Mira Loma, Mexico is what the screen says the setting is for this one. It beings with a church bell ringing and ringing as we pan around a quiet, almost deserted town. We move up the bell tower and see two people engaged in a violent fight complete with large swords that seem to sway in the breeze as though they are rubber. One person wins, then walks through the town into a cantina and a room in the back, holding an object about 15 inches long, wrapped in paper. The object is a carving of a black bird. The holder turns out to be a young woman who we saw on a poster as she walked through the cantina-she is the featured dancer at the place.
As we see the statue the shot switches to a photo of it-shown by the Chief in his office to Max and 99 as he tells them about the valuable jewels that make up this statue, known as the Tequila Mockingbird. This series did a lot of this sort of thing-the title is some sort of reference to one thing, while the plot is totally a take off on an entirely different matter. Here we obviously have a title based on the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, while the show is patterned after The Maltese Falcon AND in later scenes, the film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Back in Mexico, the dancer, named Esperanza, is clicking away on castanets while two KAOS people, Dietrick (played by Oscar Beregi) and Valdez (Lewis Charles) are sitting at a table talking about trying to find the statue. Valdez is getting into the castanets so much he is tapping the table. This gets the attention of Dietrick, who recoginizes that the pattern is Morse code and he figures out she is a CONTROL agent, has the statue, and would rather she get killed before she tells CONTROL where the statue is hidden instead of her revealing it so he would know, then killing her and leaving town. This, of course, seems dumb since she was obviously signaling to someone far out of town.
In fact, the Chief has Larabee decoding the message on a similar set of castanets in his office but suddenly the message stops because the girl is dead-we know, even if they don't. Now zesnorsock's review details correctly how director Don Adams blew a joke where Valdez, when ordered to kill the girl asks, "In front of all these people?" and we can only see the two of them looking around the room. We needed a wide shot showing the otherwise empty cantina.
So 99 is flown to Mira Loma to become the new dancer to try to find the statue, while Max has to travel in a slower fashion to go into his role as a disgraced doctor. He arrives riding a burro complete with a blanket saying "Hernandez Rent-a-Burro." He stops at a hitching post and, being Max, dismounts by stepping right into a watering trough. Max just walks through it as though he wanted to cool his feet and goes up to the one man sitting in a chair outside a building. It is Valdez, who tells him he is the chief of police, the mayor, the tax collector, dog catcher, etc.
Max meets with 99, then goes back out to see her show. Dietrick and Valdez enter, revealing that their informants have told them who the newcomers really are. 99 hesitates to tell what she knows about the whereabouts of the statue. Just before they entered, she figured out the meaning of the club she and Max found. They let her do her dance, but caution her against signaling her husband.
She tries anyhow but Max just thinks she's dancing and points back mimicking her motions. Finally she shows the whereabouts to Max who dashes outside. Dietrick sees the same message a moment later and he and Valdez confront Max right after he retrieves the statue. There is a shootout and to no one's surprise, the good guys win.
I thought this was full of laughs and the setting made it unlike other episodes. 9 out of 10.
As we see the statue the shot switches to a photo of it-shown by the Chief in his office to Max and 99 as he tells them about the valuable jewels that make up this statue, known as the Tequila Mockingbird. This series did a lot of this sort of thing-the title is some sort of reference to one thing, while the plot is totally a take off on an entirely different matter. Here we obviously have a title based on the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, while the show is patterned after The Maltese Falcon AND in later scenes, the film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Back in Mexico, the dancer, named Esperanza, is clicking away on castanets while two KAOS people, Dietrick (played by Oscar Beregi) and Valdez (Lewis Charles) are sitting at a table talking about trying to find the statue. Valdez is getting into the castanets so much he is tapping the table. This gets the attention of Dietrick, who recoginizes that the pattern is Morse code and he figures out she is a CONTROL agent, has the statue, and would rather she get killed before she tells CONTROL where the statue is hidden instead of her revealing it so he would know, then killing her and leaving town. This, of course, seems dumb since she was obviously signaling to someone far out of town.
In fact, the Chief has Larabee decoding the message on a similar set of castanets in his office but suddenly the message stops because the girl is dead-we know, even if they don't. Now zesnorsock's review details correctly how director Don Adams blew a joke where Valdez, when ordered to kill the girl asks, "In front of all these people?" and we can only see the two of them looking around the room. We needed a wide shot showing the otherwise empty cantina.
So 99 is flown to Mira Loma to become the new dancer to try to find the statue, while Max has to travel in a slower fashion to go into his role as a disgraced doctor. He arrives riding a burro complete with a blanket saying "Hernandez Rent-a-Burro." He stops at a hitching post and, being Max, dismounts by stepping right into a watering trough. Max just walks through it as though he wanted to cool his feet and goes up to the one man sitting in a chair outside a building. It is Valdez, who tells him he is the chief of police, the mayor, the tax collector, dog catcher, etc.
Max meets with 99, then goes back out to see her show. Dietrick and Valdez enter, revealing that their informants have told them who the newcomers really are. 99 hesitates to tell what she knows about the whereabouts of the statue. Just before they entered, she figured out the meaning of the club she and Max found. They let her do her dance, but caution her against signaling her husband.
She tries anyhow but Max just thinks she's dancing and points back mimicking her motions. Finally she shows the whereabouts to Max who dashes outside. Dietrick sees the same message a moment later and he and Valdez confront Max right after he retrieves the statue. There is a shootout and to no one's surprise, the good guys win.
I thought this was full of laughs and the setting made it unlike other episodes. 9 out of 10.
