I loved Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. I loved Edward Platt as the Chief (Daddy = failure). But I really crushed out on Barbara Feldon, Agent 99 (as close as they could get to calling her agent 69 without calling her that). The purr in her voice, the way she towered over Max and yet the way he was oblivious to her worship (which was the mirror of how we were crushing out on her; she pretended to be oblivious to how much we worshipped her). Her alternate coaxing and chiding of Agent 86. Max as dumb/smart (his stupidity was his gallantry; he got that life is a joke). All the au courant Courrèges and Paco Rabanne outfits she wore, the Vidal Sasson cut. Ooh la la.
Either Get Smart mapped my entire sexual life over the next fifty years, or my psyche got backformed onto the show. It’s very Groucho and Margaret Dumont. All the comedy is on one side—all the Jewishness (Don Adams was raised Catholic, his mother’s faith, while his brother was raised Jewish, his father’s faith, which is too perfect). Feldon as deadpan WASP, as sex goddess, ice queen as savior, as very subtle (pseudo-oblivious) sadist. The show killed me, still kills me (“missed it by that much”).