This is one of those episodes where the introductory scenes are really just the premise, the vehicle, if you will, to get to what the producers figured to be the main scenes, only slightly related to what we see early on.
We begin with Chuck waking everyone calling out that there's an air raid. As everyone races outside, all wearing their colorful (even in black-and-white) pajamas, with Parker in his traditional nightshirt, they see no air raid and conclude Parker was dreaming. Suddenly there's the sound of a plane and an air raid takes place, exactly as Chuck described it.
We switch to the next morning where everyone has concluded that Mr. Parker has ESP. He conjures up that something big is coming, and here comes Virgil with a box he found while scuba diving. It contains a map, with Japanese writing and Fuji informs that it is a map for buried treasure. McHale comes along and tells them to forget about it, they can't go digging up the whole island, and that in these islands there are hundreds of stories of buried treasure, almost all phony.
Next we're at the main base where Captain Binghamton is admiring a necklace of pearls that he just bought for his wife. He wants to see what they look like around his neck, just as Carpenter bursts in. Carpenter helps fasten them behind his neck and he spends a few minutes in his T-shirt wearing a pearl necklace. He's about to mail them to his wife.
An aside here: While they had a few episodes with Wally dancing with pretty girls at a party, or admiring certain women, they never suggested in this series that he would have any sort of affair with some woman, even though he obviously had to go without seeing his wife for years thanks to the war. I believe MASH would have been a better series had Henry Blake been portrayed the same way. But on that series, the only person who didn't have an affair with someone in Korea was Fr. Mulcahy.
Outside on the main base, we now have Chuck telling McHale that he's now had another premonition about an air raid hurting the captain. Right when Binghamton is talking to our heroes, an explosion to remove a tree stump makes Parker think it is an air raid right now. He panickly grabs the captain, lifting him off the ground, making him drop his box with the necklace. Immediately a bulldozer rolls over it and the necklace is destroyed.
Binghamton tells Parker that unless he can come up with $1000 to replace the necklace, he will be transferred to the Aleutians.
This leads the boys, in desperation, to try that treasure map from earlier. They have Mr. Parker pace out the directions ( I laughed when, looking at the ground, he walked right into the trunk of a palm tree) only to learn that the map indicates the spot to dig is directly underneath the bathtub in the captain's quarters.
I loved the scene where Binghamton is in his quarters, packing for an overnight trip for a conference, and Parker walks right through, counting of the paces, going right into the captain's bathroom before Binghamton does more than look at him, wondering what in the "blue Pacific" he's doing.
Since the captain will be away, McHale & Co. figure they can dig overnight. The setup is that these Quonset huts are not attached to a foundation, just sitting on the ground with a wooden set of steps leading to the door, with entry being about two feet off the ground. They get a truck and rope and pull Binghamton's hut a few feet to the side, giving them access to the ground beneath. But the ground is hard as a rock, so they'll need to dynamite to get them deep enough to find the treasure.
You just know the captain will return unexpectedly. He comes back to the officer's club, where he finds Elroy and explains that the conference was cancelled. He accuses Carpy of getting soused as soon as he leaves the base, but Elroy insists he's never drunk on duty. Elroy offers to buy the captain a drink, before he goes to bed. Wally says he'll have "whatever you're having." Elroy calls out to the bartender, ordering two more Shirley Temples, which upsets the captain so much he leaves to go to bed. As a kid, I had to ask my parents what the deal was with that, and as soon as they told me, I understood why they laughed at a time when I did not. I knew who Shirley Temple was, but had no knowledge of the non-alcoholic drink named in her honor.
This leads to the funniest scenes in the show-the ones we've been being led to from the beginning, but they had to find a reason for the captain's hut to be moved about while he was inside it. Before we get there, we get the sight of Binghamton shuffling along, up the steps to his hut, where he turns to open the door and tumbles off right onto the ground.
I see that the other reviewer on IMDB of this episode writes that Parker was too obnoxious in this episode. I fully agree that there were episodes where he was just too dumb and too clumsy to be funny. But in this episode, the only thing I was troubled by in Parker's actions was when he hoisted the captain off the ground when he thought there was an air raid. If he had just grabbed his arm to lead him to the air raid shelter, it would have been fine.
A really tired Binghamton dealing with a moving hut while he's trying to sleep, was the highlight of this episode. The ESP stuff with Parker really was a distraction and not needed for the plot, which could have been almost the same if they had just found this treasure map and needed to replace the necklace by digging under the captain's quarters.
