The British Also Have Ensigns

Binghamton gets word that British sub-Lieutenant Cedric Clivedon is being temporarily placed at Taratupa, The Captain lays out the red carpet since the sub-Lieutenant is the kin to Admiral Sommers of British Command. But when Binghamton is introduced to Cedric, he finds out that he is just as bumbling as Ensign Parker. And when he reads his service record, he finds that he has sank three ships with all of them being the ship he was assigned. Binghamton has to get him transferred but then thinks that perhaps he could sink the PT 73. So he assigns Cedric to be a part of the crew of the 73.

Sure enough it is a disaster for McHale's crew. Cedric nearly kills the crew while firing a gun and his antics are even worse (if you can believe it) than Parker's. When McHale and the crew go out on patrol, Cedric is left back at camp. During this time he runs into Fuji and arrest him as a Japanese spy. He takes Fuji over to Binghamton's office for processing.

Later McHale hears of the arrest and thinks of a plan where they may be able to release Fuji. Parker is going to dressed up as the British Admiral and hopefully talks his way into letting Binghamton release Fuji. But about that time the real Admiral Sommers makes an appearance on the base.

Bernard Fox does a nice job of playing the British officer and in some scene even makes Tim Conway look tame. The script was well written and the action made the viewer interested in the outcome of the show. This is an episode that made the series so enjoyable for many. Nice watch.

I saw a lot of McHale's Navy episodes the first time around, when I was a young kid back in the early '60s. I've had to rely on AntennaTV and MeTV to fill in the episodes I missed, including this one. My parents weren't keen on us kids watching this; Mom hated it, and Dad scoffed at it as being nothing like what he and Mom's brother endured during the war. (They both were POWs...Dad by the Germans when his B-24 was shot down en route to bombing Ploiesti, and my uncle Bob - 6' 5" and 260 lbs, kind of a beanpole - by the Japanese. (His conditions were so bad, he weighed about 110 lbs when freed by Allied troops in 1945. He looked like a skin-covered skeleton. It took him two years to fully recover.) Anyhow, I laughed myself silly watching this one...Joe Flynn and Tim Conway together always were like gasoline and a lit match. Adding Bernard Fox to the story was akin to pure oxygen being added to the mixture. One has to laugh at this episode, despite the sheer nonsense offered up in the plot. It's quite difficult to "out-Conway" Tim Conway when he's on his best but Fox does it here. You have to see this one to believe it.