The Adventures of Smilin' Jack

There are basically three types of mysteries/adventures:

1. The audience discovers who the villain is at the very end along with the "good guys". 2. Somewhere during the story the villain is found out and the remainder of the story is spent proving his or her guilt. 3. The audience knows who the villain is at the beginning and the entire story is spent watching the "good guys" try to find out who the villain is and then capture him or her.

The third is by far the least entertaining (with the possible exception of Columbo). The Adventures of Smilin' Jack falls into the third category. What is even worse is that the villain is not being chased but accompanies the `good guys' all over the Pacific while leaving behind a string of nefarious deeds.

Before viewing this serial I had visions of Dixie Lee (possibly the most alluring heroine ever to appear in a comic strip), Slickville and everything else that made Smilin' Jack a great comic strip. With Charlie Chan, Number One Son and Danny Thomas' future wife in the cast, my expectations where heightened all the more. Unfortunately, there was no Dixie Lee, no Slickville and very little plot. By the seventh episode I was both feeling extremely sorry for Jack because he was so dumb and bored to boot. Although there was `aerial action', so to speak, it involved planes catching fire and being shot out of the air by a Japanese submarine (if you can believe that). There were none of the aerial stunts and acrobatics that usually accompanies Jack's adventures and made the strip so interesting. Maybe they were not included because of the expense involved.

I am a fan of serials. I really enjoyed the classics like The Masked Marvel, The Phantom, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Captain Marvel, et. al. They were extremely entertaining and usually kept you guessing. Even though you knew who the villain was early in a few of the true classics they managed to hold your interest to the very end. The Adventures of Smilin' Jack can't hold a candle to the classics. It has difficulty holding up to the mediocre serials.