Thomas Craig is attending a "reading of the will" where he expects, as the sole living relative, to inherit a fortune from his uncle. But after taking care of others, the old man has left him only $1, leaving his vast fortune to his beloved dog, Casper. Listed in the credits as those his regular name was Casper, the dog's actual name was Red. He was owned and trained by the famous Rudd Weatherwax, known of course for being the owner and trainer of all of the "Lassie" dogs over the decades. Red was a Labradoodle who went on to a semi-regular role for two seasons on Get Smart as "Fang."
The story is that on Get Smart he would not follow his directions from his handler and the extended time necessary to get the dog to not ruin the scenes cost the production a lot of money, so on the second season, "Fang" was retired from the field and supposedly assigned to a desk job. I note that on this AHP, the dog was almost never shown walking anywhere or doing anything other than bark and look cute. I imagine one scene in particular where they wanted the dog to walk over to Tommy after being told to stay probably had the script call for a shot of the dog not staying but following him, but Red was instead only shown being next to Tommy because the dog wouldn't follow him on command.
Anyhow, our story has Tommy (Dick Van Dyke) telling his fiancee Judy (Stella Stevens) how he only inherits the fortune when the dog dies and her reaction is to get Tommy to agree to kill the dog, despite his normal human objections. He buys a hunting rifle and plans to have "an accident." Just as he appears to be about to pull the trigger another nearsighted hunter walks up and almost does the job for him before the other man realizes the animal he was sighting was a dog.
We switch to a scene of a car with the Judy waiting where she hears a gunshot before seeing Tommy AND Casper rushing up toward her. Tommy tells her they need to leave, the place is full of dangerous hunters, and we surmise that the other hunter who wandered off didn't go far and took a shot at the pair.
Tommy admits he couldn't have pulled the trigger anyhow, so Judy goes to Plan B, hire a seedy private detective named Sam to off the dog. Calling him a cousin, they move him into the mansion where Red is cared for by the butler, where Tommy is allowed to live while earning his living at a normal job only mentioned once.
Sam's first attempt is to take the dog on a rowboat to the middle of a lake and clobber him with an oar and drop him in the water. We see him raising the oar...and we cut to where he's back at the house telling Judy how "the dog saved my life." Out in the middle of the lake, I have trouble believing if Sam fell overboard, the dog could have towed him to shore. How the dog did this was never mentioned.
Sam goes about the house trying to figure the best way to arrange an "accidental" death for the dog, finally settling on poison after seeing that the dog is fed prime steak every night. He sees one steak in the refrigerator and pours ant poison on it. But as he is starting to eat his own steak dinner, with Judy and Tom, he suddenly notices they aren't also eating steak and the butler explains that after Sam had admired the filet mignon he saw the dog eating last night, the butler, who apparently had only one available steak that next day, asked Judy and Tom if they wouldn't mind having meatballs while their guest, Sam, got the one remaining steak and the dog ate something else that night.
***ENDING SPOILER ALERT*** So Sam, who only ate a bite or two, is treated by a doctor, but not harmed too much, we come to the conclusion which I need to spoil to explain my criticism. Julie is telling her therapist how she now has given up on being rich and marrying Tom, and has decided the only way she can marry rich is to become a dog. She literally barks a couple of times and the show is over.
Judy was willing to pay $1000 to the detective to kill Casper. As the soon-to-be relative of Tommy, who lives with the dog, she could easily have taken the dog for a walk one day, and have him slip his leash and run into traffic. If no car accidentally hit him, she could have retrieved the dog and tried that trick again. Or course, she could have thought of the idea of poison herself-it seems like an easy way to do this sort of job. Or she could have easily found some other way that didn't involve her fiance.
This episode was obviously supposed to be humorous, but something about the way the scenes were staged, or the actual dialogue prevented it from really being funny at all. One example, when Tommy is in the woods with his gun, the other hunter comes out almost right next to Tommy, but he never sees him, only the dog some 20 feet away and so he aims his rifle before seeing it is a dog, then he notices the man. For him to have not seen the man right next to him was simply not believable.
The whole plot is also troubling. Tom will get to hold his regular job which he doesn't' appear to hate, live in a mansion with servants, and become filthy rich in a few years whenever the dog passes away naturally. And he and Judy will risk losing everything if it is found out they killed the dog because they couldn't wait? It seemed like every way they planned to kill the dog would have been a rather obvious murder of the dog that would have gotten Tommy to not inherit anything and have to leave the mansion.
