We open with an (obvious) KAOS agent just outside Max's apartment, waiting to jump him when he exits. We see the doorknob start to turn and suddenly Max has his hands no the neck of the bad guy and is pinning him to the wall, boasting about how he fell for the "old remote control, self-propelled, spinning, doorknob trick." Just as the man is about to tell him who at KAOS he works for, the shoe phone rings with an urgent message from the Chief to report at once. So Max chops the guy in the neck and leaves him in the hallway.
Then we see 99 in a big bubble bath, when she gets the same sort of phone call from the Chief. They tease us as the camera stays on her as she gets up from the tub-revealing a yellow swim suit. She wasn't at home-we never see her at home, you know. She was working as a model and she left the job at once for her other job.
Both of them arrive at headquarters together and are amazed to see the Chief with hair on top of his head. Neither, at first, realized it was the Chief. Later Max can't resist sticking his fingers in the wig and even goes so far as to ask the Chief if he is sure he doesn't have it on backwards.
The mission is to make a good impression on a famous magazine writer who is doing a feature on CONTROL (which goes against the previous notion that the organization wanted to be truly top secret). A Mr. Fitzmaurice and his secretary, Miss Magruder come in, do a quick review of the office then say they want to follow Max and 99 all day on an assignment.
Viewers learn right afterwards that Miss Magruder works for KAOS and is trying to get Fitzmaurice to see CONTROL as a totally inept agency, so that his article can lead to it being put out of business. She has two operatives who work to foil everything Max tries to show the writer, even pouring water down a long rain gutter that spills all over Fitzmaurice's clothes when he tries to look into the periscope Max just told him about, and switching the wiring on all the gadgets in Max's car.
By the way, we are more than halfway through Season 3, and every time Max is driving in an episode, he has the same red car he always had. Why then did the opening credits for this season see him driving up in a blue auto?
One of the more creative ideas I thought was when Max is taking the writer to a meeting with a foreign minister. He takes him to a room 801 in a hotel, which you enter by taking a doorknob off one side of a room on the opposite side, moving it to the other side of that door and turning it, opening a door on the other side of the hall marked Emergency Exit. That leads them into a false room, where they even have a dummy Max calls a "false foreign minister, and a false window, which is the door to another corridor where they go through the whole thing again, with another false minister, false room, false door, and into a third room where they find an unconscious minister who's been drugged.
This leads them to visit Dr. Steele at her strip club. A moment later, 99 and others bring in the Chief, who's been frozen by the same sort of poison. Before Dr. Steele can go to work, she is hit silently and poisoned the same way.
Alone with 99, Max declares he has figured out who the KAOS agent is, but we cut away without learning what he is thinking. Max and 99 go to where Fitzmaurice and Magruder are and Max says the writer is the agent because he had access to both the minister and Dr. Steele. Max says he needs to take notes and asks to borrow Magruder's pencil. She clutches it, resisting, and 99 pulls out her gun and orders her to let Max have it. She then explains that Magruder also had access to those two AND that she and not Fitzmaurice had access to the Chief. She says that Max figured it out and he only pretended to think it was the writer.
Suddenly the two agents working under Miss Magruder appear with guns, but they are foiled, partly by Max, and in a noteworthy change from the ordinary-by 99, who cold cocks one of the hoods with one swift punch. Usually, she only grabs the female enemy agents and lets Max handle all the battles with the males. I understand that a typical woman isn't as physically strong as a typical man, but a swift punch can indeed take care of a situation and a woman of ordinary strength could surely do this. Yay 99!
There were loads of funny scenes in this one including some great lines. I think it was wise for the writers to let us know for certain Magruder was the KAOS agent. There were only two possibles, so thinking we'll play whodunit wouldn't have worked, so let us in on it so we can watch for suspicious behavior.
As far as plots go, the actions of all involved made sense and Max really didn't bumble, much-he couldn't help it that they sabotaged his rain gutter and his car. I give this one a 9 out of 10.
Then we see 99 in a big bubble bath, when she gets the same sort of phone call from the Chief. They tease us as the camera stays on her as she gets up from the tub-revealing a yellow swim suit. She wasn't at home-we never see her at home, you know. She was working as a model and she left the job at once for her other job.
Both of them arrive at headquarters together and are amazed to see the Chief with hair on top of his head. Neither, at first, realized it was the Chief. Later Max can't resist sticking his fingers in the wig and even goes so far as to ask the Chief if he is sure he doesn't have it on backwards.
The mission is to make a good impression on a famous magazine writer who is doing a feature on CONTROL (which goes against the previous notion that the organization wanted to be truly top secret). A Mr. Fitzmaurice and his secretary, Miss Magruder come in, do a quick review of the office then say they want to follow Max and 99 all day on an assignment.
Viewers learn right afterwards that Miss Magruder works for KAOS and is trying to get Fitzmaurice to see CONTROL as a totally inept agency, so that his article can lead to it being put out of business. She has two operatives who work to foil everything Max tries to show the writer, even pouring water down a long rain gutter that spills all over Fitzmaurice's clothes when he tries to look into the periscope Max just told him about, and switching the wiring on all the gadgets in Max's car.
By the way, we are more than halfway through Season 3, and every time Max is driving in an episode, he has the same red car he always had. Why then did the opening credits for this season see him driving up in a blue auto?
One of the more creative ideas I thought was when Max is taking the writer to a meeting with a foreign minister. He takes him to a room 801 in a hotel, which you enter by taking a doorknob off one side of a room on the opposite side, moving it to the other side of that door and turning it, opening a door on the other side of the hall marked Emergency Exit. That leads them into a false room, where they even have a dummy Max calls a "false foreign minister, and a false window, which is the door to another corridor where they go through the whole thing again, with another false minister, false room, false door, and into a third room where they find an unconscious minister who's been drugged.
This leads them to visit Dr. Steele at her strip club. A moment later, 99 and others bring in the Chief, who's been frozen by the same sort of poison. Before Dr. Steele can go to work, she is hit silently and poisoned the same way.
Alone with 99, Max declares he has figured out who the KAOS agent is, but we cut away without learning what he is thinking. Max and 99 go to where Fitzmaurice and Magruder are and Max says the writer is the agent because he had access to both the minister and Dr. Steele. Max says he needs to take notes and asks to borrow Magruder's pencil. She clutches it, resisting, and 99 pulls out her gun and orders her to let Max have it. She then explains that Magruder also had access to those two AND that she and not Fitzmaurice had access to the Chief. She says that Max figured it out and he only pretended to think it was the writer.
Suddenly the two agents working under Miss Magruder appear with guns, but they are foiled, partly by Max, and in a noteworthy change from the ordinary-by 99, who cold cocks one of the hoods with one swift punch. Usually, she only grabs the female enemy agents and lets Max handle all the battles with the males. I understand that a typical woman isn't as physically strong as a typical man, but a swift punch can indeed take care of a situation and a woman of ordinary strength could surely do this. Yay 99!
There were loads of funny scenes in this one including some great lines. I think it was wise for the writers to let us know for certain Magruder was the KAOS agent. There were only two possibles, so thinking we'll play whodunit wouldn't have worked, so let us in on it so we can watch for suspicious behavior.
As far as plots go, the actions of all involved made sense and Max really didn't bumble, much-he couldn't help it that they sabotaged his rain gutter and his car. I give this one a 9 out of 10.
