McHale's Navy (TV Series) The McHale Opera Company (1965) User Reviews

Joe Flynn is at his best in this entertaining episode.

[kfo9494 · 10/10 · 20 November 2014]

This episode is one of the better shows in the collection. What's going on is that the citizens of the town are wanting to open the damaged Opera House. The problem is that it will take supplies and Binghamton is not going to release anything to help the citizens. But McHale, along with the Mayor and Rosa Giovanni, they are going to make Binghaton the star of the show.

Binghamton is recording a song for his wife's anniversary. Even though the singing is hard to take, Rosa tells him that he has the best voice around and ask him to sing with her. Along with Rosa, the Mayor has assembled some locals under the Captain's balcony to clap in awe of Binghamton's voice. Now Binghamton will help with the supplies for the Opera House so that he can be the lead in the next performance. Not only will he open the show, he will also invite General Bronson to attend the event.

McHale has to come up with a plan where Binghamton cannot be heard. The plan that he comes up with is actually quite funny. And makes for a very entertaining thirty minutes.

Just when you thought that the writers could not come up with any interesting material, this happens. This show was one of the better in the entire series run. The script was well written, the acting was top-notched and the material funny. This show had all the making of a classic. Not often I give a ten to a comedy-sitcom but this was deserving. From the regular cast to Peggy Mondo making a return visit, this show had everything working. Joe Flynn was at his best in this show. Excellent watch.

Parker at his stupidest prevents a good score here

[FlushingCaps · 3/10 · 1 December 2020]

While there were some funny moments, especially in the big scene near the end, there was so much stupidity that I have to give this one a poor grade. Not only stupidity, but too much opera music beginning with Virgil entertaining the crew with his strong voice, singing something in Italian at the beginning.

Mayor Lugatto is scheming with Rosa, who is played by Peggy Mondo, an actual opera-trained singer, who has been featured on this series as a lady who runs a Voltafiore restaurant after a few appearances as a native girl while the crew was in the South Pacific. The desire is to get the US Navy to rebuild the bomb-damaged opera house in town. They like Virgil's voice and decide they can talk the crew into fixing up the opera house so Virgil and Rosa can sing the leading roles.

The crew decides to steal necessary equipment from a supply depot to fix up the house-we are not given anything stated or on screen to indicate they tried to obtain things honestly-and they are caught, and facing the usual court martial.

Meanwhile, Binghamton, with Elroy's help playing the piano, is making a record to mail to his wife for an anniversary gift, with the captain singing a song. McHale and Parker burst into the captain's office while the record is playing, and somehow fail to recognize the obvious voice of their captain. After several disparaging remarks, they learn who is singing. In some physical silliness, Parker stabs Binghamton with the record needle as he tries to start playing the record again.

Then we see the officers outside on the street. Carpenter is holding the package with the record and when he reminds the captain about posting the package, he tries to reach over Parker to hand it to the captain-for no reason at all. Parker, for no reason at all, tries to grab the package from the captain just as a big truck approaches. As we all knew would happen, Parker drops the package on the road as the four step away from the path of the truck, which runs directly over the package, breaking the record into pieces.

Binghamton makes a new record and sends that off OK. McHale now comes up with an idea for how to not only get his guys off the hook but to get the town a repaired opera house by having the townspeople all tell the captain what a wonderful voice he has-they think it's terrible-and demanding he sing the lead in their opera. So the captain let's McHale's crew off from court martial as long as they repair the opera house, which they do without difficulty.

Binghamton has invited General Bronson to come hear him sing. Now McHale worries that the general will hate the voice of the captain so much that they will all be in trouble-somehow. I didn't get this part. The townspeople, led by the mayor asked Binghamton to sing their lead. If the general hates the singing, when he learns the others shouting "bravo"-as they had been instructed to do, would have no reason to be mad at either Binghamton, and certainly not at McHale or his men, who did not appear to the general to have anything to do with the opera production.

So McHale's plan is to make a record (it is not stated how they borrowed the captain's recording machine) of airplanes flying overhead noisily, and they plan to play the loud sounds at the opera whenever Binghamton is singing his parts. It was sort of comical the way we heard Rosa singing her parts and as soon as Binghamton opened his mouth, we heard nothing from him as the planes came in immediately at a really loud volume, vanishing just as quickly when it was Rosa's turn, as the pair kept alternating their singing parts.

Partway through, McHale fears Binghamton is singing louder, so he tells Willy, who is handling the record, to turn it over to some twin engine noise. This leads to the dumbest part of the show. Somehow, Parker is unwilling to let Willy handle the task of turning the record over and he dashes over and tries to wrestle it from Willy's hand, leading of course to dropping and breaking the record.

Now McHale directs Parker and the crew to don costumes and make use of various props to keep coming onto stage keeping Binghamton from being heard via some outlandish actions including a loud horn and a bell. I couldn't help but think these scenes were an homage to the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera. This bit was easily the best part of the episode-by far.

The audience, including the general all love the comedy opera, and don't even mind when the performance is interrupted with an air raid. Binghamton plays along when the general congratulates him for the show and all ends happily.

The crew stealing the equipment, Parker idiotically breaking two different records-records in both cases where there was no reason for him to even touch the things-just made this show too stupid for me to enjoy overall. While we heard the general say he loved the bit where they drowned out the captain's voice, we never saw him appear to be laughing when this was happening. He appeared to not enjoy that at all.

For the Marx Brothers-type scene, this show had some laughs. But when most of it was too stupid to believe, I cannot give it more than a 3.