We open at a bus station with Max and 99 waiting for their contact to arrive. Agent 46 walks in and from across the room, 46 starts touching various areas on his body. Our heroes note that he's using some silent signal code. Max breaks out his codebook and after they state the first three things 46 did, 99 says, "What does he want us to do?" Max, finding those three things in the book calmly says, "He wants me to steal second base." Then they realize he's using the CONTROL Baseball Handbook, so Smart gets out the proper code book and deciphers that the message is to stay away for the time being because he is being followed.
So, while 86 and 99 are just standing around, looking away from Agent 46, Mr. Spock comes into the bus station and using a silent gun in a briefcase, shoots 46 and leaves unseen. Lying on the floor next to some wet cement, 46 scrawls a coded message in the wet cement.
The cement with the message is taken (off camera) to CONTROL headquarters where it is deciphered to be two letters, PI and a phone number. Max calls the number and talks to a paid informant, who arranges to meet Smart in the same bus station. This meeting sees Max assume a clerk at the little store in the station is his contact, and he pays him $500 (out of the $2000 he was to pay the informant) for a stick of gum before deciding that "that man made a terrible mistake." Of course, he wouldn't think that he himself made the mistake.
The scene leads to Spock (called Stryker on this show) killing the real informant, who is able to get out three words before he dies-"shark, pool, mother."
Now we viewers had already seen the KAOS men meet at a pool hall where the name was clearly visible on the windows-Mother's Family Pool Parlor-with one of the baddies called "The Shark." It took Max and Chief only a little time, but they figured out where they were being directed. The target of their search was to find a big new machine KAOS was using to intercept and decode messages. We saw it in use, and saw how it worked at the pool parlor. Certain pool balls were set up on a pool table and when shot correctly, each ball zipped into a different pocket-on one shot-and the whole top of the pool table lifted up to reveal what can only be described as a large computer that spit out a small paper with a message.
Max asks for the assignment to go to the pool hall, assuring the Chief that pool is his game. The Chief hires "Willie Marconi (a spoof of famous pool champion Willie Mosconi) to give Max some tips. This leads to a long scene where Max keeps doing things-including accidentally throwing his cue stick and hitting Willie on the head-before the Chief tells Max off, telling him he's a fraud, that he knows nothing about shooting pool. Enter Parker from the lab, who has not only developed a cue stick that is a shotgun, but has a remote control cue ball, that 99 can control from a short distance by pointing he lipstick tube to make the ball go just as she points.
Now if you're looking for total logic, forget it. There's no way she could direct the ball that accurately as to make the cue ball hit an object ball at just the right angle to direct it to a pocket. She'd be able to come close, but just a fraction off on where they collide and the object ball (which she couldn't control at all) would go near but not in the pocket, at least most of the time. The idea is that 99 will be able to look around the pool hall while Max is playing the Shark, to figure out where the machine is. But that was before she was to spend all her time helping Max make his shots. The real fun of the big game we see is how she controls the ball (she substituted the remote control one for the one that was on the table when they entered) to make the Shark miss-his shot goes real slow, then stops in the middle of the table, then backs up almost to where he started without touching another ball. Max's shots all are directed flawlessly by 99 to make all the balls go in. Most of the shots look like regular pool shots, but a few have some mysterious motion by the cue ball.
In the Barbara Feldon intro to the episode on the DVD set, she tells us that Don Adams was an excellent pool player. While he is playing the Shark, the Shark mentions a famous pool player named "Three Fingers Yarmy," which is an inside joke because Adams' real life last name is Yarmy.
Well, 99 and Max learn nothing about where the code-breaking, intercepting machine is until the balls happen to all line up together on one side of the table in the exact order needed to set up a combination shot opening up the table. Max does a three-bank shot and knocks them all in, causing the machine to suddenly open leading to a brief gun battle, culminating in Max using the remote control cue ball and 99's steering of it to KO the Shark.
Perhaps in reading this description, you think this show is a mess, too much time spent wasted in the bus station with two agents killed just to get out the place to go, then a long scene with Max being totally inept at playing pool, then he learns to use the special pool equipment, then the actual game played is fairly short, with only dumb luck getting them to crack the case. All I can say is it watched better than it reads. It was a fairly entertaining episode. Now the title simply dealt with the hieroglyphic type message scrawled in the cement, that was decoded with ease, but that only led to contacting the informant who gave the clue to the location they needed. I might suggest the title should have been "(Not your) Mother's Pool Parlor."