But the stupid ending I described earlier just kept it from having any chance of getting a score higher than a 4 from me.
The story is that on Get Smart he would not follow his directions from his handler and the extended time necessary to get the dog to not ruin the scenes cost the production a lot of money, so on the second season, "Fang" was retired from the field and supposedly assigned to a desk job. I note that on this AHP, the dog was almost never shown walking anywhere or doing anything other than bark and look cute. I imagine one scene in particular where they wanted the dog to walk over to Tommy after being told to stay probably had the script call for a shot of the dog not staying but following him, but Red was instead only shown being next to Tommy because the dog wouldn't follow him on command.
Anyhow, our story has Tommy (Dick Van Dyke) telling his fiancee Judy (Stella Stevens) how he only inherits the fortune when the dog dies and her reaction is to get Tommy to agree to kill the dog, despite his normal human objections. He buys a hunting rifle and plans to have "an accident." Just as he appears to be about to pull the trigger another nearsighted hunter walks up and almost does the job for him before the other man realizes the animal he was sighting was a dog.
We switch to a scene of a car with the Judy waiting where she hears a gunshot before seeing Tommy AND Casper rushing up toward her. Tommy tells her they need to leave, the place is full of dangerous hunters, and we surmise that the other hunter who wandered off didn't go far and took a shot at the pair.
Tommy admits he couldn't have pulled the trigger anyhow, so Judy goes to Plan B, hire a seedy private detective named Sam to off the dog. Calling him a cousin, they move him into the mansion where Red is cared for by the butler, where Tommy is allowed to live while earning his living at a normal job only mentioned once.
Sam's first attempt is to take the dog on a rowboat to the middle of a lake and clobber him with an oar and drop him in the water. We see him raising the oar...and we cut to where he's back at the house telling Judy how "the dog saved my life." Out in the middle of the lake, I have trouble believing if Sam fell overboard, the dog could have towed him to shore. How the dog did this was never mentioned.
Sam goes about the house trying to figure the best way to arrange an "accidental" death for the dog, finally settling on poison after seeing that the dog is fed prime steak every night. He sees one steak in the refrigerator and pours ant poison on it. But as he is starting to eat his own steak dinner, with Judy and Tom, he suddenly notices they aren't also eating steak and the butler explains that after Sam had admired the filet mignon he saw the dog eating last night, the butler, who apparently had only one available steak that next day, asked Judy and Tom if they wouldn't mind having meatballs while their guest, Sam, got the one remaining steak and the dog ate something else that night.
***ENDING SPOILER ALERT*** So Sam, who only ate a bite or two, is treated by a doctor, but not harmed too much, we come to the conclusion which I need to spoil to explain my criticism. Julie is telling her therapist how she now has given up on being rich and marrying Tom, and has decided the only way she can marry rich is to become a dog. She literally barks a couple of times and the show is over.
Judy was willing to pay $1000 to the detective to kill Casper. As the soon-to-be relative of Tommy, who lives with the dog, she could easily have taken the dog for a walk one day, and have him slip his leash and run into traffic. If no car accidentally hit him, she could have retrieved the dog and tried that trick again. Or course, she could have thought of the idea of poison herself-it seems like an easy way to do this sort of job. Or she could have easily found some other way that didn't involve her fiance.
This episode was obviously supposed to be humorous, but something about the way the scenes were staged, or the actual dialogue prevented it from really being funny at all. One example, when Tommy is in the woods with his gun, the other hunter comes out almost right next to Tommy, but he never sees him, only the dog some 20 feet away and so he aims his rifle before seeing it is a dog, then he notices the man. For him to have not seen the man right next to him was simply not believable.
The whole plot is also troubling. Tom will get to hold his regular job which he doesn't' appear to hate, live in a mansion with servants, and become filthy rich in a few years whenever the dog passes away naturally. And he and Judy will risk losing everything if it is found out they killed the dog because they couldn't wait? It seemed like every way they planned to kill the dog would have been a rather obvious murder of the dog that would have gotten Tommy to not inherit anything and have to leave the mansion.
But the stupid ending I described earlier just kept it from having any chance of getting a score higher than a 4 from me.