Would you believe Don Adams was run over by a rabid elephant? No? Would you believe he fell into a gravel pit? No? Well, would you believe he just got old and died? His goal was to die when nothing else was going on, so he could get better play. Missed it by THAT much.
Adams may not have liked "Get Smart," but a lot of the rest of us did. It sure beat most of what was on back then. Spoofs, series whose point is to make fun of existing genres, are hard to pull off. Two classcis were "Police Squad," which lasted less than a season in 1982 but spawned the very successful "Naked Gun" series of movies; and "Sledge Hammer" from the late '80s, which was so good it seemed to spoof movies that hadn't even come out yet. Some shows walked the line so finely that sometimes you couldn't tell if they were meant as spoofs or not -- "Maverick," for example, or "The Flintstones." Today we have shows like "The Simpsons" and "The Family Guy" that spoof so many genres at once that it's hard to keep up.