The show may have meandered without clear direction but most of the scenes were funny-an 8.
So, while 86 and 99 are just standing around, looking away from Agent 46, Mr. Spock comes into the bus station and using a silent gun in a briefcase, shoots 46 and leaves unseen. Lying on the floor next to some wet cement, 46 scrawls a coded message in the wet cement.
The cement with the message is taken (off camera) to CONTROL headquarters where it is deciphered to be two letters, PI and a phone number. Max calls the number and talks to a paid informant, who arranges to meet Smart in the same bus station. This meeting sees Max assume a clerk at the little store in the station is his contact, and he pays him $500 (out of the $2000 he was to pay the informant) for a stick of gum before deciding that "that man made a terrible mistake." Of course, he wouldn't think that he himself made the mistake.
The scene leads to Spock (called Stryker on this show) killing the real informant, who is able to get out three words before he dies-"shark, pool, mother."
Now we viewers had already seen the KAOS men meet at a pool hall where the name was clearly visible on the windows-Mother's Family Pool Parlor-with one of the baddies called "The Shark." It took Max and Chief only a little time, but they figured out where they were being directed. The target of their search was to find a big new machine KAOS was using to intercept and decode messages. We saw it in use, and saw how it worked at the pool parlor. Certain pool balls were set up on a pool table and when shot correctly, each ball zipped into a different pocket-on one shot-and the whole top of the pool table lifted up to reveal what can only be described as a large computer that spit out a small paper with a message.
Max asks for the assignment to go to the pool hall, assuring the Chief that pool is his game. The Chief hires "Willie Marconi (a spoof of famous pool champion Willie Mosconi) to give Max some tips. This leads to a long scene where Max keeps doing things-including accidentally throwing his cue stick and hitting Willie on the head-before the Chief tells Max off, telling him he's a fraud, that he knows nothing about shooting pool. Enter Parker from the lab, who has not only developed a cue stick that is a shotgun, but has a remote control cue ball, that 99 can control from a short distance by pointing he lipstick tube to make the ball go just as she points.
Now if you're looking for total logic, forget it. There's no way she could direct the ball that accurately as to make the cue ball hit an object ball at just the right angle to direct it to a pocket. She'd be able to come close, but just a fraction off on where they collide and the object ball (which she couldn't control at all) would go near but not in the pocket, at least most of the time. The idea is that 99 will be able to look around the pool hall while Max is playing the Shark, to figure out where the machine is. But that was before she was to spend all her time helping Max make his shots. The real fun of the big game we see is how she controls the ball (she substituted the remote control one for the one that was on the table when they entered) to make the Shark miss-his shot goes real slow, then stops in the middle of the table, then backs up almost to where he started without touching another ball. Max's shots all are directed flawlessly by 99 to make all the balls go in. Most of the shots look like regular pool shots, but a few have some mysterious motion by the cue ball.
In the Barbara Feldon intro to the episode on the DVD set, she tells us that Don Adams was an excellent pool player. While he is playing the Shark, the Shark mentions a famous pool player named "Three Fingers Yarmy," which is an inside joke because Adams' real life last name is Yarmy.
Well, 99 and Max learn nothing about where the code-breaking, intercepting machine is until the balls happen to all line up together on one side of the table in the exact order needed to set up a combination shot opening up the table. Max does a three-bank shot and knocks them all in, causing the machine to suddenly open leading to a brief gun battle, culminating in Max using the remote control cue ball and 99's steering of it to KO the Shark.
Perhaps in reading this description, you think this show is a mess, too much time spent wasted in the bus station with two agents killed just to get out the place to go, then a long scene with Max being totally inept at playing pool, then he learns to use the special pool equipment, then the actual game played is fairly short, with only dumb luck getting them to crack the case. All I can say is it watched better than it reads. It was a fairly entertaining episode. Now the title simply dealt with the hieroglyphic type message scrawled in the cement, that was decoded with ease, but that only led to contacting the informant who gave the clue to the location they needed. I might suggest the title should have been "(Not your) Mother's Pool Parlor."
The show may have meandered without clear direction but most of the scenes were funny-an 8.
