User Reviews

**SPOILERS** I'm giving this one a 10 because the story was good, and I liked the acting. Especially from Joe Flynn. It was hard to tell, but I knew the voice from somewhere. It was Captain Binghamton from "McHale's Navy". He plays a real good rat. He kills a cop, shoots a service station owner, holds a cabbie at gunpoint, commandeers another car, almost kills a rich kid, who's smart enough to keep himself alive; THEN holds hostage a farmer and his wife before Dan Matthews finally captures him. He then asks HOW Matthews did it.

No doubt he'll get The Chair for killing a cop. Back then, they didn't waste any time with a long stay on death row. Most guys were finished after about a year from the verdict. I can recall three who didn't last six months. Two were hung (in Iowa), one got the Chair (in Nebraska). They were spree killers, but the result was usually the same for any idiot stupid enough to shoot a cop.

The Taxicab was '56 Chevy 4-door, and one of the H.P. cars was a 2-door model. The kid's car was a 1956 Jaguar X-K 140 roadster; it had one fender skirt, on the driver's side only. It was really sweet, and Stankey (Flynn) ground the gears taking off in it; VERY believable. One other thing I noticed, and this was real tricky. If you pay attention, you'll notice in these early episodes, it almost looks like there are 4 doors on Dan Matthew's car, A 1956 Buick Super, but, NO. They've put rear door handles on, but there are NO doors. No kidding, check it out. Later, of course, they corrected this. Also, if you listen, these are standard shift Buicks. They actually did produce a few of these, but they are few and very far between. One last thing. The couple are listed as farmers, but very few (I've never heard of any), farmers used a caterpillar bulldozer to plow with. It was a great little place, but it was NO farm. Today, it's probably worth several million dollars in real estate.

So apparently a decade after WWII, "somebody up there" still hated Captain Binghamton, because the man was reduced to being a petty thief. Well, anyhow, it was Joe Flynn who starred in this episode as the robber.

The twist to this one is that Joe's character decides to take a taxi to commit his crime. He doesn't tell the driver, who lets him off at a gas station what he is about to do, just approaches the attendant, whips out his gun and leads him inside where he takes all the cash-a small amount as the man said he just went to the bank. This does lead to the question of who was minding the store if the attendant just got back from the bank. They had no way to bank early in the morning in those years, so the station must have been open while he was gone, but no mention was made of another attendant. The one we see is shot in the shoulder by Joe before he leaves the station.

Joe (I see the credits list him as Steve, but nobody called him that) goes back and orders the cab driver to take him away. He was darn lucky that the cab driver didn't suspect something when he heard the gunshot and take off before Joe could get back to the cab. Lucky...or was it poorly written?

As the pair wait for a red light, a sports car with a teen driving pulls up next to him. The cabbie says, "There's a getaway car for you." Joe agrees and just jumps out and pulls his gun on the kid. Before they getaway, the cabbie calls out across the street to a highway patrolman who appeared to be giving someone a ticket that there's a gunman in the sports car.

Before the cop can react, Joe fires and mortally wounds the cop, and takes off as the passenger in the kid's car. The kid tells him he is almost out of gas, but this doesn't register. He directs him to the usual Highway Patrol woods far from civilization and takes his car, tying him up to a tree after the kid pleads for his life. He takes the car but before driving far, runs out of gas, so he walks to a farmhouse where the "farmer" is using a big bulldozer on a hilly area in front of his house.

Now the other reviewer criticizes the use of a bulldozer by the "farmer." I agree that he would be unlikely to own one, but might well have rented it to clear some land so he could plow and plant. With the gun pulled on him, the farmer leaves his bulldozer running and goes to the house at gunpoint, where he and his wife are now to let Joe stay for a while.

The farmer is asked if he has a car, and he says he does. As Joe rips out the telephone cord so they can't phone after he leaves, he is tying up the farmer when our man Dan arrives at the house trying to locate the gunman. Joe unties the farmer's hands, and pointing his gun at the wife, tells him he better get rid of the cop.

The farmer doesn't give any mouth or hand signals while he talks to Dan through the door, even though Joe can't see him. When Dan asks to use the phone, he is told they don't have one. This puzzles Dan as he starts to leave and sees a telephone line. I will maintain that in the later years he would have cleverly gone back to his partner waiting at the car and had them pull out of sight, figuring his prey must be inside. Dan was smarter as he got more experience. He goes to his partner, and observes that the nearby running bulldozer didn't make sense, especially coupled with the story about the phone.

Here he goes back right away and demands to come in. So Joe calls out and tells him he will kill these two people if Dan doesn't clear the area. He plans to take the missus as hostage as he escapes through the roadblocks Dan tells him are set up, after he ties up the farmer.

Despite the threat if Dan didn't disappear, he has his partner go right up to the farmhouse while Dan sneaks around from behind, hoping there's a way he can get to the place from the back. Joe sees this second cop right in front of the place and gets into a discussion with him about how many people he's killed today and what his plans are. Just as Joe is counting to three before he fires at the cop outside-who's standing upright in full view from the window--Dan has entered from behind and subdues Joe very quickly.

It would have made far more sense for Dan not to give the bad guy a chance to see him gesturing to his partner before he returns, and obviously, going back up to the house when he suspected the man was there was really risking the lives of the farmer and his wife as well as Dan himself. Having the partner go back up the hill to talk more was even more foolish as he might have been shot right away while walking up the hillside. Remember, Joe has already shot two people, killing one, and for all Dan knew, had also killed the boy who had the sports car. After Dan has been ordered away, to have his partner just walk up to the house was really being reckless with his life, not to mention the farming couple.

I conclude by saying that the opening narration suggesting Joe was clever to have a taxi take him to the gas station and then use it to escape, but it seems like a really dumb way to commit a robbery. The cabbie would have radioed in where he picked up a rider, as he didn't know anything was fishy until he was at the gas station. He could have seen Joe pointing the gun at the attendant, based on the staging of that scene. He would most likely have pulled away immediately on hearing the gunshot. And, as depicted, the wounded attendant told the police as the cab was pulling away, just how the holdup man made his escape, making a getaway taxi rather easy for police to locate on the streets.

Joe was described as a "seasoned criminal" but if so, he would have found it much easier, safer for himself, and practical, to just steal a car and use it for his holdup.

With all of these plot problems, I cannot give this more than a 6-two just for the pleasure of seeing Joe Flynn in another role. I always thought HE was the best part of McHale's Navy, and his role as the captain was perfectly played to make him smart enough to suspect many of the things McHale and his "cutthroats" were up to, just not clever enough to catch them and convict them in a court martial.