User Reviews

Not a bad episode just not very inventive. A man runs up a big debt in Vegas and his airplane crashes on the way home. Later, he calls his wife and tells her to give him the life insurance money so he can pay off his debt. If he is faking his death, he will have bigger problems than the gambling debt. Insurance companies don't like being scammed so if he pays off the debt, he still has to stay hidden. It comes out there was a bomb on the plane and the "dead" man is only a voice on the phone that nobody sees. And there is a voice impressionist working at the casino that is holding the guy's marker. See where this is going? Joe confronts Rich on stage and he folds like a cheap card table. It doesn't do him any good. The bottom line is the widow and best friend killed the guy and the casino owner came up with a plan to get his money by using Rich to impersonate the dead guy and grabbing the insurance money. Hopefully, Art the Cop did get the widow to crack and confess. The cast are all veterans. Don Dubbins is the guy's best friend. Leslie Parrish is wasted in a small role. Charles Picerni, a bad guy in several Mannix episodes, is the casino's hitman who isn't very good at his job. Alan Bergmann is the casino owner who is shifty bad guy who wants the money. So does the widow. So does the best friend. At least Joe is not shot, beaten up, or drugged. Yet another case where he won't be paid.

This episode is enjoyable and has some twists, though the big twist near the end was pretty easy to guess. After all, Rich Little is a guest star on the show and considering his act, it's awfully easy to know what part he has in the conspiracy. It also has a few small plot holes.

The show begins in Vegas. Victor is losing badly at the gambling tables and has run up a $230,000 tab--a tab which he cannot possibly pay. After he leaves for home in L.A. in his private plane, it disappears from the radar--and it's assumed to be sunk in the ocean near home.

Mannix arrives at the end of the funeral for the guy. It seems that his wife has hired Mannix because her husband really isn't dead--and she wants to know where he is. How does he know he's alive? Well, she's received several phone calls from him. In the latest call, he's asked her to take the insurance money from his death and give it to him! Mannix's job is to find him and straighten all this mess out by the end of the show.

So here are some problems with all this:

1. Rich Little is in the show...and the widow is receiving phone calls from her dead husband. Does it take Einstein to figure this out?! Plus, why didn't Mannix realize this until the end of the show?!

2. The husband really is dead. Note that I said there'd be spoilers. However, this is important, the plan ONLY works if the body is never found and it easily could have been--or at least pieces of him.

3. Why would the widow give her husband the money? She obviously didn't like him.

4. At the end, count up all the people who broke serious laws. One of them is NOT caught and gets away with conspiring to kill someone. An interesting omission, though life does sometimes happen that way.

The bottom line is that while this is an enjoyable episode, it's kinda hole-ridden. And, once it's over, you start to realize this.

These types of shows usually don't introduce superfluous characters. Having a ventriloquist on the episode, and the faceless voice of a missing key character....just a little too predictable.