We open with the 73 docking at Taratupa, returning from some mission without McHale (another meeting at ComFleet) and as they start to unload crates of supplies, they discover a stowaway from their stopover at New Caledonia-a young woman named Babette, who somehow is very friendly with Virgil. (They never explain how Virgil has girls all over the South Pacific.)
Here comes McHale who is furious when he finds out they stopped at New Caledonia without orders. He starts to yell about what would happen if Captain Binghamton found out, when here comes the captain. They manage to hide Babette, barely, and safely return to their own island.
McHale comes up with the notion that they can return her if they can convince the captain the boat needs repairs-to be done at New Caledonia. Now this is the first time we ever heard of boat repairs being done that far away when they usually are done at the main base. But McHale left Ensign Parker with Babette while he took the others to the main base to go ask about the repairs, only to learn from Carpy that Binghamton left a short while ago for McHale's Island.
Which makes me wonder-I know it's a short distance from McHale's base to the main base-how is it possible they never saw the captain en route?
Back at McHale's, Babette gets Parker to almost run away by just smiling and walking toward him. She chases him around until she stumbles upon a machine gun, which she starts firing while Parker hides behind a tree. Apparently, they left the machine gun all cocked and ready to be fired. Sure. Parker eventually takes her away from the gun, but not before she fires holes in the captain's gig, sinking his boat, about the time McHale and the 73 return.
Binghamton want to know who among the crew was not on the 73-meaning who was it who fired at his boat. He lines them up and figures it had to be Parker, who is soon discovered hiding in a trash barrel near the dock-the same trash barrel as Babette.
So for the umpteenth time, Binghamton has Carpenter fill out court martial papers against Parker and the crew for their unauthorized visit to New Caledonia. Gruber get the idea of trying to get out of it by having Parker don a disguise and pretend to be Babette's father-a powerful plantation owner who has been negotiating with Admiral Rogers for the purchase of an island for naval use.
This is the big scene the show was set up for: Parker as the Frenchman, wildly challenging Binghamton to a duel, insisting Binghamton not involve his family in any scandal by claiming she stowed away, just wanting to go back home. McHale, Babette, and "her father" leave the office, having secured permission to return them to New Caledonia.
Next we see Admiral Rogers and a man in a white suit and learn he is the real Mr. Bergerac. Binghamton goes nuts. Instead of quietly asking, "Admiral, you're telling me this is Mr. Bergerac?" and going after McHale before he can leave the dock, the captain starts insulting and physically attacking the man, claiming he is an imposter. Carpenter joins in the assault until the Admiral orders them to stop.
Binghamton now explains and they all rush out to see the imposter. We see that Parker is still kissing Babette on the cheek, as though he is still trying to convince someone he is her father, instead of quickly going to the boat to get out of there. They could have been out of the dock by now, instead they barely get to the boat before the Admiral, Mr. Bergerac, and Carpenter approach.
McHale tells Chuck to take Babette aboard (they haven't yet been seen) and for him to change back to his uniform. He stops to greet the others as they come up. Babette pops up at the bridge calling out to her Papa. Then Parker pops into view, in uniform, but still wearing the mustache from his disguise. Babette disobeys her father, insisting she wants to steer the boat before going home.
They start the engines and quickly pull out and Babette steers the ship wildly while Parker just tries to reason with her, instead of pulling her away. He even lets her fire a torpedo, which of course heads straight for the dock, knocking over a Jeep and causing much damage. Then the 73 crashes into the dock.
Mr. Bergerac is next seen spanking his adult daughter, and apologizing to the Admiral. But he will go through with the deal to sell his island, so the Admiral is happy and once again Binghamton loses a chance to court martial any of McHale's men.
The stupid actions of many in this episode kept it from being more than mildly amusing to me. To start with, if Babette was so eager to steer the 73, why did she hide in that crate during the entire ride from New Caledonia to Taratupa? You'd think halfway en route, she would have popped out and asked to steer the boat then. Also-what happened to all the things that were originally in the crate? She had to put them somewhere to hide inside it.
Why was Parker practically running away from her as she advanced toward him? We've previously seen him kissing a couple of women, including one he barely knew while in disguise. If he'd just rebuffed her, he could have prevented her shooting the gun and sinking the captain's gig.
And when we saw the gig after the shooting, there was clearly a hole in the bottom of the boat. She was clearly firing from a machine gun on the ground at a boat behind some bushes she never saw. So how could the hole(s) be anywhere but in the sides of the little boat?
The worst was Binghamton not figuring out that the man who took Babette away was the imposter, not the man who walked in with Admiral Rogers. But even if he didn't realize it, there was no need for him to physically attack him.
Frankly, it didn't even make sense that the charges would be dropped-the unauthorized stop in New Caledonia still happened. McHale this time, unlike others, didn't do something big like luring a Japanese plane or ship out of hiding and shooting it down/sinking it. I don't see how they avoided the trouble they were in.
I found Babette quite annoying. Early on, she seemed to not understand why the crew was all in big trouble. She kept running over to kiss Virgil, talking about how she just wanted to have fun. She spent much of the show acting like a little kid ignoring everyone around her. She kept kicking Captain Binghamton or stomping on his foot and he just let her get away with it because of her father. If nothing else, you'd think he'd not stand anywhere near her.
Even simple things were ridiculous here. When Parker came into Binghamton's office pretending to be Babette's father, he held her shoulders and kissed her on each cheek, then repeated this act about 6-9 times. He was doing this again after they left the office when they should have been hustling to the boat. When McHale discovered Babette aboard the boat early on, instead of a lengthy lecture about what would happen if Binghamton showed up, why didn't he just say, "Christy, let's get this boat back to our own island pronto!" Then they wouldn't have given Binghamton time to come up to the boat.
I just found myself so annoyed with the actions of the various characters that I didn't laugh much at all. A 4 is my score. I see after writing that last sentence that this series devoted reviewer, kfo... also gave it a four. I enjoy his reviews (from 2014) whether I agree with his scores or not. This time, we match.
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