Max is to meet 99 in a beauty shop where they are to go on some errands together in preparation for their wedding "next week." He has a bit of trouble finding her, going up to three different people facing away from him and asking, "99?" The third person was a guy with hippie-length hair.
Max was there to tell 99 that he can't go with her, the Chief needs him to substitute at the CONTROL training school, so she'll have to go on her errands alone. He leaves. Although it seemed like an ordinary beauty salon, it was a CONTROL salon because the hairdresser told 99 the Chief was on the phone for her. He has a special assignment. Knowing her exact plans for her day off-which seemed most unlikely-while she is doing her errands, she is to pick up, in 3 parts in 3 shops, a special formula. They have left these parts in each of the places she is to go.
Max the teacher finds only 3 people in the classroom, one of whom isn't a student, but a sexy girlfriend to one of the two males, Caruso. Max tells her she has to leave. She says OK and all three happily watch her sashay out of the room. The other rookie, Lundy, played by Fred Willard from Fernwood Tonight, says she comes every day and every day she is ordered to leave. Max asks Caruso why, and gets a simple honest response: "I like to watch her leave."
The other students in the class are all at the graduation rehearsal. These two aren't scheduled to graduate. As Max puts it, their grades are bad in two important areas: "Your grades are alarming in disarming and you're failing in tailing."
This leads to them trying to show their disarming techniques in pantomime in a really funny bit where they keep knocking or kicking the imaginary gun out of each other's hand, then switching back. At one point, they pretend to have knocked it onto the floor and cannot find it. Max gets into the act, getting on his hands and knees and says, "It's got to be here someplace."
He then assigns them to shadow 99 for the rest of the day and report to him that evening. 99 spots the clumsy trenchcoat-clad men and calls the Chief. He, not knowing about their activities, decides to assign these very same rookie agents, # 198 and 199, to shadow the KAOS agents that are following 99.
Once 99 gets the three pieces-not in paper form, but in three different forms, she is then directed to take the formula to Lum Fong's Chinese Laundry, where Fong will put them into a new code disguised as laundry marks on shirts to be shipped to Peru that evening. If this sounds familiar, it is the way a code was being smuggled by KAOS in the first episode back in Season 1 where we met Harry Hoo, with The Claw as the KAOS leader.
Meanwhile, Max has convinced the Chief to let him go track 99 to make sure she's safe from the KAOS agents she has reported. He did this after a frustrating attempt to communicate (thanks to a faulty Cone of Silence) via a special card code where they each have a box full of cards with one word on each, and they hold up cards one by one to spell out simple questions and answers.
When 99 gets inside the laundry, she finds out the man who says he is Lum Fong has no idea about the code pieces she hands him, because he is actually a Japanese KAOS agent who is a master of disguise, and can thus pretend to be Chinese. He is played by Victor Sen Yung, best known to TV fans as Hop Sing on Bonanza, and to movie fans as Charlie Chan's # 2 son Jimmy, and later # 3 son Tommy, when they changed the actor who played Charlie.
He winds up in a swordfight of sorts with Max, with the weapons being heavy flat irons.
I particularly liked the freshness of this script-Max teaching rookies, then 99 being followed as she spent most of the episode away from Max. I'm not sure we ever previously had an episode that featured so much 99 without Max being at her side. There were loads of laughs for me and no complaints about anyone doing anything that made no sense. I am giving it a 9.
Max was there to tell 99 that he can't go with her, the Chief needs him to substitute at the CONTROL training school, so she'll have to go on her errands alone. He leaves. Although it seemed like an ordinary beauty salon, it was a CONTROL salon because the hairdresser told 99 the Chief was on the phone for her. He has a special assignment. Knowing her exact plans for her day off-which seemed most unlikely-while she is doing her errands, she is to pick up, in 3 parts in 3 shops, a special formula. They have left these parts in each of the places she is to go.
Max the teacher finds only 3 people in the classroom, one of whom isn't a student, but a sexy girlfriend to one of the two males, Caruso. Max tells her she has to leave. She says OK and all three happily watch her sashay out of the room. The other rookie, Lundy, played by Fred Willard from Fernwood Tonight, says she comes every day and every day she is ordered to leave. Max asks Caruso why, and gets a simple honest response: "I like to watch her leave."
The other students in the class are all at the graduation rehearsal. These two aren't scheduled to graduate. As Max puts it, their grades are bad in two important areas: "Your grades are alarming in disarming and you're failing in tailing."
This leads to them trying to show their disarming techniques in pantomime in a really funny bit where they keep knocking or kicking the imaginary gun out of each other's hand, then switching back. At one point, they pretend to have knocked it onto the floor and cannot find it. Max gets into the act, getting on his hands and knees and says, "It's got to be here someplace."
He then assigns them to shadow 99 for the rest of the day and report to him that evening. 99 spots the clumsy trenchcoat-clad men and calls the Chief. He, not knowing about their activities, decides to assign these very same rookie agents, # 198 and 199, to shadow the KAOS agents that are following 99.
Once 99 gets the three pieces-not in paper form, but in three different forms, she is then directed to take the formula to Lum Fong's Chinese Laundry, where Fong will put them into a new code disguised as laundry marks on shirts to be shipped to Peru that evening. If this sounds familiar, it is the way a code was being smuggled by KAOS in the first episode back in Season 1 where we met Harry Hoo, with The Claw as the KAOS leader.
Meanwhile, Max has convinced the Chief to let him go track 99 to make sure she's safe from the KAOS agents she has reported. He did this after a frustrating attempt to communicate (thanks to a faulty Cone of Silence) via a special card code where they each have a box full of cards with one word on each, and they hold up cards one by one to spell out simple questions and answers.
When 99 gets inside the laundry, she finds out the man who says he is Lum Fong has no idea about the code pieces she hands him, because he is actually a Japanese KAOS agent who is a master of disguise, and can thus pretend to be Chinese. He is played by Victor Sen Yung, best known to TV fans as Hop Sing on Bonanza, and to movie fans as Charlie Chan's # 2 son Jimmy, and later # 3 son Tommy, when they changed the actor who played Charlie.
He winds up in a swordfight of sorts with Max, with the weapons being heavy flat irons.
I particularly liked the freshness of this script-Max teaching rookies, then 99 being followed as she spent most of the episode away from Max. I'm not sure we ever previously had an episode that featured so much 99 without Max being at her side. There were loads of laughs for me and no complaints about anyone doing anything that made no sense. I am giving it a 9.
