We open in Max's apartment, where 99 arrives to hear about how Agent K-13 (Fang) has been re-assigned to desk duty and is quite listless being "out of action." They know of another agent, 73, who's having dog problems and when he phones, Max informs us of a special agent hot line phone-a log taken from his burning fireplace. Just as the agent is about to tell Max what dog kennel he took his dog to, the dog suddenly attacks and kills 73. Which kennel is not important here because the Chief knows where 73 went and that several other people have recently been killed by their dogs right after they did business with the same kennel.
At the Chief's office, we learn several CONTROL agents have been recently killed by their dogs and they all went to the same kennel. With no other good candidates, the Chief lets Max talk him into sending Fang there to spy on the KAOS front. Fang is to wear a camera that will supposedly let them see what goes on. They also take a parrot with them who the Chief assures them will later be able to repeat everything he hears-in case the camera doesn't work. Smart and 99 pose as husband and wife simply wanting to drop off their pets. They do so using assumed names.
The two men at the kennel think Max looked familiar. On its own, the parrot blurts out his real name and they know he's with CONTROL.
Back at Max's, he, 99, and the Chief are perplexed that Fang's picture shows nothing and hasn't for a couple of hours. The Chief leaves with orders for Max to NOT try to rescue Fang. But after he's gone, 86 and 99 go to rescue Fang. We see them about to blast open the door of the closed kennel when they find out the door is unlocked.
Now a serious spy show would have them suspecting a trap because the door was unlocked. Here, they enter and are immediately captured by the same two men, who tell of plans to retrain pets for all the important people in Washington so they will attack their owners on the head man's command. (He, the leader, played by Oscar Beregi, best remembered as Lisa Douglas's father on Green Acres, is never named,)
They bring out a bomb that will go off on a dog's bark, with Max and 99 chained to the wall, the two KAOS men go to the basement, leaving open the door to the elevator shaft so they can signal Fang to bark once they know the Chief has arrived to rescue the agents.
I won't reveal just how our heroes got out of it, but they did, of course.
What I didn't like about this episode was how everyone kept doing the opposite of what they said they wanted to do and how there was no logic to many of the actions. Right after we learned about the fate of Agent 73, the Chief had files showing that many Washington leaders had taken their dogs to the same pet place. Surely, they could have spread the word not to go there-even if they had no proof. Of course, a city as vast as Washington would have many pet kennels in and outside the city limits. Even in 1966, most well-off people lived in the suburbs and would be unlikely to go into the city for a pet kennel, and certainly not the same one.
When Max and 99 went there, they used fake names. If they figured KAOS was going after top government officials, you would think they would have fake covers to make it look like at least one of them was such a person, but they did not. Or Max would use his real name knowing KAOS would recognize it as a CONTROL agent and want to liquidate him. If the parrot hadn't talked, there would have been no need to retrain Fang, as the owners seemed to be ordinary citizens.
Fang, who was miserable at obeying commands by Max or anyone, was somehow, in a few hours, retrained by Oscar to obey complicated commands relying on several words-in German. He was a veritable Aryan Lassie. Again, not realistic at all.
Then there's the matter of the camera on the dog's collar. How is it attached so it won't mostly just point at the floor? If it's hanging from the collar, the camera will be bobbing all around leaving no viewable, useful picture. Dogs don't tend to hold their heads steady for long. If someone is doing anything with Fang, he won't be standing right in front of the dog for long, so the camera won't show much no matter what.
If it's one man doing whatever they did to make Fang ready to kill Smart, that man isn't likely to be talking much while with the dog, so the parrot-even if left alone with Fang, which is doubtful-wouldn't be able to repeat anything useful. I mean, someone comes into the room to brainwash/retrain Fang to kill Smart. Alone with the two animals, is the man going to say, "Now Fang, I'm going to attach this machine to your head so that you will be reprogrammed to do whatever I tell you...?"
To make it even more dumb, once they capture Max and 99, the KAOS men are just waiting for the Chief to arrive to blow up the room where the three are, killing everyone. If a room in your house is going to blow up...do you want to be beneath that room as the KAOS men were in the show? And when they blow up part of their kennel, how do they continue their work in brainwashing other dogs?
I know there are dumb elements in every episode, but this whole episode is too full of dumb things that don't make sense. The plot is quite thin, so there's a lot of filler-about the Chief trying to catch a bee in his office, finally helped by Max, and they set up parallel lines of dialogue where Max expresses his fondness for Fang by pointing out objects of Fang's, then in the Chief's office, he uses most of the same phrases in talking about Max, each man doing so before going to rescue the agent they were talking about-Fang and Max, respectively.
There were few laughs in this one. I give it a 4.
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