SORRY ABOUT THE CHIEF

When Don Adams passed away a few weeks ago, his immortality within the concept of Toobworld was already assured with his portrayal of Agent 86. Maxwell Smart and his partner/wife Agent 99 had been inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame back in April of 2002, the last month of this blog's predecessor, The Tubeworld Dynamic - one page of which yet remains on the web. (See the link at left.)

And so to pay tribute to this force for niceness, I'm going to reprint those old entries about the Toobworld links which can be traced back to Max and 'Get Smart'.....

from April, 2002:
BLIPVERTS
Through the continuing adventures of Maxwell Smart, the viewers at home were introduced to such products as Mobilink Communications and Diet Pepsi. Uh-huh.

(The Miller Lite ad has to be disqualified, even though he uses a standard Maxwell Smart catch-phrase, because he's addressed in the commercial as Don Adams. So that would link to 'Don Adams' Screen Test', but not to 'Get Smart'.)

And it looks like Max used the occupation of game salesman as a cover identity during his career as a spy. Among the products that he shilled were Skittle and Pursuit.

The Diet Pepsi blipvert appears to have occurred during the supposed separation between Max and 99, for it appears [in the commercial] that Max may have been celebrating love, American-style: truer than the Red, White, and Blue.

Like the first of this year's [2002] "Dynamic Duos" (Felix Unger and Oscar Madison), Maxwell Smart also appeared in a public service announcement about diabetes in which he tangled with future Hall of Famer Konrad Ludwig von Siegfried.

And it appears that CONTROL utilized its propaganda unit for an international campaign against smoking. [This was via a print ad.]

NOT ONLY, BUT ALSO
Characters from 'Get Smart' have encountered characters from other TV series, providing unofficial but legitimate links to those shows.

The Wild, Wild West
In the pilot episode, Max and 99 met "Mr. Big", the head of KAOS. As has been established several times before in the TwD, Mr. Big was an alias for Dr. Miguelito Loveless. Due to alien genetics on both sides of his family tree, Loveless was an immortal and about 130 years of age by the time he met the CONTROL agents.

I Spy
Kelly Robinson was working undercover as a waiter in a Turkish nightclub when Max and Agent Samuels showed up in their ping-pong champion guises.

Dr. Shrinker
The mad scientist's assistant Hugo used to be the top half of the KAOS team known as Agent Gemini. When the team was broken by the treachery of Gemini Bottom (who had been replaced by CONTROL agent Munchkin), Gemini Top escaped and found employ with Dr. Shrinker.

The Dick Van Dyke Show
Although she lived in Twin Falls, Idaho, and would visit her daughter in Washington, D.C., Agent 99's mother must have been in the New York City area at least once. She tried on shoes with the assistance of comedy writer Rob Petrie.

The Love Boat
Konrad Siegfried lied to his own daughter about what he did for a living: he claimed to be a doctor on a cruise ship.

It was an old spy trick in which someone else's identity is assumed (providing that other person wouldn't be around to ruin the deception). And since Siegfried resembled Dr. Adam Bricker (who was often at sea aboard the Pacific Princess), that cover story proved to be reliable and plausible.

The same ploy was used by the CIA agent known as Geronimo when on the West Coast. He would pose as an advertising executive from Connecticut named AJ Henderson. In fact, his boss - the CIA Director who went by the code name of X-9, - may have also pulled the same stunt in tandem: posing as look-alike ad executive Larry Tate. ('Columbo', 'Bewitched')

SEQUELITIS
In 1995, Toobworld revisited Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 (as well as many of the others from the old CONTROL team) when they had to put down a threat by the latest KAOS mastermind, Nikolai Dimante.

Because of his service to his country, Max was promoted to the position of "Chief" at CONTROL, while his wife 99 thought she could better serve her country as a United Stated Representative. One of their twins, the boy named Zack, grew up to follow in his father's clumsy footsteps and become a CONTROL agent. Zack was teamed up with Agent 66 and became romantically involved with the daughter of Siegfried.
('Get Smart', "Get Smart Again", 'Get Smart II')

BIG SCREEN TV
When the exploits of Maxwell Smart crossed over into the Cineverse with "The Nude Bomb", a lot of changes had occurred in the life of the inept agent. No longer working for CONTROL, Max was now Agent 86 for the Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service {PITS}. Several of Max's old cronies were seen again in the film, chiefly Larrabee and Agent 13.

But there was a glaring omission......

No 99.

In fact, Max seemed to be romantically enticed by several women during this case, especially by his partners, 34, 22, 35.

It's the Toobworld belief that during this time, Max and 99 were going through a rough patch in their marriage. Perhaps they even had a legal separation.

It's likely that Max may have found out about 99's yearly dalliance with former Red Sox pitcher Sam Malone every Valentine's Day weekend.
('Get Smart', "The Nude Bomb", 'Cheers')
______________________________
There was more to the whole tribute, linking 'Get Smart' to such shows as 'Batman', 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', and even 'Highway To Heaven', but these were the segments that centered around Max himself.

But I'd also like to add that since then, I've decided that there was a connection to 'The Bill Dana Show' as a "theory of relateeveety", in which Maxwell Smart and hotel detective Byron Glick were identical cousins.

And also, as I may have mentioned in an earlier post, Max might have lost favor after his stint with PITS and left government service altogether, taking a job as a Sheriff out West. This happened around the same time 99 was having her yearly affair with Sam Malone. ('The Fall Guy' & 'Cheers')

Obviously many of these links can't be proven (But as I always like to point out, they can't be disproved either!) but even with the legitimate connections, Maxwell Smart showed himself to be a towering figure in the pantheon of Toobworld.

A towering figure who sometimes stumbled over his own feet trying to answer his shoe phone.......

Be seeing you, Agent 86. We miss you by this much........

Tele-Toby