From February 12, 2022
The “Cone of Silence” bits from Get Smart were some of the funniest TV comedy ever. Edward Platt (the Chief) never failed to make me laugh; and of course you had Don Adams, too.
It made me laugh then, and it makes me laugh now. They worked up several dozen variations on this theme, every one of them hilarious. YouTube has a bunch of them, if you want to laugh yourself silly.
Get Smart ran from 1965 to 1970. That’s a lot of Cone of Silence gags!
I think I was lucky to find this on YouTube. It was the only one of its kind. All the other “Defenders” were only Marvel Comics wastes of space. I am so tired of that crap.
“The Defenders” was a TV show that ran from 1961 through 1965, and starred E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed as a father-and-son legal team. When I was old enough to stay up and watch it on Saturday night, it blew me right over.
In this show the impossible sometimes happened: the good guys lost the case! Holy cow! That never happened to Perry Mason! Sometimes the Defenders’ clients were even… guilty! With Perry Mason, the client was always saved at the last minute by some delivery guy or meter-reader breaking down under questioning and admitting that he dunnit. That never happened for the Defenders.
It was a good show, but my favorite thing about it was the theme music. Almost made me want to be a lawyer.
And now it’s sinking into a Marvel Comics swamp that swallows up much that is better than itself. Sheesh, can’t we sit still for a drama anymore? Does everything have to be a bleedin’ comic book?
Several readers have mentioned Green Acres as one of their favorite TV theme songs. I’ll go along with that. The show ran for six seasons (1965-71), with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as the stars. Catch it on YouTube–it’s still extremely funny, and in some ways far ahead of its time. When the characters on the screen get distracted by the background music and wonder where it’s coming from, that’s funny!
We’re reminiscing about TV theme songs because we live in evil and turbulent times and we can’t keep fighting and working without kicking back for a breather now and then. Be thankful that God has kept laughter in our world. He knows we need it.
Several of you have mentioned this as one of your all-time favorite TV theme songs, so I thought it fitting to post it here for everyone to enjoy–The Beverly Hillbillies, classic TV sitcom from 1962-1971, with the music provided by Country & Western stars Flatt and Scruggs.
(Yo, Lee! What’s with all the TV themes?)
Look, the nooze is just so bad, our popular culture is fit only for the landfill, and readers have been clamoring for something better. Well, by George, America used to be better! And we can riffle through the past and find an infinite number of things to prove it.
These shows were harmless fun–and there’s something to be said for that! Last time I watched a Beverly Hillbillies episode on YouTube, it made me laugh out loud. There’s something to be said for that, too. And the humor was never malicious or snide–can’t say that for today’s brew, can we?
This old stuff is so far ahead of Disney and the rest of ’em, they couldn’t find it with a telescope.
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And woodnt yiu Know It,, sumb Biggit Hater thay sayed “waht Is “the” Poynt of that?? That thare sho it “was” On TV sicksty (&^60) yeers aggo!!”! So six (%6#) of us we Beet himb upp! (OOPs! Sari! Shood of sayed beet “themb” Up!!)
I meen, lookit it!!! Awl themb peeple In “the” gaim thay “Are” awl Wyte!!!Iff thatssnot Racist, watt is???? and I bet nun “of” themb is Trans neether!!!! Cant yiu just Feeel The Haite comming Offf “the” skreeen???
So we wil “be” keeeping a Eye “out” nhow for enny boddy, enny stoodint, enny prefesser, enny boddy at awl Waching this heer Show “and” iff we cache themb, THAY ‘ARE’ TOEST!!!!!!!
{Sumb oather Hater Biggit thay sayed the sho It Is “not” on TV enny moar,, so we Beet Themb Up tooo!!! (and thiss tyme I rebembemered To “say” Themb!)!
The nooze has worn me down this week, I can’t help it. I need something to laugh at.
Ah! Phantom Agents! I can certainly laugh at that. It may well have been the silliest TV show ever produced.
The agents were ninjas (!) employed by the Japanese government to put down secret societies of bad guys. They tried never to shoot anyone–because, after all, “We’re phantom agents!”–and always used traditional ninja weapons.
