The Bumbler

I've noticed a common thread that has woven its way through film and television over the past 40 years. I will call it "The Bumbler". For reasons I can't explain, characters continue to pop up that have all of the makings of a great spy or superhero or boss or whatever...but instead they are incessant bumblers.

This has been on my mind lately because of the recent Get Smart movie. The original Get Smart television series is a classic example of the bumbler phenomenon in television. The idea, I assume, is that people will delight at the madcap parody of a James Bond-style secret agent. The seemingly suave spy with the great suit and high-tech gadgets, tripping over his own feet and basically acting ridiculous. You know what I'd rather see? An actual suave spy with the great suit and high-tech gadgets!

I had forgotten about the pervasiveness of the bumbler in children's television until my kids checked out an "Inspector Gadget" tape from the library (itself a spoof or extension of Get Smart). This show brought me endless frustration as a kid. What's the point of spending millions of dollars creating a robotic (half robotic? I can't remember) super agent if he can't use even the most basic of his gadgets? I wanted to see a show about a robotic secret agent that kicked ass, not one that got tangled up in his own go-go gadget legs.

The bumbler crept into every show that had potential to be cool. Apparently some television executive thought that every awesome show for 10 year-olds needed something that the viewer's 3 year old sister could giggle at. Godzilla was the greatest cartoon of all time until "Godzooky" came onto the scene. The Superfriends could survive the addition of the worthless Wonder Twins, but not Gleek.

Don't even get me started on the Greatest American Hero. Oh, please, where do I sign up to watch some curly-haired doofus fly into a billboard once a week? My only solace in this whole mess is that the bumbler never made it into my precious Incredible Hulk television series. I'll bet it wasn't easy. I'm sure there's a script somewhere with a post-it from the top brass that reads, "The scene where the Hulk picks up the car...couldn't he drop it on his toe?"