Actor Don Adams passed away at age 82. He was most famous for his role of a bungling secret agent on the TV show "Get Smart".
The show's basic premise was a satire of the many secret agent movies and TV shows popular at the time. It was a very funny, well made show, poking fun at lots of aspects of everyday life, not just the spy business. For example, they had a scene where the spies from opposing sides went on strike and were comparing fringe benefits.
Max had a bevy of lines that became part of the national lexicon, just as Seinfeld's did more recently. These included "Sorry about that chief", "Would you believe...", "facing constant danger...and loving it!".
As readers of this newsgroup know, the show was heavy into telephone and telephone company satire. Max had his famous shoe phone. We take our tiny cell phones for granted these days, but in the 1960s it was pretty impressive. Max once refused to give his shoephone to the enemy because "I still have 13 message units left!". He often argued with telephone operators: "Operator, I'm going to give you a top secret number, you are to forget the minute you connect me! \\ Oh, you mean Control".
Max's lab always came up with imaginative secret agent devices, which Max always managed to set off at the wrong time.
Bernie Koppel, who played his enemy Siegfried, later played the doctor on Love Boat. When greeting Smart, he always clicked his heels together in the German style salute. Smart responded in kind, and always you heard jangle of him hurting his shoe phone.
TV Land used to run reruns of the show, perhaps in honor of Adams' memory it will do so again. I realize some of the humor and certainly the technology will be dated for our younger readers, but it is certainly worth a look.