Here we have the makings of a decent episode that ends badly. Oh, the good guys win, but the script for that last scene was really weak.
The plot is simple. 99 was taken captive by people that run a furniture store, with a substitute taking her place in the apartment. That part was seen in flashback. The show opened with a telephone call from the fake 99 to the real 99's mother. Max returns home late to find his wife-the imposter, with a black eye. As the real 99 told the Chief-she escaped her warehouse cell-she clobbered the fake before being taken prisoner. Since KAOS didn't know she had escaped, she was ordered to slip back into that cell so they could figure out what the KAOS plan is.
We soon learn that the plan is to have her poison Max the next day, serving him poison in all three meals. Then he'll be dead and the real 99 will be released and imprisoned for killing her husband.
After his second large meal of the day, Max goes back to work after lunch and is dizzy and keeps falling down. Despite this, nobody suspects he is being poisoned. The Chief orders him to go back home with the fake 99 and get some rest. Back at the warehouse, 99 is told what will happen, but she can't get word to the Chief because they are watching her too closely. The head of this operation, Melnik Archer tells his assistant, Rico from The Untouchables (or at least the guy who played him, Nicholas Georgiade) to keep a close eye one her. Eventually, 99 tricks him and is able to escape.
Just as the fake 99 is practically force-feeding Max into eating more of her poisoned cake, telling him, "one more bite should do it," 99 burst in and tells Max not to eat.
Here I am going to spoil the ending, but believe me, I'm not ruining anything because this was really poorly scripted.
The real 99 tells the imposter to "Get away from my husband," and she rushes to Max lying on the floor, almost poisoned to death, letting the imposter go to her purse and grab her gun. Before she can shoot, the Chief and Larabee arrive. When the Chief says "Drop you gun!" Larabee does so. I think this is a Larabee "Jump the Shark" moment-he goes from being somewhat dense to being a complete nitwit. Earlier in the episode, he is to take Max home because he's sick. He enters the Chief's office, sees Max lying on the floor, and calmly says, "OK Max, are you ready to go?" That was funny, dropping his gun was not.
Now a few years back, when someone was impersonating Max, the Chief pointed his gun at both men and set up an immediate hearing with a panel to ask questions and determine which man was the real Max. This time, reminded about the black eye the imposter has-that both Max and 99 told him about-the Chief goes over, hands the imposter a handkerchief and tells her to wipe off her eye makeup. She says, Sure," reaches for the handkerchief and knocks the Chief's gun out of his hand. Immediately, 99 standing right next to them, gives a roundhouse right to the imposter and KOs her.
They are ready to take her in, but have to pause because Larabee is gobbling down the poisoned pie, telling them how great it tastes.
The idea of a 99 impersonator was very good, after all, we've had imposters before for the Chief, Max, Admiral Hargrade, Larabee, even agent 13, so why not? But we viewers learned about the impersonator in the first 3 minutes and there was never a doubt which one was the real one.
What really bugged me was how the Chief sent 99 back to the warehouse to be captive again. For all they knew, Melnick had discovered she was missing and might have killed her immediately on her return, figuring she's contact the Chief and told him enough to ruin his plan. It seemed so likely that the plan was to somehow kill Max, for all the Chief knew, ordering him to pretend he didn't know he was dealing with an impostor, was going to kill Max. Also, knowing she could have easily shot him that first night but didn't, should have made him suspect she might kill him by poisoning him, especially when Max talked about her feeding him this huge breakfast which is not his normal routine.
For that matter, with the resources KAOS had, I would think they'd find a poison that could have killed Max in one small dose. If he wasn't suspicious, he would have eaten whatever his loving wife fed him, even if it tasted funny, and he would have been dead before reporting for work that next morning.
The one thing they did that was clever, was have the natural voice for the impostor not sound like Barbara Feldon doing a different voice. They hired the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, June Foray, to do that voice. Otherwise, this was simply one of the dumbest scripts ever, making no sense in any way.
It didn't even make sense that Melnick Archer would be running a big furniture store while fronting for KAOS. It's one thing for other fronts, when it's a small office, with only 1-2 employees, but a big furniture store would have to have plenty of employees-are they all working for KAOS but spending most of the time selling and shipping furniture?
So I wind up giving it a 4 because there were a few good lines, but it was not well done in any important way.
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