Someone mentioned last week that this episode would be a “bottle episode”, meaning mostly familiar locations and only a few other characters – and that was pretty much true. There wasn’t really much of a case. Someone was sabotaging the machines at the base. Hooper was a suspect, but why would he sabotage himself and then complain about having to fix everything? His assistant Beverly had no motive; she had already complained about him harassing her and wanted to quit. So the only other person was the safety inspector Ernest Wolffhart. That was an easy one. As Maxwell Smart once put it, “It had to be him – based on three things: instinct, motive, and a lack of other suspects.”
So with little emphasis on the case, there was a little more background about the main characters revealed, by using the device of having a psychiatrist Dr. Angela Carr come to interview them. She also turned out to be one of the ex-wives of Colin Devis (which I suspected the moment he heard her name and then fled the scene.)
The most revealing character moment came when Nathan admitted to Kenzy that he had worked a case involving his father’s company only to find his father was the culprit behind it. Ironically, it was after he had tried to drag Pal over to the see the shrink and they got trapped together when an explosion breached the air supply. I was expecting Kenzy to be the one to reveal something but Nathan did instead. I think all Pal admitted to was that she’d had some bad run-ins with psychiatrists in her youth. I did like her line earlier about what she didn’t like about working on the moon – literally miles and miles of nothing outside, but we’re stuck in sardine cans.
Colin ends up stranded with his ex-wife during the crisis and eventually persuades her to have sex with him. She is pricelessly flummoxed later on as to how he managed to pull it off and how she managed to fall for it. Best exchange between them:
Angela: I’m scared.
Colin: Let’s cuddle then.
Angela: I’m not that scared.
Also enjoyed the scene where Krivenko takes Wolffhart out in the moon buggy to look at Earth from the lunar surface. That would be quite a sight, I’m sure. Ernest reflects on the boredom of his job and Alex talks about how insignificant we are – with countless galaxies out there but we’ve never left this one. I was annoyed when that dialogue was turned against him by Dr. Parr, commenting on how that meant he thought everything was futile. I agreed with his defense that this was a statement made in confidence to a friend to help cheer him up. It didn’t work of course; Wolffhart went on to sabotage this on the base just to shake things up, although he never meant to cause an explosion like he ended up doing. He was just plain clumsy.
Hooper managed to fix everything with Beverley’s help, but in the end he never acknowledged her efforts and despite her trying to be nice to him just huffed that he liked to do things by himself. Some people will just always be jerks.
In the last scene, Nathan asks Kenzy not to say anything about what he told her. She assures him she won’t now that they’re getting along well. He tells her that sounded a little like her old blackmail tone, but she laughs, “Now would I really do that to you?” They then walk off by separate corridors. He thinks about it for a few moments and then pops his head back out thinking, “Would she???” Unfortunately, someone apparently thought that wasn’t good enough and they dubbed her saying “Would I?” loudly before he pops his head back out. But it made no real sense for her to say that and just kind of ruined the punchline by being added in. That’s my take on it anyway.
Anna gets a bit short-changed with the episode. Earlier she asks Colin what he feels like doing and he says he wants to play “hide the sausage.” That kind of line could get you fired for sexual harassment these days, but she just takes it in stride and it’s obviously she would never report a colleague. Later one, Dr. Parr does ask her about her feelings about having to shoot a man last week, but it’s never really explored. It’s just an excuse for her to mention Colin’s name so that Angela can look bug-eyed when she realizes he’s there.
It’s a different kind of episode, but the characters are interesting enough to make it work. I’ll give this one 7 rivet drivers, which you can politely show to your assistant when she gives you a screwdriver by mistake, but you should not then fire a rivet right near her to demonstrate. That’s just being a jerk.