They also had the ability to jump backwards 20 feet into the air and land on tree branches, which never broke or bounced them back, and could even leap backwards out of deep water to land on the deck of a ship. They could camouflage themselves by standing in front of a brick wall and holding up a kind of blanket with bricks printed on it. This always fooled their incredibly gullible enemies.
This monstrosity was on TV for two years, 1964-66. I watched it because it was hilarious. There are still a few clips available on YouTube, mostly in Japanese.
Unreliable sources report that Joe Biden watches it “religiously” and must be restrained from trying to leap backwards into trees.
You have no idea how badly I wanted to try this, when I saw it on TV circa 1962. Shooting a Bic pen out of a rifle! Bam! Or a crossbow. Or you could use it to drill through a wooden plank, or even attach it to a figure-skater’s skates! And it would still “write first time, every time.” Even if the rest of the pen was totally destroyed.
True, some of us actually used ballpoint pens only for writing. You didn’t always have a crossbow handy. Uncle Ferdie had a rifle, but wouldn’t let us use it to shoot Bic pens at boards. (How could the man be so selfish?)
I wonder if there is anybody in the Defense Dept. working on top-secret military uses for ballpoint pens. That “dyamite” ball is “the hardest metal made.” Should be good for scaring off the Russians.
This show was a big hit when I was a kid in middle school: The Addams Family, based on Charles Addams’ weird cartoons.
The gags come hot and heavy, but always from the same root: what’s normal for the Addams family is bizarre to us; and what’s normal to us seems bizarre to them. The writers and the cast made it work.
But I’ll tell you what really made it work; and it’s not what you might think.
They loved each other.
Every member of the family, even the servants, received affection and respect from all the others. Leave It to Beaver gets mocked for idealizing family life. The Addams family had the Cleaver family beat by miles, but never got mocked because they were all so out to lunch. The critics didn’t understand what made the show tick.
The other night I watched an Addams Family episode on YouTube. I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did in seventh grade. Sure, the jokes are easily predictable. That’s what made them so funny! But even more than that, the family feeling shines over the whole thing like the sun.
TV and movies seldom achieve so much.
If you’re much younger than me, you might not recognize this cartoon character, Quick Draw McGraw, which ran on TV in 1959-1961. I used to watch it. Kids watched a lot of cartoons in those days.
As you can see, Quick Draw McGraw is a horse. That doesn’t stop him from riding a horse (Doh!) or riding in a stagecoach drawn by horses. I never questioned this at the time, although I did wonder why Goofy could talk and wear clothes, but Pluto couldn’t.
But what would the other horses think of having to lug around this gun-toting, hat-wearing, talking horse whose hooves functioned as hands? Is that quite fair?
Quick Draw was a sheriff (!). usually accompanied by his deputy, a burro named Babalooey who wore a sombrero and spoke with a Mexican accent. [Gasp! Break out the smelling salts!] Imagine getting arrested by a horse and a donkey. It would be even more unnerving if they talked.
Even more baffling, what has caused me to remember this? It’s not like I hear people going around saying, “Hey, remember Quick Draw McGraw?” I’ll bet I’ve gone at least 50 years without hearing his name mentioned even once.
Memory Lane is a street that always gets longer.
Now they don’t want us watching vintage TV westerns. Like Bonanza.
If you want to watch Bonanza on TVLand, first you get a bright blue screen with a warning on it:
This program contains outdated cultural depictions. Viewer discretion advised.
What? “Outdated cultural depictions”? You don’t say! Y’know, I thought there was somethin’ fishy about that show! Like, nobody had cars or cell phones. And I didn’t see one transgendered person!
Whose ridiculous idea was this? Like, maybe we might want some outdated cultural depictions, just to get out of the cultural septic tank we’re living in today. For just an hour we can pretend we’re somewhere else–a world where we aren’t perpetually nagged by imbeciles.
They don’t post warnings for shows whose contemporary cultural depictions include perversion, cruelty, and enough trash to turn the Grand Canyon into a landfill. They don’t advise viewer discretion for that.
The wokies want to reach into your living room and tell you what you can watch on TV. If they had their way, there’d be no freedom, ever, anywhere. No escape into the past. No acknowledgment that there ever even was a past. Nothing but the deadly, dreary, soul-annihilating mental landscape of their own Far Left spiritual abyss.
I pray I’ll be able to laugh at this someday, as some temporary buffoonery that has passed away forever.