This episode completes the 4-part saga of Oliver owning the phone company. I agree with the other reviewer that it was perhaps the funniest the series ever had.
Despite the previous episode, where Lisa competently called all 25 slots on the switchboard and listed who belonged to each slot-so many down, so many over-we open with Eb trying to follow her list, only he went across and then down and kept getting the wrong person. Even doing it Lisa's way no longer worked for reasons unexplained. A frustrated farm hand, Eb walked away and told Oliver he is a farm hand, not a telephone operator-it bugged him when all his buddies kept calling and asking for dates-as though he were a female.
Oliver had encountered Mr. Kimball who showed off his new radio to communicate with his boss. In demonstrating, after getting Oliver to respond, "Oh fer..." when Hank asked what his name was, Hank picked up his unit and ordered "10 tomato pickers to the Ofer place." He later ordered 20 more by accident. This was also an example of Kimball at his best. Sometimes he just interrupted himself in every sentence and never said anything coherent. Those were the too-dumb-to-be-funny bits. Here he couldn't remember Oliver's name, but he otherwise got out complete thoughts and was delightful.
Somehow, whoever Hank was talking to, figured out the "Ofer" place was the Douglas farm, so the next morning, a truck pulls up with 12 pickers for Mr. Ofer. Oliver gets a bright idea and on asking learns one of these migrant pickers knows how to run a switchboard. Although her English was shaky, he hires Carmelita to operate his switchboard. She too has trouble with Lisa's list.
Desperate to get rid of the pesky phone company, Oliver goes to Drucker's to take out a full-page ad in the newspaper about selling it. In a neat twist on the usual, Mr. Haney shows up, interrupting Oliver's transaction for important business: He wants to take out a full-page ad saying that he wants to buy a telephone company. Of course, Haney's method of "buying" it involved Oliver paying him $500 to take it, but he settles for $5.
This leads to telephoning Haney-style, where operator Haney charges 50¢ for all information calls, even a simple "How are you doing?" He rigorously times each call with a loud "bonger" and the clock starts when Oliver began talking to Haney, not when he got through to the party he wanted to call.
Soon Trendall and Drucker are leading Haney into Oliver's tomato field by shotgun ordering him to help pick tomatoes, in lieu of tar and feathers. They give the company back to Oliver.
Carmelita stole the show. Her phone calls for help to Oliver, whom she called "El Presidente" were a hoot. I noted when she stood next to Oliver, she appeared to be over a foot shorter than he was. I see she was only 4'11". Played by legendary cartoon voice actress June Foray, she was fabulous here. I know that I recently heard her in a few episodes of Get Smart, including one where she was a telephone operator, coincidentally enough. She rarely was on camera, but you most likely know her voice as she played in over 340 movies and TV shows from 1937 through 2014. She began in a small role in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (as a squirrel, not a dwarf), was later given a larger role in Cinderella, and went on to be the longtime voice of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, played a dog in an episode of I Love Lucy, was Dudley Do-Right's girlfriend Nell, many voices in the Rocky & Bullwinkle series feature Fractured Fairy Tales, and was most famous for being both Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on Rocky & Bullwinkle (aka The Bullwinkle Show). She had roles on Red Skelton, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, The Twilight Zone, and The Brady Bunch. She died in 2017 just two months shy of her 100th birthday. She was the queen of voice acting-with Mel Blanc of course being the king.
As I said, a solid 10.
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