We begin with what is an obvious dream sequence where Parker is a 007-type Spy in a trenchcoat who enters a house, kisses the beautiful girl, then faces "Leadfinger"-a mad scientist who, of course, is Binghamton with a silly blonde wig. Of course, the "Leadfinger" is a spoof of James Bond's "Goldfinger"--a novel that would not be written by Ian Fleming until 13 years AFTER World War II ended, but that's not important.
Back to reality, where Binghamton has opened the safe in his quarters and is admiring a jade necklace he bought for his wife for $1000. After seeing a chimp just outside his open window, Carpenter enters to report a fire nearby. The captain leaves the necklace in its open box on the table to see about the fire. McHale and men are just finishing putting it out. Of course, Binghamton assumes they started it and he threatens to investigate.
Back at his home, Binghamton sees the necklace is missing, and, as always, assumes McHale or his men of stealing it. Now the episode showed the chimpanzee taking the necklace, but even though I didn't mention it until now, I'm sure you figured that out already. It's worth noting that this wild chimpanzee was running around far from his native Africa--wonder how he got there?
Carpenter takes the initiative to call Naval Intelligence, who promises to send an officer to investigate. To his surprise, Carpenter finds the captain most unhappy. Binghamton admits that he had lied about having friends loan him the money to buy the necklace-he embezzled it from some officers' fund entrusted to him. Of course, he intended to pay it back, but the captain had to know borrowing it was illegal.
So he and Carpy set out to try to find evidence that McHale's crew took the necklace. They not only fail, but the chimp shows up with the necklace still in his paws, which Binghamton is able to wrestle back from the animal.
Rather than call off the Intelligence officer, Binghamton decides to try to frame the 73 boys, utilizing a newly reported nurse to help him. She tells Virgil about knowing the captain has a jade necklace in his safe (which oddly enough, didn't alert McHale to the trap, even though it would seem really weird that this newly-arrived nurse would somehow know about what the captain has in his personal safe, especially since she would be most unlikely to have ever been to his quarters for any reason.)
McHale decides to break into the captain's safe, using Gruber's safe-cracking skills to take the necklace long enough to be able to keep the captain from framing them. Instead, as soon as they get their hands on the safe, the captain arrives with a camera to "photograph them in the act."
To Binghamton's surprise, that new nurse IS the Intelligence Officer and she is arresting the captain for fraud, among other things. Just to cap it all off, she executes a judo flip with the captain doing a flip and landing on the deck, then Mr. Parker does the same flip on the captain (both times, of course, with a stunt double flipping over.)
At the end, we learn that the captain, for his attempted fraudulent attempt to frame innocent men, received the punishment only of being dropped to the bottom of the promotion list. This is the identical punishment he received four episodes earlier in The Return of Maggie.
I disagree with reviewer KFO who thought this was an "above-average watch"-which doesn't really correspond with his rating of 7, which to me IS average, thinking like a school grade, where 90% (9 of 10) is excellent, 8 is above average (or B) and 7 is a C, or average).
I didn't find too many laughs. Parker bumbled stupidly in the fire scene, showing up after the fire is out with his extinguisher, which he, of course, has pointed in the captain's direction as he accidentally starts spraying extinguisher material in the captain's face, then moments later shoots off some more with the nozzle still pointing right at the captain.
With the valuable necklace in his hands, I couldn't believe the captain would just leave it on a table with an open window when he could almost as quickly stepped to the safe and returned it and closed the door. A second option here would be sticking it in his pocket and taking it with him for safety.
Normally, the captain would not have committed embezzlement, and while he is often happy to trap McHale with some kind of lure, framing him for stealing something after he knows McHale had nothing to do with the original disappearance seems way too callous even for "Old Leadbottom."
And frankly, McHale's plan to snatch the necklace out of the safe once he hears someone else knows it was in there seems rather dumb on our hero's part. If the captain is expected to remove the necklace soon to frame McHale, he could have already done so before they get there, and he could still get McHale on charges of attempted burglary by catching them in his quarters with an open safe. If he planned to leave it until later, the same bad scenario for McHale comes in to play when they go to break into the safe. McHale's best bet would be to report to some authority that the missing necklace was reported to him (truthfully, via the "nurse") to now be in the safe and have some military police official get Binghamton to open his safe for a quick inspection.
We don't know exactly how long Binghamton had been in the Naval Reserves, but we can estimate that $1000 he spent to be about 3 months pay-a pretty hefty sum-for jewelry for his wife. That too seems quite unlikely. How long was he expecting to take before repaying the money he embezzled?
Between Parker's not-funny ineptitude with the fire extinguisher-a repeat of the identical stunt from some episodes ago to the repeat punishment of the captain ( a non-punishment really for serious charges) there wasn't much to laugh at. I say somewhat below average, a 4.
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