smart answers back with another kidnapping of his own and soon KAOS and CONTROL members are being nabbed left, right and center. Eventually Smart and Siegfried are the only ones that haven't been kidnapped so they begin negotiations. The season finishes off with a three part story entitled "A Man Called Smart" that was originally supposed to be a Get Smart movie. Season 2:
Disc 1: "Anatomy of a Lover", "Strike While the Agent Is Hot", "A Spy for a Spy", "The Only Way to Die", "Maxwell Smart, Alias Jimmy Ballantine", "Casablanca", "The Decoy", "Hoo Done It"
Disc 2: "Rub-a-Dub-Dub...Three Spies in a Sub", "The Greatest Spy on Earth", "Island of the Darned", "Bronzefinger", "Perils in a Pet Shop", "The Whole Tooth and... ", "Kiss of Death", "It Takes One to Know One"
Disc 3: "Someone Down Here Hates Me", "Cutback at CONTROL", "The Man From Yenta", "The Mummy", "The Girls From KAOS", "Smart Fit the Battle of Jericho", "Where-What-How-Who Am I?"
Disc 4: "The Expendable Agent", "How to Succeed in the Spy Business Without Really Trying", "Appointment in Sahara", "Pussycats Galore", "A Man Called Smart, Parts I, II, and III" Season 3:
Get Smart's writers kept up the quality of the writing, and came up with new material while keeping the familiar.

This season enjoyed the character development and groundwork of the first two seasons. Don Rickles fans note, "The Little Black Book" was a great episode that put KAOS' little black book in the hands of Sid, played by Rickles, who is one of Smart's army buddies. Instead of dialing up a hot date, Sid gets a hold of KAOS, who sends two agents to retrieve the book. In real life Rickles and Adams were friends, and their chemistry works onscreen too.
This was the season of the big name guest stars. Icon comic Buddy Hackett was in "Maxwell Smart, Private Spy", Variety show queen Carol Burnett does a brilliant bit in "One of Our Olives is Missing", and Uncle Milty, Milton Berle was in "Don't Look Back". Cesar Romero, Regis Philbin, and Bob Hope appear in episodes throughout this season. Season 3 Episode list:
Disc 1: "The Spy Who Met Himself", "Viva Smart", "Witness for the Persecution", "The Spirit Is Willing", "Maxwell Smart, Private Spy", "Supersonic Boom", "One of Our Olives Is Missing"
Disc 2: "When Good Fellows Get Together", "Dr. Yes", "That Old Gang of Mine", "The Mild Ones", "Classification: Dead", "The Mysterious Dr. T", "The King Lives?"
Disc 3: "The Groovy Guru", "The Little Black Book Parts I & II", "Don't Look Back", "99 Loses CONTROL", "The Wax Max"
Disc 4: "Run, Robot, Run", "Operation Ridiculous", "Spy, Spy, Birdie", "The Hot Line", "Die, Spy", "The Reluctant Redhead" Season 4:
Not my favorite season, but still very funny and some great episodes such as "The Laser Blazer" with a guest appearance by Leonard Strong (the Craw) and "The Not so Great Escape" with Siegfried and KAOS kidnapping CONTROL agents, "The Impossible Mission" where we see 86 and 99 getting engaged, and Again, more guest star heavy hitters, including Yarmy's Army buddies (Don's brother, Dick Yarmy's Hollywood "rat pack") Don Rickles and James Caan. Marriage for 86 and 99 seemed wrong to me as a child, and now as an adult.

Max at his funeral

Season 4 Episode List:
Disc 1: "The Impossible Mission", "Snoopy Smart vs. the Red Baron", "Closely Watched Planes", "The Secret of Sam Vittorio", "Diamonds Are a Spy's Best Friend", "The Worst Best Man", "A Tale of Two Tails"
Disc 2: "The Return of the Ancient Mariner", "With Love and Twitches", "The Laser Blazer", "The Farkas Fracas", "Temporarily Out of CONTROL", "Schwartz's Island", "One Nation Invisible"
Disc 3: "Hurray for Hollywood", "The Day They Raided the Knights", "Tequila Mockingbird", "I Shot 86 Today", "Absorb the Greek", "To Sire, With Love, Part I"
Disc 4: "To Sire, With Love, Part II", "Shock It to Me", "Leadside", "Greer Window", "The Not-So-Great-Escape, Parts I & II"Season 5:
To every season, turn, turn, turn. A beginning, middle and unfortunately, as Carmela Soprano says, "everything comes to an end." The swan song fifth season featured another 26 episodes. Again, Smart and 99 being married was the end of it for me. "And Baby Makes Four" featured the progeny of 86 and 99. Some great guest appearances with one of my favorites, Vincent Price is KAOS's mad pharmacist in "Is This Trip Necessary", Martin Landau, Phyllis Diller and Jonathan Harris found a spot in "How Green Was my Valet". It still was better than 99.9 percent of what is offered as sitcom fare on today's television. Season 5 Episode List:
Disc 1: "Pheasant Under Glass", "Ironhand", "Valerie of the Dolls", "Widow Often Annie", "The Treasure of C. Errol Madre", "Smart Fell on Alabama", "And Baby Makes Four, Part I"
Disc 2: "And Baby Makes Four, Part II", "Physician Impossible", "The Apes of Rath", "Age Before Duty", "Is This Trip Necessary", " Ice Station Siegfried", "Moonlighting Becomes You"
Disc 3: "House of Max, Parts I & II", "Rebecca of Funny-Folk Farm", "The Mess of Adrian Listenger", "Witness for the Execution", "How Green Was My Valet"
Disc 4: "And Only Two Ninety-Nine", "Smartacus", "What's It All About, Algie?", "Hello Columbus, Goodbye America", "Do I hear a Vaults?", "I Am Curiously Yellow" This was the best DVD collection to date that I have ever been fortunate enough to own, watch with my own kids and enjoy all over again.

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Great review, but it was a baby girlJan 25th, 2007 - 03:40:03

It was Don Adams's daughter Stacey who was born in 1965. Other than that, a very nice review. Thanks.

Jim Beaver

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April MacIntyreJan 25th, 2007 - 04:07:34

sorry Jim
-I watched that again, they say son in the dvd extra-mea culpa and all fixed-it was a touching scene, as was your tribute to him-well done sir.
I really loved the personal touch your family and Don's friends gave to this collection.
A side note, my husband played backgammon with Don in the 80's in Beverly Hills, and had a great encounter and experience meeting both our childhood's favorite icon!

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lostyandFeb 20th, 2008 - 15:11:33

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oldshollMar 15th, 2008 - 09:44:24

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kistovJun 11th, 2008 - 18:51:33

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