"Get Smart" Diplomat's Daughter (TV Episode 1965) Poster

(TV Series)

(1965)

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9/10
Craw! Not Craw!
zsenorsock4 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Terrific episode has Maxwell Smart and agent 99 protecting a visiting princess (Inger Stratton) from a ring of Asian kidnappers. The kidnappers have been grabbing blonde women from a hotel and CONTROL fears the princess is next. It turns out the man behind the scheme is the infamous Claw (Leonard Strong) whose left hand is a powerful claw magnet. It turns out he has been after the princess all along (he explains: "all blonde women look alike to us"). There's some great stuff between 99 and 86 as the Princess, having known Smart as a teenager, throws herself at him. Max also has a terrific idea to foil the Claw at the end of the episode, showing that every once in awhile, Smart is a pretty good at what he does.

The Craw and Bobo would return the next season to try and get revenge on Smart and finally straighten out the fact his name is Claw, not Craw!
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9/10
Great episode
intp19 October 2012
Warning: Spoilers
I just saw this episode for the first time on DVD and it was hilarious. I used to watch this show as a kid and liked it, but I appreciate it all the more now that I am older.

This show has just the right balance of seriousness and silliness. Much of the fun comes from the 'straight' way Don Adams usually plays the character. Also, for a 1965 TV episode, this one handled Asians surprisingly well. Max mispronounces the villain's name as "Craw", not because he's mocking him, but because he's too dumb to know better!

Max has just the right combination of dumb luck (like accidentally shooting a would-be assassin) and occasional cleverness (figuring out how to stop the Claw at the end) to make him truly endearing. Barbara Feldon is also wonderfully sexy and engaging as 99.
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5/10
Lame episode, but the series improved later
sherioffers15 June 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The only good things about this episode are 99's comical jealousy over Max, and of course...The Claw/Craw!

The Chief acts out of character by not wanting to use the CONTROL password; he's not supposed to be the flake, Max is. To make matters worse, he gets angry at Max and threatens him, for wanting to use the password.

Due to a rash of blondes being kidnapped, Max and 99 are assigned to guard Princess Ingrid of Scandinavia during her visit to Washington. 99 has good reason to be jealous, because Ingrid--who was a teen when she met Max--is now in her early twenties, and a raging turbo-tart, chasing after Max. Not to mention, this is before 99 had a fashion sense, so the poor girl looks really dowdy, in comparison to Ingrid.

KAOS has a bouquet delivered to the princess, but for some odd reason, the bug in it isn't destroyed, even when Max dunks it in water. This is just one of many plot elements which are massive fails in this episode.

With this bug, The Claw and his henchmen are able to find out where Max, 99, and the princess will be going. Before they can kidnap her, 99 takes her to safety and Max chases the Asian man who is tailing them...only to end up in the hands of The Claw, whose name Max keeps mispronouncing as The Craw.

The Claw's lair is the Shanghai A Go-Go, which is used as an excuse to make repeated lame jokes about how them thar crazy kids are dancing nowadays, even though rock'n'roll dancing had been around for nearly a decade by that point. In fact, much of this episode steals ideas (and even the exact music) from a later episode of The Patty Duke Show. When 99 flails around and beats up a KAOS goon, it's lifted straight from Patty Duke doing the same to a boy she doesn't want to dance with.

Only the scenes with The Claw are worth watching, because the script is so derivative.

Predictably, since the Princess wants to party, she slips away from 99 to go partying...at the Shanghai A Go-Go. Max and 99 manage to save her, by taking down the KAOS goons.

There is a cute scene, where the jealous 99 forges a report from Max, and ensures that he doesn't accompany the Princess on the plane back home...and the Chief sees through her ruse. But then the writers even spoil this, by having the Chief tell 99 to teach him that newfangled dancing. By this point, it's hard to keep track of how many times that dead horse has been beaten.

Fortunately, this TV series improved greatly over time.
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