Cows

An Indian-inflected song on the radio the other day directed some brainwaves to the 1960s musical group The Sacred Cows. This power trio's members aren't Indian - they sound a bit like Cream. It's not clear where they were supposed to be from, and their only available music is a single short video clip. Not that it matters, as they aren't a real musical group. They show up at the end of the 1968 Get Smart episode, The Groovy Guru.



Larry Storch played the eponymous Guru, who is taking advantage of the counterculture to expand the influence that KAOS had on the younger generation. The Sacred Cows were an important part of his mind-control plans, which Max and 99 were able to defeat before the end of the episode.

Like The Way to Eden, which was broadcast about a year later, the screenwriters were GI Generation who evidently wanted to make some comment about what was happening in the world around them. Unlike that Star Trek episode, though, there doesn't appear to be much more being said than "Kids these days are getting brainwashed and they don't even know it!" Not a very deep message, granting  that Get Smart was not known for being a cerebral show. Although they did include some musical references that made it clear they were paying attention. (Based on those, in fact, the assertion that "The Sacred Cows" were a parody of "The Grateful Dead" seems very unlikely.)

Both episodes do have a leader who is using the young people for his own purposes, and which they might not completely support if they knew. Perhaps that is a subtle indicator of how many people saw the events of the late 1960s.