Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · NBC · 1965

Pass it on

Get Smart

45Watch it awake.

The spy glut, laughed at. The partnership is the part worth keeping from the joke.

The review

By 1965 the country had been sold a sleek killer often enough that a comedy about an incompetent one could be a top-fifteen hit. He works for a secret agency, misunderstands the briefing, and is kept alive by a partner who is better at the job and does not need the joke to be about her humiliation. The gadgets do not work. That is the moral, as far as the show has one.

I will take this over the straight version of the same fantasy. It tells a boy the pose is funny. It does not give him much in place of the pose. Watch one and ask who actually did the work of the mission. The answer is rarely the man whose name is in the title. That is the useful surprise. Then turn it off before the formula starts to feel like a personality.

Journal

Keep Get Smart in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 45. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety and Republic are the thin ones.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

All in the Family

60 instead of 45

All in the Family is still a comedy show, and it scores 60 instead of 45. What you gain is household: Edith stays, and the daughter and son-in-law live there and argue.

The eight

5
Industry
The agency has procedures. He cannot follow them, and the show knows that is the joke.
5
Household
The partner is the competent one, and the affection between them is not a sneer.
2
Piety
Nothing is sacred, including the agency. The irreverence is the style.
5
Courage
He walks into the trap. Surviving it is mostly her competence and his luck.
4
Republic
They work for a government. The show's debt to the public is mostly a laugh at the work.
5
Temperance
The gadgets fail. Appetite for being the hero is exactly what the episode punishes.
5
Truth
The pose of the spy is a lie, and the show is telling you the pose is ridiculous.
5
Stewardship
A house can inherit the laughter at the license, which is better than inheriting the license.

Where to watch

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Live Historic · Get Smart · 45IMDb

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · ABC · 1960

Pass it on

The Flintstones

45Watch it awake.

The first prime-time cartoon the country sat for. A family is the joke, and the joke stays a family.

The review

A man works in a quarry, comes home to his wife, and thinks of a way around the honest version of the evening. The neighbors are in it. In 1960 this was a strange object, a cartoon in prime time, and the country made it a hit because the object was familiar: a suburb, with the suburbs' jokes about money, bosses, and a husband who would rather bowl. The stone-age costumes are the charm. They are not the subject.

The subject is a household that stays one. He is vain and the schemes are dumb, and Wilma is often the adult. That imbalance is the comedy and also its limit. A child can watch it. Say that the scheme failed because it was a scheme, not because he had bad luck. The country's first idea of a cartoon for the evening. The idea is a family. Later cartoons often forgot to bring the family.

Journal

Keep The Flintstones in the record.