McHale's Navy (TV Series) The Balloon Goes Up (1964) User Reviews

Funny episode, but built on a couple of weaker plot devices....

[parrot849-1 · 6/10 · 14 November 2020]

I loved watching the 73 crew and especially Petty Officer Moss dressed as a native and doing some wacky made-up South Pacific dance in front of the Japanese soldiers/black-marketers.

I suppose the writers had to come up with something to spoil Captain Binghamton's big chance to transfer to COMFLEET, but anyone who has had to reconcile an inventory for simple custody transfer reasons knows that the Barrage Balloon and probably half of that other crap on that inventory could have been "creatively" dealt with in the "final disposition" column of the Navy inventory form just by McHale, Gruber, and the Captain sitting down for a few minutes with a number 2 pencil, and Binghamton would have winging his way up to a happy Admiral Rogers.... Could you imagine trying to transfer a commanding officer during WW2 if he had to locate every unaccounted for paper clip before he could physically depart his present command?

An entertaining and funny show.

[kfo9494 · 9/10 · 1 November 2014]

This was a pleasantly surprising episode as it starts off with Binghamton being transferred which has everyone on the base in a giddy mood. But the one thing that has to be completed before the transfer is the base inventory. By the time the inventory is completed, the transfer may not take place. It seems that many valuable things are missing from the inventory list. Binghamton suspects only one group of people, and that would be McHale's crew.

With the inventory list standing in the way of Captain's transfer, McHale agrees to help Binghamton get back all the stolen items. McHale goes to Gruber which claims that most of the stuff was traded to Chief Urulu. So McHale pleads with the Chief to return the items so that lead-bottom can be transferred. For a price the Chief agrees to return the items but he forgot to tell McHale that one large item, a barrage balloon, was traded to the Japanese. Now McHale is going to have to deal with the enemy in order to get the Captain gone from the base.

This was a very clever script that was well done by the actors. Jacques Aubuchon does a nice job as Urulu that makes the entire episode humorous. One cannot help but laugh when Urulu is tricked by the Japanese soldier and unsheathes a sword only to find the blade part missing and the Chief is left just holding a handle. That entire scene was very well written. When an episode makes a viewer laugh then it has accomplished the job intended. This episode did its job.