Get Smart Episode: Hoo Done It

"Get Smart" was a comedy that spoofed the secret agents of the Cold War and the movies and television shows about those agents. "Get Smart" originally aired on the NBC network for its first four seasons, and on the CBS network for its fifth and final season. The show depicted the "good versus evil" battle in two organizations, "Control" and "Kaos." This episode is a parody of the Agatha Christie story "Ten Little Indians," made into the movie, "And Then There Were None." *

This has been one of my favorite episodes since it was first broadcast in November of 1966. In those times we were still living in the aftermath of World War Two, and the subject of that war was very popular in books, articles and movies. Most Americans were not afraid to say Nazis were bad, and there was no coddling of Nazis and fascists with statements like, "there were good people on both sides." Further, the idea that a fascist want to be dictator would ever sit in the White House, and that he would encourage underlings to storm the U.S. Capitol Building, with some shouting to hang the vice president of the United States and to kill the Speaker of the House, would have been challenged by both major political parties without hesitancy, and swift justice would have been administered to the fascist plotters involved, with NO HAND WRINGING or COMPLICITY by most, and likely all members of both parties serving in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Back then, however, there was still a fear of the rise of Nazis again ... IN GERMANY, NOT IN THE UNITED STATES! A number of Nazi war criminals were still running around loose, but they were being pursued in a number of cases. This episode of "Get Smart" has a reference to the war and to Nazis, but most certainly not in ANY positive way. See further below for the specifics.   

Episode Cast: 

Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86

Barbara Feldon as Agent 99

Joey Forman as Harry Hoo

Maureen Arthur as the Contessa 

Peter (Raoul) Frank as Omar Shurok

Tol Avery as Otto von Werner

Anthony Eustrel as Milton Conrad**

Bob Michaels as Ben Gazzman

Max and 99 go to a remote Pacific island to meet with a retired British colonel who has information about a KAOS plot. The island is overgrown with jungle and there's an active volcano that rumbles every hour on the hour. They meet the owner of the hotel and the grounds shortly after their arrival. His name is "Milton Conrad," a play on "Conrad Hilton," the head of the Hilton Hotel chain. When they arrive at the hotel, the retired British officer is killed when his birthday cake fires at him as he tries to blow out the candles. As the two Control agents begin to investigate the murder, Hawaiian detective Harry Hoo shows up. ***

The hotel employees leave on the boat going back to the mainland, but there are four other guests staying at the hotel and they are all suspects in the murder: Ben Gazzman,**** an adventurer, Otto von Werner, who claims to be a Swiss clock maker. When Max says that he must have been a Swiss neutral during World War Two, von Werner says, "I was never neutral, I  was just taking orders," and he lists his hobbies as "water colors, classical music and torture." Further, in an attempt to persuade his two skeptical questioners of his genuineness,  von Werner sets a large clock on the table, where a small Hitler doll comes out with outstretched arm and shouts "Sieg heil, Sieg heil." When Max says, "It's not 2 o'clock," von Werner replies, "Don't argue with him, if he says it's 2 o'clock, you'd better believe him." Then there is the Contessa Dorino(?) Montenegro who had been drinking Manhattans with the Colonel earlier in the day. Finally, there is Omar Shurok, who says he is Lebanese and a spy who spies on every country, except Austria, because his mother is spying on Austria.

Telephone service on the island goes down when someone cuts the lines, and 99 leaves the island to get help on an inflatable raft  she and Max had stored in their luggage (hey, they're secret agents! Haha), but in the meantime, each of the other suspects is killed. A note is found at the scene of one of the murders, supposedly left by the victim, but only with the letters "HH," which Max guesses could mean Herbert Hoover or Hubert Humphrey.***** Max and Harry Hoo assume the killer is in hiding on the island, so they decide to deceive the person in order to bring them out of hiding. Max and Harry draw their guns on one another, with each accusing the other of being the murderer. They end up exchanging fire, and they both slump over. A secret panel opens and out steps Milton Conrad. When he approaches the two bodies, they both straighten up and point their guns at him, but .... they forget that they had replaced the bullets with blanks for their ploy to draw out the killer. Conrad points his gun at them and the guys are in a real predicament until a shot rings out and Conrad falls to the floor. The shot was fired by 99, who wasn't able to reach the mainland in the raft and instead returned to the island. 

The British colonel had found out that the Contessa, Gazzman, von Werner and Shurok were all KAOS agents and he was going to report the information to Max and 99; so Conrad, also a member of KAOS, killed him, but then killed each of the others to keep them from talking. The stories in a lot of comedies don't always add up, but it's best not to take them too seriously; after all, they're comedies, relax and laugh. Don't stress yourself over such silly things as the plot not being perfect. 

* For the article about the movie "And Then There Were None," here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/07/agatha-christie-story-and-then-there.html

** In the show he introduces himself to Max and 99 as "Milton Conrad," but the ending credits show the character's name as "Hillary Conrad." Perhaps that was to be the character's name, but it was changed to "Milton" somewhere along the line and somebody didn't get the memo. Haha 

*** The "Harry Hoo" character had appeared in a previous episode. The character was an obvious play on "Charlie Chan," and Harry Hoo wore white suits, something that was often, but not always, done by Charlie Chan.

**** The character of "Ben Gazzman" is a play on the name of actor "Ben Gazzara, " who was at that time starring in an NBC series called "Run for Your Life," where Gazzara's character had been given between a year and a year and a half to live by his doctor; so, he tries to get in all the living and adventure he can. The Gazzman character in the episode of "Get Smart" says his doctor gave him two years to live, and when he's asked when the doctor told him that, he answers, "1944," and the show is set in 1965-66. Hahaha 

***** For those unaware, Herbert Hoover was a former president of the United States who had died, at age 90, almost exactly two years before this episode was filmed. Hubert Humphrey was the then vice president of the United States when this was filmed, and he was a candidate for president two years later in 1968.

 

Photo is from the 2008 HBO Video release of "Get Smart: The Complete Series" (Season 2)

WORD HISTORY:

Dire-This is an interesting word^ that goes back to Indo European  "dwei-ro," which had the notion of "fear, hate." This "perhaps" gave Latin "dirus,"^^ meaning "fearful, dreadful, ominous." English borrowed the word from Latin in the mid 1500s, with the meaning "boding ill for something, dread of bad consequences."

^ It is a distant relative of the "dino" part of dinosaur, a word borrowed from Latin,  which got the "dino" part from Greek, where it meant "terrible, something feared."

^^ I say "perhaps," because while Latin "dirus" is undoubtedly from the Indo European form, whether Latin had "dirus" directly from this form is debatable, and "dirus" seems not to have been a common Latin word, leaving open the possibility of some intermediate source that provided Latin with its form. The sheer obscurity of the word and its use in religious context for "bad omens" could have seen Latin get the word elsewhere, but perhaps from a closely related language, with the word passing into dialectical Latin until later in Latin when it became somewhat more common.