"If Max Is So Smart..." is a sub-par episode of "Banacek". Most of this is because of a character played by Anne Baxter. She comes off as very phony and I am not sure if it's Baxter's fault, the writer's, the director's or a combination of them. Regardless, her character is annoying and very unrealistic....and very bombastic.
The show begins with a fancy diagnostic computer disappearing from a hospital. This was long before the days of laptops and other portable computers, and like most computers of the 1970s, it needed a large room or separate building and plenty of air conditioning to keep it running. In this case, the computer is housed in a building that is separate from the hospital. Further, it's surrounded by barbed wire and has a fancy security system....which makes its theft seem impossible. Can Banacek figure all this out....like usual?
As I mentioned above, Baxter played a very hard to believe and annoying character. She's supposed to be a gullible and nasty rich woman but instead comes off poorly, often bellowing her lines and seeming more like an angry Simon Oakland than anyone else...and a bit like the Egyptian princess Baxter played in "The Ten Commandments". It also didn't help that this is a 'Carlie episode'...one featuring Banacek's nemesis who was introduced in the final episode of season one. As a result, the episode is poor...and I think telling those involved that SOME subtlety would have helped make this character less of a caricature. Not a completely terrible episode but one that simply should have been better.