- This article is about the season one episode, 'The Dead Spy Scrawls'. For the article on the code for which the episode is named, see The Dead Spy Scrawls (code)
Chief: "How's your pool?"
Max: "Don't worry about me, Chief. I know the game inside and out."
Chief: "I was afraid you'd say that."Get Smart Episode #18, Season One.
Plot[]
Max goes undercover to challenge pool champion and KAOS agent The Shark.
Synopsis[]
The episode starts with Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 waiting for a CONTROL agent at a bus station. The CONTROL agent appears, but while Max is trying to decode what the agent has to say, the CONTROL agent - Agent 46 - is shot by a mysterious sunglass-wearing man with a briefcase. By the time Max notices that the agent was shot, he is already dead. But 46 successfully scribbled a coded message into a block of wet concrete. Max and 99 take the now-hardened block to Professor Parker who helps Max and the Chief translate the message to say 'Paid Informer' and a telephone number, using the The Dead Spy Scrawls Code.
Max contacts the informant offering to pay two thousand dollars for the information leading to the location of a KAOS electronic brain that can decode messages sent by CONTROL agents to each other. Max and the informant meet, but the man who shot Agent 46, whose name is revealed to be Stryker, shows up and shoots the informant. Smart is only able to get a few words out of the man before he dies, "Shark.. Pool.. M-Mother".
The Chief successfully decodes that to mean "Mother's Family Pool Parlor" which is owned by a man who calls himself the Shark.
Meanwhile at the Mother's Family Pool Parlor, the Shark is playing against some men when Stryker walks into the hall. Stryker tells his boss about the run-in with Agent 86 in the bus station. It is revealed that the electronic brain is hidden within one of the pool tables in the parlor and that a certain combination of balls in a certain combination of pockets causes the tabletop to open like a lid to enable access to the machine.
Max, after being taught how to play pool by Willie Marconi, and receiving special weapons from Parker, such as a Remote-controlled Cue Ball and a Cue Stick Shotgun, challenges Shark to a game. While Shark and Smart are playing, Max accidentally enters the right balls into the right pockets, revealing the decoding machine. Stryker tries to shoot Max. Max shoots Stryker with his Cue Stick Shotgun. The Shark grabs Agent 99, but 99 uses the remote-controlled cue ball to knock the Shark out.
Characters[]
CONTROL[]
- Maxwell Smart - Don Adams
- Agent 99 - Barbara Feldon
- The Chief - Edward Platt
- Parker - Milton Selzer
- Agent 46 - Clive Wayne
KAOS[]
Others[]
- The Informer - Don Brodie
- Willie Marconi - Harry Bartell
- The Vendor - Roy Engel
- Pittsburgh (uncredited)
- Pool parlor patron - Robert Karvelas (uncredited)
- Billiard Instructor- Harold 'Red' Baker (uncredited)
- Three Fingers Yarmy (mentioned)
Gadgetry[]
- Remote-controlled Cue Ball
- Lipstick Remote Control
- Cue Stick Shotgun
- Micro-Camera
- Shoe Phone
- Electronic Brain (Decoding machine inside pool table) (KAOS)
- Briefcase Gun (KAOS)
Reality Check[]
The episode title refers to the famous Dead Sea scrolls discovered between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Palestine.