Remote-controlled cue ball? Shotgun concealed in a cue stick? Decoding machine hidden inside a billiards table? Leonard Nimoy playing an assassin named Stryker?   Quadruple-check. It’s all part of the hilariously outlandish billiards TV episode “Dead Spy Scrawls” from the first season of Get Smart. The full episode is available to watch here.

http://youtu.be/eUX-dnwtDLc

First aired in 1965, Get Smart was created as a lampoon of earlier spy series, such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, of course, the James Bond franchise.   The comedy featured Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart (aka Agent 86), who works for the US counter-intelligence agency CONTROL. Many episodes pitted Maxwell Smart and CONTROL against their nemesis KAOS, an “international organization of evil.” Such is the storyline for “Dead Spy Scrawls” in which CONTROL learns that KAOS has a machine that is intercepting US government secret communication.

The location of the “decoding machine” remains a mystery to CONTROL until the Chief deduces from an informant’s dying words, “Shark…pool…mother,” that “One of the best pool players in town is a man known as The Shark. And he runs a place called Mother’s Family Pool Parlor….Well, if The Shark is a KAOS man, it’s just possible that the decoding machine could be hidden in Mother’s Family Pool Parlor!”

To infiltrate Mother’s and leave time for Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) to find the machine, Smart must play the Shark (Jack Lambert) in pool. Though Smart tells the Chief he knows the game “inside and out,” the Chief, taking no chances, hires pool professional Willie Marconi (an obvious spoof on, and tribute to, pool legend Willie Mosconi) to teach him the game. But Smart, in the comedic tradition of earlier pool players such as W.C. Fields (Six of a Kind) and Peter Sellers (A Shot in the Dark), is a butter-finger with the cue stick, ultimately maiming Marconi in both the face and the hand and tearing the baize through a bungled masse shot.

Fortunately, CONTROL is able to outfit Smart with a can’t-miss cue ball that is remotely controlled by Agent 99’s lipstick and a cue stick that conceals a single-barrel shotgun. So, armed with the necessary pool gadgets, Smart and Agent 99 head to Mother’s to challenge Shark. There, Smart plays Shark in a game with physics-defying shots.   In a final shot, Smart finds himself with the 8-, 10-, 5, and 1-balls in a row, next to the side pocket. (As we learned earlier, these four balls pocketed simultaneously serve as the combination to unlock the decoding machine, which is hidden inside the belly of the billiards table.) Smart makes the shot (which, in fact, is one of the most famous trick shots in billiards), unlocking the decoding machine, and apprehending the members of KAOS.

“Dead Spy Scrawls” is refreshing in its absurdity. In subsequent years, the remote-controlled billiards ball concept would be repurposed in a less satisfying manner (e.g., Mission: Impossible – “Break”; Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”). But, in “Dead Spy Scrawls” it works beautifully, perhaps because there is still respect for the game, as evidenced by the cultural reference to Willie Mosconi and the use of several well-made trick shots.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) or Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap), Don Adams was an exceptional pool player in his own right. (The episode acknowledges as much when Shark references a famous pool player named “Three Fingers” Yarmy. Yarmy is Don Adams’ real surname.) In fact, Adams appeared as a guest on Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats, played (many years later) in the $20,000 “Sportsworld” Celebrity Billiards Tournament, and of course, merged his billiards ability and comedic genius by starring in the famous 1970 advertisement for Skittle Pool.