User Reviews

George, Sapphire, Andy and Calhoun are all excited about going to the convention of the Mystic Knights of the Sea, in Chicago. At Sapphire's insistence, SHE will take care of the lodge's $500 appropriation, which was for minor expenses as well as to pay their hotel bill and their train tickets back home.

In order to write this review, I need to reveal the surprise ending, so consider this to be your special spoiler alert.

The first beef I have with the script is that the group did not buy round-trip tickets. Everyone knows train fares were always less if you did this instead of paying separately for one way fares. It also seems they would have been quoted a rate for the hotel for their stay and issued a check from the lodge for that amount, with the travelers issued a small amount of money for incidentals, rather than be given cash for everything-even in the 50s, I believe.

As soon as they check in, George starts pestering Sapphire to let him have the money. She says no until he provides his dumbest reason-warning her what he heard about the hotel being full of confidence men trying to trick you out of your money. On that point, given his history, you'd think Sapphire would say that this is the biggest reason why she will continue to hold the money.

Actually, since almost all of the money-hotel bill, which was nearly $200, and train fare home-wasn't going to be needed until they checked out, you'd expect Sapphire to want to put all but about $30 in the hotel safe right away.

Instead, she suddenly, inexplicably, switches and hands George the envelope with all of the money. He goes down to the lobby, has his buddies leave him for a few minutes, and is immediately approached by someone who we are certain is posing as a lodge member. We are certain when he tells George he is in charge of security and everyone is giving him their valuables to put in the hotel safe to prevent theft. Idiot George, on this stranger's word, just hands him the money and not much later decides he wants some of it so he and his buddies can wander about town for a while. It is then that he learns that the man saying he is named Higgins is not registered at the hotel. We later hear that the police told George they have been looking for this crook Higgins for days.

He tries to con the hotel owner into letting him cash a check that will provide payment for the hotel and cash back to get home. He makes up orally a letter from his bank in New York for the man, but the owner says, "You're playing a joke, right? Nobody could be so stupid as to think I'd go for a story like that."

So George does the dumbest thing possible-he and friends decide to hop a freight train back to New York and only leaves Sapphire a note telling her to wire her Mama for train fare home. He is gone by the time she has a chance to read the note.

We see the guys get into an empty freight car, and while sleeping, it is loaded with cows. Somehow, the cows are put in a separate part of the car, and the guys are not seen. After they finally wake up to the odd mooing sound of the cows, they walk over and see the cows. After one of them says, "They're cows" Calhoun has to walk up and touch one before he believes, confirming, "Yeah, they're cows." Call him "Doubting Calhoun" I guess: He can't tell they're cows until he touches one.

I was surprised that this train they hopped didn't wind up taking them to California. Somehow they got home and when George tells Sapphire about his trip, she says she just wishes he had told her right away. She reveals that she arranged with this Higgins to con George out of his money. He gave it back to her and she had it all the time. But for three days in Chicago, George was without money and never let her know what had happened.

Now because we didn't know this, I spent the whole episode thinking, "I know George and friends are idiots, but this is the first time I ever recall Sapphire being totally stupid with money as to just let George have the whole $500 instead of relenting and giving him $25 or so. Now I know why that happened.

But we are left with this dilemma: How did Sapphire come to have this "Higgins" do her this favor? Who was he? Remember that we heard the police have been looking for him for days. Secondly, if he gave her the money back right away, why didn't she find some way to get George to reveal that he'd lost the money to her? She apparently just kept it and let him go about worried as could be, penniless, and she never said a word to him?

I didn't even like George's explanation that his mother-in-law would never send enough money for the group to get home, only enough for Sapphire. If she asked for X amount, her mother would send it, knowing she'd get it back. She wouldn't really want the 3 others stuck in Chicago permanently.

Overall, because we didn't know about Sapphire's deception, the show seemed more stupid than it was in that regard, but wound up being really dumb, just in a different way. I smiled a bit at the fake check attempt, but it wasn't believable either-that George would think this would work-asking for an extra $200-that's got to be a couple of thousand today. No hotel would just give you that much without confirming the validity of your check. Thus I give it a 2.