So a script that had it's best moments in the last third of the show, gets a 9 from me.
We begin with Chuck waking everyone calling out that there's an air raid. As everyone races outside, all wearing their colorful (even in black-and-white) pajamas, with Parker in his traditional nightshirt, they see no air raid and conclude Parker was dreaming. Suddenly there's the sound of a plane and an air raid takes place, exactly as Chuck described it.
We switch to the next morning where everyone has concluded that Mr. Parker has ESP. He conjures up that something big is coming, and here comes Virgil with a box he found while scuba diving. It contains a map, with Japanese writing and Fuji informs that it is a map for buried treasure. McHale comes along and tells them to forget about it, they can't go digging up the whole island, and that in these islands there are hundreds of stories of buried treasure, almost all phony.
Next we're at the main base where Captain Binghamton is admiring a necklace of pearls that he just bought for his wife. He wants to see what they look like around his neck, just as Carpenter bursts in. Carpenter helps fasten them behind his neck and he spends a few minutes in his T-shirt wearing a pearl necklace. He's about to mail them to his wife.
An aside here: While they had a few episodes with Wally dancing with pretty girls at a party, or admiring certain women, they never suggested in this series that he would have any sort of affair with some woman, even though he obviously had to go without seeing his wife for years thanks to the war. I believe MASH would have been a better series had Henry Blake been portrayed the same way. But on that series, the only person who didn't have an affair with someone in Korea was Fr. Mulcahy.
Outside on the main base, we now have Chuck telling McHale that he's now had another premonition about an air raid hurting the captain. Right when Binghamton is talking to our heroes, an explosion to remove a tree stump makes Parker think it is an air raid right now. He panickly grabs the captain, lifting him off the ground, making him drop his box with the necklace. Immediately a bulldozer rolls over it and the necklace is destroyed.
Binghamton tells Parker that unless he can come up with $1000 to replace the necklace, he will be transferred to the Aleutians.
This leads the boys, in desperation, to try that treasure map from earlier. They have Mr. Parker pace out the directions ( I laughed when, looking at the ground, he walked right into the trunk of a palm tree) only to learn that the map indicates the spot to dig is directly underneath the bathtub in the captain's quarters.
I loved the scene where Binghamton is in his quarters, packing for an overnight trip for a conference, and Parker walks right through, counting of the paces, going right into the captain's bathroom before Binghamton does more than look at him, wondering what in the "blue Pacific" he's doing.
Since the captain will be away, McHale & Co. figure they can dig overnight. The setup is that these Quonset huts are not attached to a foundation, just sitting on the ground with a wooden set of steps leading to the door, with entry being about two feet off the ground. They get a truck and rope and pull Binghamton's hut a few feet to the side, giving them access to the ground beneath. But the ground is hard as a rock, so they'll need to dynamite to get them deep enough to find the treasure.
You just know the captain will return unexpectedly. He comes back to the officer's club, where he finds Elroy and explains that the conference was cancelled. He accuses Carpy of getting soused as soon as he leaves the base, but Elroy insists he's never drunk on duty. Elroy offers to buy the captain a drink, before he goes to bed. Wally says he'll have "whatever you're having." Elroy calls out to the bartender, ordering two more Shirley Temples, which upsets the captain so much he leaves to go to bed. As a kid, I had to ask my parents what the deal was with that, and as soon as they told me, I understood why they laughed at a time when I did not. I knew who Shirley Temple was, but had no knowledge of the non-alcoholic drink named in her honor.
This leads to the funniest scenes in the show-the ones we've been being led to from the beginning, but they had to find a reason for the captain's hut to be moved about while he was inside it. Before we get there, we get the sight of Binghamton shuffling along, up the steps to his hut, where he turns to open the door and tumbles off right onto the ground.
I see that the other reviewer on IMDB of this episode writes that Parker was too obnoxious in this episode. I fully agree that there were episodes where he was just too dumb and too clumsy to be funny. But in this episode, the only thing I was troubled by in Parker's actions was when he hoisted the captain off the ground when he thought there was an air raid. If he had just grabbed his arm to lead him to the air raid shelter, it would have been fine.
A really tired Binghamton dealing with a moving hut while he's trying to sleep, was the highlight of this episode. The ESP stuff with Parker really was a distraction and not needed for the plot, which could have been almost the same if they had just found this treasure map and needed to replace the necklace by digging under the captain's quarters.
So a script that had it's best moments in the last third of the show, gets a 9 from me.
