2007-05-29

Another reason to hate hippies...

...is that the hip-ster era made huge spans of otherwise decent 60s television totally unwatchable.

I know this because I've borrowed my father's Get Smart DVD set, and the Groovy Guru episode has to be one of the most painful 22 minutes of television ever seen.

And it isn't just a one-shot problem: The Way to Eden, after the passage of time, quickly eclipsed "Spock's Brain" as the worst Star Trek episode of all time.

Want a third example? Fine. I can't remember which episode (I think it was "Fiddler on the Loose") of the old-school Spiderman cartoon which showed "groovy swing music" and how much J. Jonah Jameson hated it. Again, its the sort of thing that makes old TV shows stink to high heaven.

Update, 3:07pm: "The Groovy Guru" is apparently one of the 100 greatest television episodes of all time. Not sure if Get Smart deserves any entries in that pantheon, but if so I would nominate "How to Succeed in the Spy Business Without Really Trying", or "A Spy for a Spy", where Sigfried and Smart have to exchange prisoners after each organization kidnaps the entire membership of the other.