A small bantum rooster, Max bobs back up from his dunks into disaster with his confidence intact. Failures get filed into their proper perspective. After all, he is the chief field agent for Control and has saved the world innumerable times. What balances out Max's nickle-pinching cheapness is the generosity of his affection and loyalty. Sure, he might momentarily wonder if the Chief has volunteered for anything recently when the bad guys are wondering who to shoot first, but he is quickly brought back to perspective and his courage certainly matches that of many of our favorite spy guys.

Though there is a good amount of physical comedy, at which Max is a master, much of the comedy is verbal, the show owing a large debt to a great set of writers. Gathering clips for music videos for this show needs to be done with the sound off, since it's impossible to turn off one of their wonderful jokes in the middle, even when the action needed for a music video clip is long over and done.

Don Adams (1923-2005) won three Emmys (1967-9) for his role as Maxwell Smart, and they were well deserved. The actor submerged into the character, and we believed in Max just as much as he did in himself. While the series was a success with audiences and critics, the movies didn't do well at all. It wasn't that the audience had given up on Maxwell Smart, it was more that Don Adams had. Part of Max's appeal was that he never saw himself as the bumbler the audience saw. He could fall flat on his face and still come back knowing that he was as good as he thought he was.

By the time Don Adams played Max in the movies, he'd become a spectator of the famous character, and that innocent belief Max had in himself was just gone. Instead of seeing Max, we saw Don Adams playing a bumbling spy that Adams let you know, unconsciously, wasn't him at all. And all the repeats of those beloved, familiar jokes just couldn't rise past that loss of the character's innocence.

If there's a comparison that can be made for 99, it might be to Sidney Bristol in Alias. Like Sidney, 99 marries her spy partner and has children while still on the job. In both shows, their organizations come though with babysitting services. Not bad company benefits.

Barbara Feldon's extensive roles include appearing in Flipper, Man from Uncle, McMillan & Wife and Cheers. In 2003, she won the TV Land Award for the "Hippest Fashion Plate - Female".

And when events turn the organization upside down, the military background of the principles make it not surprising that a demotion doesn't mean the Chief storming out but, rather, acting as Max's subordinate and putting his heart into the job.

Edward Platt (1916-1974) attended Princeton and Julliard, becoming a band vocalist with Paul Whiteman, and performing in "The Mikado" and "The Pirates of Penzance". He joined the army, during World War II, as a radio operator. After the war ended, he went back into Broadway musical comedies and a variety of dramatic film roles. He appeared in Gunsmoke, Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, Peter Gunn, and many others.

Max refers to Hymie as his best friend, and there's a real warmth between them. When Hymie is reprogrammed as an assassin and attacks the Chief, Max is ordered to disassemble him, but Max is unable to destroy the robot and brings in the pieces of a washing machine which he attempts to pass off as his disassembled friend.

The relationship between Max and Hymie is one of the high points of the show though, unfortunately, Hymie only appears in 6 episodes.

Hidden behind the white hair of Admiral Hargrade, William Schallert is well known for his role of Nilz Baris, in Star Trek's "Trouble with Tribbles." He was also the father of Patty Duke for three years in the Patty Duke Show, and has appeared in an incredible number of films and TV episodes, beginning his career in 1947.

For some reason, Carlson never gets over challenging Max to discover the underlying cleverness in his devices, usually leading to their complete destruction. Having spent incredible years and funds developing a spy fly, he challenges Max to find the device on the Chief's desk. When Max doesn't come up with the right answer, Carlson draws his attention to the fly, which Max instantly crushes with the already examined, rolled newspaper. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get up and go to work.

Siegfried is as bumbling in his own way as Max is in his. They meet on a park bench and divest themselves of weapons before they sit down to negotiate, the alternating array of hardware an early precurser of Lethal Weapon's Martin Riggs dropping weapons with a fellow cop, though with a different purpose. Comparing weapons and company benefits of the two organizations is one of the running gags in Get Smart.

Even though Siegfried is always trying to kill Max, they seem to have an amazingly good relationship, with Siegfried trying to recruit Max into KAOS. And when Max and 99 are captured on the eve of their marriage, Max seems shocked that Siegfried doesn't intend to come to the wedding. And this when Siegfried plans for the pair includes slicing and dicing them in the propeller of his old German bi-wing plane, a Snoopy and the Red Baron throwback.