Speaking of 'Wild Wild West'...

Most people may know it as either a badass Kool Moe Dee jam or a pretty horrible Will Smith/Kevin Cline flick, worse than the Y2K 'problem' it debuted during the Summer prior. While i'll give you the Moe Dee tune, the real deal came in the form of an awesome TV show that that ran on CBS for four seasons from 1965 to 1969.

Developed at a time when the television western was losing ground to the spy genre, the show was conceived by its creator, Michael Garrison, as kind of a 'James Bond' on horseback.' The show revolved around two Secret Service agents - James West, a chiseled Bond-esque gunslinger (played by Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin), a smartass gadgeteer and master of disguise. Their overarching mission was to protect Ulysses S. Grant and the good ole' US of A from all manner of dangerous threats.

They traveled in around in their own tricked-out train, the Wanderer, that was equipped with everything from a stable car to a laboratory. The show was an interesting mix of classic Western/espionage thriller and, in certain episodes, borderline science fiction. Being that our heroes were a little more spy than cowboys, each episode was replete w/ beautiful women, clever gadgets and delusional arch-enemies with crazy-ass plots to take over the country or even, BWA-HA-HA, the world.

Said clever gadgets included a jacket that had kind an ejecting/retractable support-arm that had everything from a a tiny squirt-can containing acid, iron climbing-claws and a full-fledged derringer pistol...explosive material in the hollow heel of one boot (the fuse attached to the hem of his jacket) and a break-away blow-torch in the other heel...a belt buckle/holster that had everything from secret spare bullets to a motor-driven winch for climbing...the list goes on.

Said delusional arch-enemies included everything from a murderous matchmaker, a karate-kicking Frankenstein, an assassin who is half-man/half-metal, a gorilla, a Kraken-like sea monster, a Chinese warlord and Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, a dwarf w/ giant intellect...again, the list goes on.

Said crazy-ass plots involved everything from an LSD-like hallucinogenic capable of driving men into fits of killing madness...a sonic device that allowed the use of paintings as a portal to other dimensions...both an earthquake and tidal-wave making machine...surgically implanted crystals that when shattered inside the brain by a high-pitched noise, caused the subject to turn into a criminal...a drug capable of shrinking a man down to a height of 6"...should I stop yet?

Personally, due to the aforementioned gadgets/villains and the guest stars who played them (Victor Buono, Harvey Korman, Agnes Moorehead, Boris Karloff, Martin Landau, Burgess Meredith, Don Rickles, Ricardo Montalban, Ted Knight and many more)...it always struck me as more the televised version of Batman than 007. Regardless, I used to love watching the re-runs every Sunday morning on WGN for ALL of the reasons listed above.

The timing of their inclusion in the previous book review is pretty funny, as I just recently discovered 'The Wild Wild West' airs every weeknight at 8PM here in Chicagoland on MeTV's sister channel MeToo, available on Comcast digital cable. I forgot how much I loved this show and have been watching on pretty much any night that isn't Thursday. For those who don't have the channel, the entire series is available on DVD. Tune in and give it a whirl...